Looking Back

While people have been searching out the latest news, trying to figure out what exactly happened on Monday, I spent that evening sitting on my porch with my father re-reading the Commission of Inquiry (COI)* report that described the events of April and May 2006, looking for a way to better understand Major Alfredo Reinado.

The report told me surprisingly little about Reinado or his politics. And that in itself challenged his media epithet of “author of the crisis.” According to the report, he mobilized his small faction of military police and PNTL members only on 3 May 2006, well after the initial complaints were lodged in February and the protests underway in April. His strength seems to have come not from early leadership, but, instead, from after the breakdown of order and the into crisis’s aftermath.

I went out with a Swedish radio journalist as a fixer yesterday, and we spoke with friends and a colleague of mine who introduced us to his neighbors at the small IDP camp where he has lived for almost 22 months. Translating allowed me to ask, indirectly, deniably (He is wondering why…), the basic questions that are taboo, impolite, or seem too stupid to query as someone who has been here for a while. (Why do you still live here? How do you feel about the Major’s death? Are you angry? Pleased?)

In the interview, my friend described Reinado as the key to the crisis.* I agree, but with a caveat. This makes sense, particularly after looking at the COI and recent ICG reports, only of the events of April-May 2006 – arguably a crisis of weak security institutions – are separated from the more recent IDP crisis – a crisis of fear, regionalism, property, and popular confidence. Put another way, a crisis of institutions precipitated a second crisis of intra- and inter-community conflict and prolonged internal displacement. While Reinado fought prominently in the first crisis, it is Reinado’s threat and what he may still symbolize that prevents the resolution of the second, according to my friend.

Reinado has been a fixture of Dili unrest for the duration of my time in Timor-Leste – escaping from Becora prison a few days before my arrival (30 Aug) in a silver taxi (or so the reports said). He was already a myth by then, and he soon gave shape and voice to the anger of some western youth. As time passed he became a part of the political landscape, shaking things up from the hills but never descending. He was up there, making threats and making DVDs, but never perceptibly moving closer to or father from the negotiating table or Dili.

One of the journalist’s opening questions was “Were you surprised when you heard the news on Monday?” Like each person he spoke to, my answer is yes. I think that I had started to believe, as some Timorese do, that powerful leaders are protected by magic. Reinado escaped the ISF, and Ramos-Horta and Gusmão are survivors. Perhaps the president believed it too as he decided to walk towards, not away, from the gunfire. So yes, I was surprised that this happened and surprised by the death and injury.

Maybe what I should have taken from the COI report was not facts about Reinado, but the larger lesson of fragility. Timor-Leste is a place, where, on a Monday morning, a former military leader could launch a dual assassination attempt, wound the president and end up shot right above the eye.




* There is a link to this report in the sidebar under "Reliable Sources."

** This view is clearly not shared by the author of a recent report on the displacement in Timor-Leste. For a different perspective, please see this report out of the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center.