Independent Study On Security Force Options And Security Sector Reform For East Timor

In 1999, the people of East Timor voted, overwhelmingly, against a proposal that would make their island an autonomous province of the Republic of Indonesia. Though it appeared that all of the factors for a successful transition from conflict to peace and stability were present and it was expected that establishing a new state would be fairly straightforward, surprisingly, to the International Community, this was not the case. This paper examines the United Nation's (UN) efforts in Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) as an important case for the study of SSR and postconflict stabilization and reconstruction. The authors argue that, despite presumed favorable conditions especially when contrasted against other contemporary peace support operations, the SSR program has failed. The paper begins with a brief history of the UN's efforts at SSR in Timor-Leste and then presents an analytical framework to assess these efforts based on the Guiding principles for stabilization and reconstruction, co-authored by the U.S. Institute of Peace and U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute. Using this framework, the paper highlights several critical junctures where the international community could have better leveraged and empowered the host-nation to improve reform outcomes.

This volume provides a framework for analyzing security sector reform under international tutelage.Following violent conflict and military interventions, international organizations or coalitions of countries increasingly engage in post-conflict reconstruction. Part of the international post-conflict agenda is thereconstruction orreform of th

This book examines international efforts to provide security in post-conflict sites and explains why internal security should be given precedence in statebuilding endeavours. The work begins by exploring the evolution of security sectors in mature liberal democratic states, before examining the attempts of such states to accelerate that evolutionary process in post-conflict sites through statebuilding and security sector reform. These discussions suggest interestingly different answers to the question of who should provide for internal security in international operations. When considering mature states, there are both practical and normative reasons as to why internal security has become the sole domain of police, with military forces being excluded from internal affairs. In peace and stability operations, on the other hand, difficulties with utilising police personnel have led to military forces being required to play internal security roles. This tension is investigated further through detailed case studies of three recent missions: Afghanistan, Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands. These case studies both reinforce and augment the practical and normative reasons for ensuring that internal security remains the domain of police. This then impacts upon peace and stability operations in two important ways. If we are to provide enduring security in post-conflict sites, we should both (i) prioritise internal security agencies in security sector reform efforts, and (ii) prioritise ways of enabling police to play internal security roles in the contributing mission. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peace and conflict studies, military studies, police studies, historical sociology, security studies and IR in general.

This book examines the history of political continuity and conflict in East Timor between 1974 and 2006, and the origins of an unexpected crisis in 2006 which caused an international military intervention and several more years of UN missions. Providing a fresh and empirical political history to explain the crisis, the book offers new dimensions to the understanding of East Timor, its independence struggles, political transition and politics after independence in 2002. The author revisits historical materials and brings to light new resources, making extensive use of the 2005 Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation and contemporary diplomatic, UN and news media reports, to provide a precise context and chronology for the events in 2006. The book provides an analysis within which factors such as ethnic and inter-communal violence, security sector weaknesses and conflict between the army and police, the constitution and legal system, state-building and peace-building can be located in the larger context of the 2006 crisis. Demonstrating how and why, in the space of four weeks in April and May 2006, the newly independent country of Timor-Leste plunged from ‘UN success story’ into catastrophe, this book will be of interest to academics working on Southeast Asian Politics, Southeast Asian history, Development Studies and Nation-, State- and Peace-Building and International Relations.

Smith analyzes the successes and failures of the complex UN mission designed to work in partnership with the East Timorese people in guiding the country to independence.

Few new nations have endured a birth as traumatic as that endured by Asia's youngest country, East Timor. Born amid the flames, pillage and mayhem that surrounded Indonesia 's reluctant withdrawal in 1999, it has been struggling for years to rebuild itself from the ashes. The author, one of a handful of journalists to refuse to be evacuated during the nightmarish Indonesian withdrawl, stayed on to report East Timor to the world, and to keep faith with the East Timorese whose story she wanted to tell.Her book is a vivid first-hand account of the lives of individual Timorese during the long decades of Indonesia 's repressive occupation, their often heroic struggle for freedom, and their efforts to cope with the dramatic historic shifts engulfing them and their endeavours to rebuild their homeland. Based on years of research, and lengthy interviews with East Timor 's leaders, priests, nuns, students and guerrilla fighters, this moving and extremely readable book is at the same time also an exploration of the complexities of the country's internal politics.

This is an unparallelled analysis of the state of the United Nations peace operations and their impact on Asian security.This new volume examines new strategies being adopted by the UN; including doctrinal shifts in peace operation, and assesses the division of labour between the UN, regional organisation and non-governmental organisations/actors. Based on selected papers from mostly Asian scholars, the book offers regional perspectives from South, Southeast and Northeast Asia on the changing nature of UN Peace operations and analyses some of the core issues that are of critical relevance to regional security in Asia. In addition it reveals interesting new insights on the new players in the area of peace operations – i.e. China and Japan and considers their projected roles as defined by their respective security concepts. It also delves into issues of possible areas of concern caused by the new activism of these regional powers in peace operations. Finally, the book also revisits the significant lessons learnt from the UN experience in Cambodia and East Timor and examines their impact on future directions of peace operations. This book was previously published as a special issue of the leading journal International Peacekeeping.

More often than not Security Sector Reform (SSR) takes place against many odds, in barely enabling political, security, economic and social environments. Such difficult contexts may be characterised by widespread corruption, ongoing violence, imprecise, open-ended or non-inclusive peace agreements and post-conflict architectures, lack of resources, 'stolen' or impending elections or referenda - all circumstances that stand in the way of full-fledged, holistic and sustainable SSR efforts. Following an overview of 'ideal' SSR requirements, contrasted with typical obstacles inhibiting SSR efforts, the main body of this volume offers evidence-based analyses of positive and negative SSR records in barely enabling environments, drawing on the experiences of specific national and international SSR programmes and experiences in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Lessons learned from these experiences are intended to feed into theoretical re-thinking of SSR policy frameworks as well as to help practitioners in designing and implementing effective and sustainable SSR in challenging environments.

Despite Timor-Leste’s high expectations when it became independent from Indonesia in 2002, the country is ranked among the least developed countries in the world. It has found itself at the centre of international attention in the last decade, with one of the biggest interventions in UN history, as well as receiving amongst the highest per capita rates of bilateral assistance in the Asia-Pacific region. This book draws together the perspectives of practitioners, policy-makers and academics on the international efforts to rebuild one of the world’s newest nations. The contributors consider issues of peace-building, security and justice sector reform as well as human security in Timor-Leste, locating these in the broader context of building nation, stability and development. The book includes two demographic studies that can be used to critically examine the nation’s possible future. Engaging in deliberate consideration of both practical and theoretical complexities of international interventions, this book will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of Development, Security and Southeast Asian Studies.