An advance party of 130 Australian commandos took control of the airport in the capital city of Dili. They were joined by troops from New Zealand and Malaysia. “We will be disarming everybody in Dili,” Australian force commander Brig. Gen. Mick Slater said May 28.

Faced with a rebellion by sections of Timor Leste’s army and police, President Xanana Gusmao and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri requested the intervention May 24. With Australian forces on stand-by since early in the month, Howard said he was not going to wait for “three of four signatures on a bit of paper” before sending in troops. Opposition Labor Party leader Kim Beazley backed Howard’s decision to “pacify the situation in Timor.”

Dubbed Operation Astute, the military force includes 1,300 Australian ground troops and seven Australian navy warships. The New Zealand government is sending 166 soldiers, while the Malaysian regime has offered 500. The Portuguese government has promised 120 military police. Some 30-40 U.S. Marines have also landed in Dili to “protect the U.S. embassy,” according to Reuters.”  
 
Colonial legacy
East Timor was a colony of Portugal until 1975. It was then occupied by Indonesia, in spite of ongoing resistance by the East Timorese people. In 1999 Australian troops led a force under the United Nations flag, which replaced Indonesian forces. Independence was won in 2002.

The newly independent country faced a deep social crisis that has not abated. Some 40 percent of its 1 million people live below the official poverty line. With few jobs outside the government, about half the population is unemployed. Only 11 percent of homes in the countryside have electricity. A Human Rights Watch report released in April described widespread police brutality.

Substantial revenues from oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea are slated for the Timor Leste government in a treaty signed with the Australian rulers in January. The accord, however, left in place maritime boundaries that give Australia’s capitalists the lion’s share of the deposits.

Reflecting factionalism within Timor’s government itself, Alkatiri, the prime minister, has reportedly accused Gusmao, the president, of trying to oust him. Gusmao and Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta have criticized Alkatiri’s handling of the crisis.

In February a mutiny by sections of the military erupted over conditions in the armed forces and claims of regional discrimination over promotions. The Alkatiri government responded by sacking almost 600 soldiers out of the army of 1,500. Five people were killed when government forces fired on an April 28 protest rally in Dili by the dismissed troops and their supporters. The rebellious soldiers reportedly retreated, fully armed, into the hills around Dili, where they were subsequently joined by sections of the police.

Despite attempts led by President Gusmao to broker a peace settlement with the rebel forces, tensions deepened after Alkatiri won the backing May 19 of a conference of the ruling party, Fretilin, to remain prime minister. Rebel troops began launching attacks on Dili, including burning the house of the army commander. Forces loyal to the government responded with their own attacks, including burning houses owned by the minister of the interior and deputy police commissioner, whom they accused of supporting the rebellion.

The bloodiest incident took place May 25. Troops loyal to the government killed a number of police officers and wounded more than 25 in a firefight that day at the police headquarters in Dili. Most of the police were reportedly shot as they surrendered in a deal brokered by United Nations forces. The government of Australia then dispatched 50 federal cops to Dili to take over police functions.

Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer says the military intervention will last at least a year, until elections scheduled for May 2007 take place in Timor Leste. The Howard government now has deployed some 3,600 troops abroad—in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Solomon Islands, as well as Timor Leste.  
 
 
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