The Origins and Onset of the 2006 Crisis in Timor-Leste

Abstract

In the space of four weeks in April and May 2006, the newly independent country of Timor-Leste plunged from 'UN success story' into catastrophe. As hostilities grew, most of the inhabitants of the capital city fled their homes, and on 24 May, amidst armed conflict among police, army and irregular groups, Timor-Leste's leadership called in an international military intervention to restore the peace. Despite its gravity the crisis remains poorly understood both inside and outside the country, and many of its critical details have been lost to sight in the wake of subsequent events. The political nature of the crisis and the violence accompanying it exposed unresolved issues and deep divisions rooted in Timor's history. A returned Fretilin exile group under the leadership of Mari Alkatiri outmanoeuvred resistance hero Xanana Gusmão in the UN-managed political and constitutional processes leading to independence in 2002. After independence Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri pursued an autocratic style of government, favouring friends and excluding and persecuting opponents, built up paramilitary police forces and declared that Fretilin would rule for fifty years. By early 2006 Timor-Leste's first significant petroleum revenues had come on stream, its first parliamentary elections were due in 2007, and the UN mission (UNOTIL) was preparing to leave. Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's appetite for power and authority, resisted by President Xanana Gusmão, made a confrontation of some kind inevitable. In early 2006 the political contest between Mari Alkatiri and Xanana Gusmão surfaced, over complaints of discrimination in the army. Over the following months, as tensions grew, the army fractured and the police force disintegrated. In May 2006 armed conflict among army, police, and irregular armed groups brought the country to the brink of civil war, halted only by the rapid deployment of Australian-led international forces on 25 May. Subsequent judicial investigations and prosecutions were pursued in dilatory fashion and left the impression that an understanding had been reached among the leadership to avoid mutual recrimination. The failure of the country's leadership to resolve pressing issues before the crisis, and their failure afterwards to account publicly for and to atone for what happened in 2006, sacrificed democratic and legal principle in the interest of political deal-making, and embedded undesirable precedents in Timor-Leste's political and judicial practice.