successful example of externally-led security sector reform in so far that they managed to establish a police and defense forces and institutions where there had none existed before. The case study of Timor-Leste is centered on the UN-led SSR program that predated the violent clashes between the newly created security forces in 2006 which casts doubts effectiveness and legitimacy of state security forces, drawing into question whether the breakdown of the security sector in Timor-Leste is due to the exclusive framework of the international state security-orientated approach to SSR in post-conflict or fragile states.
In this chapter it is explained that the unsuccessful reform of the Timorese police and military is a consequence of the exclusive state-centric SSR-model that fuelled violence as it ignored the hybridity of Timorese society such as local traditions, ethnic customs and religious norms.
Timor-Leste conflict background
The archipelago of Indonesia, including the western half of Timor was subject to Dutch colonial rule prior to the Second World War. In 1948 a war of independence started and after the defeat of the Dutch colonists the independent Republic of Indonesia was created. The eastern part of Timor remained under Portuguese colonial rule until the decision in Lisbon was made to release all its colonial holdings. Political parties quickly formed during the decolonization process which escalated quickly into a intense but brief civil war. The civil war ended after the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETLIN) emerged victorious and declared independence on November 1975. In early December 1978, the Indonesian government invaded East Timor with a substantial military force, under the pretext of anti-colonialism, and annexed the former Portuguese colony. What the Indonesian military expected to be a swift and decisive victory turned into a complicated and intense guerilla war between the Indonesian military and FALINTIL, the military wing of FRETLIN. The following 24-year Indonesian military occupation were characterized by intense fighting accompanied with massive human rights violations by committed Indonesian security forces against the East-Timorese population.
After the fall of the Indonesian dictator General Suharto in May 1998, the new President Habibie granted the people of Timor-Leste a referendum about the future of Timor- Leste but did so through a rather dangerous tactic by instigating an unexpected, direct and universal ballot, referred to as a snap election. This ballot was prepared in cooperation with the Indonesian government, the UN and Portugal, that stated that the Timorese people would be allowed to choose for themselves between autonomy or independence. This agreement and electoral process was implemented, organized and coordinated by the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), whose mandate was UNSC Resolution 1246 on 11 June 1999.
The election presented a 78,5 percent of the eligible voters opting in favor for independence (ICTJ 2009: 8). The announcement of the results unleashed a violent rampage by Indonesian military forces and pro-Indonesian proxy militias during their withdrawal causing a wave of uncontrolled violence, destruction of property, rape and looting (ibid). In
response to the deteriorating situation in East Timor, the UNSC issued Resolution 1264 on September 15, 1999 which created the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), a multinational UN-sanctioned peacekeeping taskforce, that was charged “to restore peace and
security in East Timor, to protect and support UNAMET in carrying out its tasks and, within force capabilities, to facilitate humanitarian assistance operations, and authorizes the States participating in the multinational force to take all necessary measures to fulfill this mandate” and was successful in halting the violent situation that followed the ballot for independence (UNSC 1999b: emphasis in original).
Attempts to reform the Timorese security sector were initiated in 1999 by the established UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) between 1999 and 2005. UNTAET was a groundbreaking transitional administration with broad governing powers and was charged to administer the territory of East Timor, exercised total executive, judicial and legislative authority during the transition period and supported capacity-building for independence (ICTJ 2009: 8). After a two and a half year UN transitional administration, the newly independent nation of Timor-Leste was declared on 20 May 2002, and UNTAET handed over authority to the newly elected Timorese representatives. Also that day, UNTAET was succeeded by the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) established by UNSC Resolution 1410 of 17 May 2002, whose mandate expired on 19 May 2005. UNMISET retained executive policing authority in East Timor to provide assistance to security administrative structures in service of the stability and development of Timor-Leste.
It should be noted that while East Timor is geographical insignificant and does not possess any rare resources, the international commitment was anything but small. According to Ludovic Hood, “the withdrawal of Indonesian forces in October 1999 was the product of intensive political pressure on Jakarta by US President Bill Clinton, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn and other world leaders, an extraordinary visit to the region by the UN Security Council and Australia’s willingness to lead a large, multinational force (INTERFET) into East Timor” (2006: 62). While the nation of Timor- Leste was regarded as one of the UN largest and most successful state-building achievements, the reform of the security sector after 2002 exemplifies quite the opposite and reached its climax during the breakdown of its security sector in 2006.
