Word: dili
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...shootout in the capital Dili should not have been such a surprise. When most multinational peacekeepers flew out of Dili in the years after East Timor's formal independence in 2002, the world considered the country a victory of U.N. nation-building. The U.N. chief in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was asked to duplicate his work as special envoy for Iraq (he was later tragically killed in Baghdad), and East Timor's former President Xanana Gusmão (now Prime Minister) declared that his country could be a model for other young, developing countries. Yet the billions poured...
...country's leaders, in exile in Portugal or Mozambique during Indonesia's occupation, have aggravated the situation by failing to connect with the majority of their compatriots. Senior government officials live lives of relative luxury, in stark contrast to the lot of the vast majority of East Timorese. (Because Dili is a small town, it's not uncommon to see such officials dining in trendy Portuguese cafés situated near the poor and homeless squatting in tents.) Portuguese is the official language of the government, which means that most East Timorese, who speak Indonesian or the local language Tetum...
...those early warnings, including riots across Dili in 2002, did not convince foreign peacekeepers - desperate to proclaim success and not to appear as occupiers - to stay longer. By 2005, most Australian soldiers went home, even though East Timor's leaders, including Ramos-Horta, had begged them not to leave too quickly. By 2006, the cracks in East Timorese society were impossible to miss. I visited the country that year and as I drove its length, passing pristine white beaches, lonely scuba divers and dilapidated Portuguese mansions, I met intensely angry former guerrilla fighters, some of whom had been sacked from...
Just before dawn on Feb. 16, dozens of Australian soldiers crept silently into Fatu Metan, a district in the west of the East Timorese capital, Dili. They surrounded a small house and laid a ladder up against the partially completed second story; across the road, snipers with laser sights took up positions on the roof of a partly demolished house. The soldiers, members of the International Stabilization Force attempting to restore calm to East Timor, believed that hiding inside the three-bedroom home was one of the country's most wanted men, Lieutenant Gustao Salsinha - sought in connection with...
...phone SIM cards to avoid having their locations triangulated. In the absence of reliable intelligence, the ISF is forced to resort to broad-brush tactics. Earlier last week, Australian forces conducted a sweep around the tiny village of Dare, perched on the western mountain range that rises steeply behind Dili. The soldiers threw up checkpoints on the roads and declared the area a "media-free zone," denying access to journalists, but allowing Timorese to pass...