Timor-Leste: The Harsh Reality After Independence

Abstract

Even set against its long history of misery, 2006 was one of Timor-Leste's worst years. While there have been other years in which more people have died and in which its physical infrastructure has been more destroyed, 2006 saw, if not the ending of a dream, then the harsh realization that the value of independence was only as good as its political community made it. In 2006, Timor-Leste's political community tore itself apart, setting in train an internal conflict that had scope to run well beyond the year's end, and which threatened to relegate the country to the status of just another post-colonial failed state. Timor-Leste's descent into factional conflict and the related forced resigna tion of its Prime Minister reflected the type of political chaos that has affected many newly post-colonial states, in which competition for power overwhelmed a fragile and still fragmented political environment. So much had been hoped for and invested in Timor-Leste by the international community, by the United Nations, and not least by the people of Timor-Leste themselves, yet so little was shown to have been achieved. Despite the change of prime minister, with the ascendance of the popular Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta, the establishment of a UN police presence,1 along with continuing external military support from some 3,000 foreign troops, violence and destruction continued, entrenching a regional divide that challenged Timor-Leste's future.