Security Sector Reform in Timor-Leste
Prior to the establishment of the East Timorese police and defense service by UNTAET, Timor-Leste never possessed territory-wide, indigenous structures to provide for external defense or the maintenance of law and order within its legal borders. Following the
exodus of Indonesian forces after the 1999 referendum, the vast share of the territory-wide administrative capability, which were Indonesian senior to mid-level administrators left the region (Hood 2006: 63). Faced with this challenge, UNTAET was also committed to the construction and formation of a Timorese national police service. In the aftermath of the Indonesian incited unrest in 1999 and the challenging process of the DDR of FALINTIL, East Timorese leaders spoke in favor of establishing a national defense force in the early period of the UNTAET mandate (ibid).
One of the most important components of the UN-led SSR-agenda was the requirement to establish an indigenous police force called the East Timor Police Force which was later labeled as the PNTL, issued by UNSC Resolution 1272 on 25 October 1999 that called in paragraph 3 article (a) for a “governance and administration component including an international police element with a strength of up to 1.640 officers” and in paragraph 3 article (c) for a “military component, with a strength up to 8.950 troops”. During the period between 2000 and 2002, training and selection processes for ETPS recruits were carried out by an international policing presence 1.600 CIVPOL officers. After UNTAET delegated governmental authority to the elected Timorese government officials, while UNMISET training force of 1.250 officers were issued with the task to “assist with the development of a new law enforcement agency in East Timor, the East Timor Police Service” also referred to by its Portuguese acronym PNTL (UNSC 2002: 2). In the following paragraphs it will be explained that that UN training force were deficient in its efforts to build an impartial , democratic and professional police service.
Reform of the East Timorese Police Service - PNTL
Charged with the task of preparing and supporting capacity-building for self- government, UNTAET was charged with the task to build up and strengthen the PNTL as soon as possible. Due to the considerations of time, UNTAET was forced to choose between rebuilding the Timorese police service using either individuals with no relevant experiences or competencies on the one hand, or choosing for recruiting former members of the Indonesian police on the other. Ultimately, the PNTL force included both groups. However, the reliance on former members of the Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia (POLRI) was a contested subject within Timor-Leste society, since a majority of Timorese people personally experienced the repressive tactics and violent collaboration with the former Indonesian occupation forces (Kocak 2013: 8). Nevertheless, the UN relied on these former POLRI
members because of the UN perceived that these recruits possessed advanced experiences and relevant skills in the rubric of civilian policing duties and put an estimated 400 members through a fast-track training and vetting program, and placed former POLRI members in high ranking positions within PNTL, including that of commander (ICTJ 2009: 9). Moreover, it was harder for non-POLRI recruits to be admitted to the Police Academy as the UN relied on exclusively on western questionnaires, finding English-speaking candidates more suitable rather than recruits with knowledge of several local dialects (Kocak 2013: 8). The decision to conduct a favorable recruitment process that suited former POLRI members is still a contending issue in Timorese politics today, as several former POLRI member still hold high ranking offices (Hood 2006: 64). Additionally, the UN mission suffered from a considerable gap in its CIVPOL deployment: there were no “CIVPOL officers specifically recruited to be trainers or institutional capacity builders” (Hood 2006: 63). A combination of the time constraints upon which the building process of the ETPS was based and the UN deployed CIVPOL’s lack of expertise in the areas of recruitment and training meant that there were significant shortcomings in the selection and training of PNTL recruits. By the time of Timor-Leste’s independence, over an estimated number of 1.700 PNTL officers have gone through the recruitment and training process.
Beyond the shortcomings in the training and recruitment process, the UN failed miserably in the building process of the institutional capacity of the PNTL As UNPOL was overcommitted with the task of providing internal security and recruiting PNTL cadets, it had little capacity left for the simultaneously training, and institution building of the PNTL. Due to this double burden, it was noted in an assessment of UNTAET in London that the mission was characterized “[…] inadequate planning and deficient mission design; unimaginative and weak leadership; and negligible Timorese ownership of the process” (Hood 2006: 65).
