East Timor has bought off the security threat once posed by dissident veterans with cash benefits
BANGKOK (AlertNet) – East Timor, recovering from a history of conflict and violence, must strike a balance between recognising veterans’ role and promoting strong and independent institutions in order to ensure stability, a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.
The veterans fought for the country's independence during 24 years of Indonesian occupation. They are now demobilised but the tensions as well as bonds between these former fighters remain.
“The question of who and how many qualify for veteran status remains both difficult and politically charged,” Timor-Leste’s veterans: An unfinished struggle?, which examined the country’s attempts to recognise and honour those who fought for its independence, said.
According to the report, the resource-rich country has bought off the security threat once posed by dissident veterans with an expensive cash benefits scheme. This has succeeded in engaging most veterans’ voices in mainstream politics but there are concerns, it said.
The report said there are now 200,000 claimants to the benefit scheme in a country of just over a million people.
“While the promise of money eased discontent among dissident former fighters, it has also brought a flood of apparently false claims of service,” Cillian Nolan, ICG’s Southeast Asia analyst said in a statement.
“A definitive list of veterans is an unreachable goal. Once the long-deferred decisions on who will qualify are made, they risk creating real discontent,” he added.
The report also said Timorese politics and its security sector institutions “remain held together by a small set of personalities rather than bound by legal rules”.
“Much of Timor-Leste’s stability still hangs in the balance of power between a very small number of leaders, who should take more steps to encourage confidence in those who will someday have to take their place,” the report added.
COUNTRY STILL FRAGILE
Ten years after the demobilisation of its guerrilla liberation army and nine years after it became an independent nation, the country of 1 million people, which voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, is still fragile.
The country is trying to rebuild itself from two major violent episodes.
More than half the population was made homeless in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum when pro-Jakarta militias destroyed 70 percent of the country's infrastructure. More recently, in 2006, factional violence uprooted 150,000 people, mainly in the capital Dili.
Beyond cash benefits, the report identified two areas the governments need to manage – the scope and shape of a proposed veterans’ council and whether to give former fighters a formal security role in defending the states.
The advisory council could be a useful forum for regulating matters concerning veterans, but ICG warned the government needs to manage expectations of some who want it to play a broader role in setting government policy.
Meanwhile, arming the former guerrillas in times of crisis might lead to the creation of a militia, ICG said.
“The danger of arming them was made clear in the violence of the 2006 crisis, as they formed part of different opposing factions armed by state institutions,” the report said.
“They were neither disciplined nor united, and added to the violence rather than controlled it,” it added.
(Editing by Alex Whiting)
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