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Analysis: Timorous Nation-building

Council on Foreign Relations

June 5, 2006
Prepared by: Robert McMahon

After its violent birth as an independent state, East Timor seemed to merit mention in recent years only as a nation-building success story. Just this past April, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz paid a visit to the capital city of Dili and hailed the "bustling markets, the rebuilt schools, the functioning government - and above all, the peace and stability." But within weeks of that statement, the disgruntlement of dismissed soldiers spilled over into open conflict and gang warfare that has caused more than 100,000 people—one-tenth the country's population—to flee their homes. About 2,000 Australian-led forces are now seeking to restore order.

The crisis stems from an imbalance in the country's small armed forces—most of the officers come from the eastern part of the country and many rank-and-file members were recruited in the west. After soldiers' complaints of discrimination, the government sacked about 600 of them, and the ensuing protests have shattered the national unity of the small state and exposed a number of problems unresolved by UN administration. This Backgrounder looks at the fault lines in East Timor and the UN's other nation-building efforts. Another chief concern for East Timor is the economy. Seven years into its nation-building experiment, residents of Asia's poorest country are poorer (NYT), seeing a sharp decline with the departure of most of the 11,000 UN-led staff. The UN Security Council wanted to wrap up a mission costing hundreds of millions of dollars per year. But experts say East Timorese were also eager to seize full control, perhaps understandably since UN governance followed centuries of Portuguese rule and decades of Indonesian occupation. But leading figures such as Foreign Minister José Ramos-Horta are now acknowledging they may have been too hasty.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.