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Sydney, June 1 (DPA) East Timorese too young to recall the dreadful violence that brought foreign troops rushing to the half-island in 1999 have been witnesses to a chilling flashback.
Armed gangs loot and burn, people flee their homes and take to the hills, ancient animosities between ethnic groups are settled in back alleys with swords and clubs, mobs ransack warehouses of aid agencies and fight over the spoils.
This time Indonesia cannot be blamed for a descent into anarchy that has cost dozens of lives, left thousands homeless and again trashed Dili, the picturesque seaside capital. The Indonesians, who invaded in 1975 and ruled with an iron fist for a quarter century, left seven years ago.
The East Timorese have had their own elected government since 2001 and have been formally independent since 2002. The blame for recent disgraceful scenes lies with the East Timorese themselves.
This round of violence began in May after 600 soldiers dismissed from the army by Prime Minister Alkatiri's government made common cause with others unhappy with his leadership.
Demonstrations degenerated into riots that pitted soldiers against police, those from the east of the country against those from the west, and supporters of Alkatiri against those seeking his removal.
Discipline within the security apparatus broke down. With law and order gone, mob rule took over. Alkatiri, under pressure from President Xanana Gusmao, called in Australian, Malaysian, New Zealand and Portuguese troops to separate the warring parties and restore order.
'The government has failed miserably,' Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta admitted.
'We have failed to embrace people who disagree with the government, we have not succeeded in addressing the problems in the military even though we knew about them,' Horta said.
East Timor's political problems are tricky. The dominant party is Fretilin, which holds 55 of the 88 seats in parliament. In May, with the active support of Ramos Horta, Alkatiri was re-elected leader in advance of a general election in May next year.
The popular Ramos Horta now wants the unpopular Alkatiri to resign. So does Mandela-like war hero Gusmao. But Alkatiri refuses and is pushing for some face-saving cabinet reshuffle to smooth over the cracks.
Australia, which led the international force that curbed Indonesia's goodbye-gift pillage in 1999, is desperate to stay out of local politics.
'We'll be encouraging them to run their own show again,' Australian Prime Minister John Howard said. 'We'll be giving them help, we'll be giving them advice, but in the end, if it is to be an independent country, East Timor has got to run itself.'
Howard is keenly aware that the million people that inhabit the region's poorest country have come to expect Australians to save them from themselves. Interventions are expensive, counter-productive and most worryingly, are an irritant to Australia's all-important relations with Indonesia.
The Australian National University's Andrew MacIntyre is adamant that Australia should leave nation building to the East Timorese and not allow the nascent country to become a client state.
'We cannot be the long-term providers of law and order,' MacIntyre said. 'We cannot broker durable political solutions to internal leadership struggles. We cannot drop in new systems of government. And we cannot drive job creation.'
Paul Cleary, who worked as a World Bank-funded adviser to Alkatiri, is also insistent that East Timor's politicians are the authors of the discord and should be left to fix the problems they have created.
'East Timor's unrest is the result of dissatisfaction by a widely unemployed population with a government seen as foreign, culturally insensitive, centralised and to some extent autocratic,' Cleary said.
'The trigger that transformed this dissatisfaction into violence was an inept administrative decision to sack almost 600 soldiers,' said Cleary.
The incompetence of the East Timor government is stark. Revenue from oil and gas fields shared with Australia has started rolling in. The government budget is higher than what is was when Indonesia ran the place. Yet there is little to show for government spending.
East Timor has the world's highest population growth rate. However, over half its workforce is unemployed.
The decision to have Portuguese as the national language has seen the education system reverse the gains made when Jakarta was in charge.
The scourge of corruption, something that East Timorese claimed would be gone with the Indonesians, is still deeply rooted.
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