Reform of the New Timorese Defense Force –F-FDTL
In the direct aftermath of the incited violence that followed the 1999 referendum, UNSC Resolution 1272 did not go into great detail on how to deal with the task of demobilizing and reintegrating former FALINTIL guerilla forces back into society, or on the establishment of a new East Timorese defense force. After FALINTIL had spent over a year in specially assigned cantonment areas for DDR purposes, a plan was proposed to establish a defense force in Timor-Leste and on 1 February 2001 in which FALINTIL was officially disbanded and the F-FDLT was established by law. Starting the recruitment process in early
2001, UNTAET delegated this task to the FALINTIL High Command, headed by ex- FALINTIL commander Taur Matan Ruak (Kocak 2009: 10). Subsequently, the recruitment and training process was heavily biased in favor to former FALINTIL fighters that were loyal to Rauk and his allies.
Remaining ex-FALINTIL members that were not selected for F-FDLT were disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated within society under the auspices of the ‘FALINTIL Reintegration Assistance Program’ (FRAP). Kocak observed that most ex-FALINTIL successfully underwent the DDR process but few organized themselves in several armed clandestine groups that in the following period were reported to have strong links to organized crime (2006: 10). Moreover, FRAP had its limitations due to the secretive nature of guerilla forces and the fact that women were excluded from the process (ibid).
In short, the UN played an insignificant role in the recruitment and training process of the F-FDTL and the FRAP DDR process of ex-FALINTIL fighters. More importantly, the period between 2001 and 2005 as the Timorese security sector became highly politicized in a very short time span which established the root causes for the violent clashes between the PNTL and the F-FDTL. While the new Timorese defense force was mainly filled and commanded by ex-FALINTIL fighters, the East Timorese Police Service consisted in a great proportion of former POLRI-members within its ranks. Hence, the political division between the PNTL and the F-FNTL deepened as they became more organized alongside lines of political affiliation. Kocak points out that divisions become even more deepened as the political divides began to overlap alongside lines of regional identity: “while the PNTL consisted of Kaladis, people from the western provinces of Timor-Leste, the majority of the F-FDTL recruited in the first round consisted of Firakus, people from the eastern provinces of Timor-Leste” (2006: 9; emphasis in original). Consequently, both the recruitment and the allocation of limited state security positions were perceived to be subject to the politics of favoritism and corruption which even further created tensions. In general, the formation of the PNTL and the F-FNTL can be characterized by “conflict and division, rather than by peace and unity” (Scambary 2009: 267).
Also, the de facto policy of both UNTAET and UNMISET of formally distancing themselves from the national defense development process and oversight management was highly problematic. Recalling the mandate stipulated in UNSC Resolution 1272 in which the
UN forces present in East-Timor were “empowered to exercise all […] executive power” (UNSC 1999: 2) and mandated to “establish an effective administration” (ibid).
Conclusion
: The failings of the state-centric SSR-model and the violent breakdownin 2006
UNTAET’s reform policies of the Timor-Leste’ security sector were primarily focused on ‘train-and-equip’ missions, neglecting essential SSR principles of ‘people-centered’, ‘local ownership’ and democratic principles of civilian oversight and public participation. Due to the ill-equipped CIVPOL, systems of democratic management, transparency and oversight were not adequately implemented. It can be argued that the failing SSR policies can be attributed to the exclusion of local actors from the planning process as well as the UN’s hesitance to deal with FALINTIL guerilla forces and furthermore its denial of problems associated with the biased recruitment process of the F-FDTL. According to Kocak, both “UNTAET and UNMISET […] failed to implement democratic oversight over the security organizations, and missed the opportunity to incorporate Timorese politicians into the SSR process” (2006: 11). Due to an overburdened and inexperienced UN-led SSR operation, newly elected Timorese officials were excluded from the official reform process of the security sector and the necessary SSR principle of local ownership required for establishing an effective and democratically accountable security sector.