E. Timor faces threat from RI-based militias: UN
E. Timor faces threat from RI-based militias: UN
Agence France-Presse, Dili
Anti-independence militia have launched a "terrorist strategy" to undermine East Timor's government before the planned United Nations withdrawal from the country next year, a top UN peacekeeper says.
Brig. Gen. Justin Kelly, deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force in the world's newest nation, said the killing of five former pro-independence campaigners in a mountain region last month pointed to a new militia threat from Indonesian West Timor.
He said a group of men recently arrested in the town of Liquica claimed that they and a group which carried out those killings were sent into East Timor in December from West Timor, along with five other groups.
Kelly said they named their sponsor as Master Sergeant Tome Diogo, an East Timorese working from the border town of Atambua.
The men said they were among some 300 trained for a guerrilla campaign against former pro-independence activists and Suco chiefs, the influential local chieftains.
Kelly called this a "classical terrorist strategy of trying to separate the people from the government," comparing it to the past campaigns of the Vietcong in Vietnam or the communists in Malaya in the 1950s.
"We more or less expected this would happen but it has happened earlier than we thought," he said.
Kelly said he thought it was more likely Diogo was working for other East Timorese in this matter rather than the Indonesian army. East Timorese leaders have also said they do not believe Jakarta had any hand in the incursions.
Pro-Jakarta militias -- allegedly organized by elements of the Indonesian army -- organized a brutal intimidation campaign before East Timor's August 1999 vote to break away from Jakarta, and a revenge campaign afterwards.
The militias fled across the border to West Timor before international peacekeeping troops arrived and an estimated 3,000 former militiamen are still there.
Many of the militia leaders come from influential East Timorese families and some are wealthy. But they face legal action for crimes committed in 1999 if they return home.
The infiltration, coming on top of riots late last year linked to internal dissent, could herald a dangerously enlarged role for East Timor's military, some analysts say.
East Timorese troops were ordered to restore order after the five killings last month despite some complaints that police and not soldiers should have been used.
The fledgling army is largely composed of former Falintil anti-Indonesian guerrillas who are solidly opposed to the militiamen.
Although officially non-political, they are deeply loyal to President Xanana Gusmao but have little time for Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri who wields effective power.
The new unrest has gone hand in hand with jostling for power within the government and within Alkatiri's ruling Fretilin party as the UN's planned withdrawal next year draws closer.
In riots in Dili in December, properties linked to Alkatiri or his family, a wealthy Muslim family of Yemeni origin, were specifically targeted by the mob.
Two people died and questions have been raised about the competence of the East Timor police force in handling the disturbances.
East Timor, still heavily dependent on international aid, was Asia's poorest nation when it became independent last May after 31 months of UN stewardship.
Analysts say unemployment of around 70 percent and infrastructure still barely rebuilt from the 1999 violence are bound to provoke discontent.
Of deeper concern is the government's limited ability to deal with the problems it faces, a situation that the militiamen in West Timor may seek to exploit.
"If I were a betting man I would say that East Timor will have a couple of rock and roll years ahead of it," said one political analyst in Dili.
"You have a police system and a justice system that do not work, which means the foundations of stability are quicksand. And it opens up a big opportunity for the army to march in and say, 'We will do it'."