Who shot JR Horta – Asia Times
September 4th, 2008
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JI04Ae02.html
DILI - Turbulent East Timor may going through its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the events of February 11 finally emerges as the truth. Conflicting accounts, questionable evidence and reversed recollections continue to cloud an alleged assassination attempt on the president and prime minister that sent a popular rebel leader to an early grave.
Ramos-Horta was shot close to this beach outside Dili (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
East Timor’s post-independence politics have confounded outside observers, and for the most part the Timorese themselves. Simultaneously transparent and opaque, what was thought to be a mono-cultural, impoverished, Western-backed, state-building poster-child has morphed into a divided half-island, with obscure tribal-linguistic rivalries once considered dormant since stirred by political rivalries and manifested in quasi-mysterious gangs.
The Timorese political elite remain at odds along familiar regime lines, demarcations so old that these rivalries were, broadly speaking, established when Richard Nixon was still in the White House and more sharply honed in the 1980s – when soap opera addicts spent months wondering who shot J R Ewing, the fictional Texan oil mogul in Dallas.
But East Timor may now have its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the events of February 11 finally emerges as the truth. (more…)
The long way home in Dili – ISN
September 4th, 2008
East Timor’s capital now seems serene and lively, and a version of normality looms – but the country has confounded observers before.
By Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch
Normality? Ceremony on rooftop of Dili hotel (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
The first thing a returnee to Dili notices upon emerging from the airport is nothing: Empty fields behind the fence across from the parking lot, where until recently hundreds of tents sheltering some of Timor’s thousands of conflict-displaced once stood.
The camp was dangerous, inside and out, with political instability prompting riots, and the occasional projectile aimed at passing vehicles – the ubiquitous gleaming white UN SUVs a favorite target. Now only trees are left, a welcome sign that East Timor may be veering toward a long-awaited normality, even stability.
Six kilometers across the city, Marcelo has spent most of the past two years living in a tent just off Avenida Nicolau Lobato, close to restaurants and hotels used by Dili’s plentiful expat aidworker and consultant contingent. (more…)
NATOs Afghan Litmus Test – ISN
June 2nd, 2008
The greatest challenge facing NATO is its mission in Afghanistan, NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Jones said, testifying before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2006. This assertion was repeated by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the run-up to the April 2008 Bucharest summit. US Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland wrote in The Washington Post on 1 February 2008 that “The alliance that never fired a shot in the Cold War is learning on the job.”
NATO is engaged in military combat operations for the first time in its history, and in a country far from the Cold War European theater envisaged back in 1949. The alliance is also committed to assisting Afghan authorities in providing security and stability, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance in a country that has been shattered by war since the invasion of the then-Soviet Union in 1979. (more…)
Malaysia’s political tsunami: next the shockwaves
March 13th, 2008
KLs Petronas Towers (Simon Roughneen, Aug 09)
In what Kuala Lumpur’s Star newspaper dubbed ‘ a political tsunami’, elections in tourist-haven Malaysia have cut the ruling coalition majority by a third, and threaten discord in the usually peaceful multiethnic society. The shockwaves hit in earnest on Tuesday when the new ethnic Chinese-led state government- in industrial powerhouse state Penang – stated it would discard a long-running and controversial pro-Malay affirmative action policy. The last time Malay interests were challenged so directly, in 1969, race riots left over 1000 Chinese dead.
In Saturdays election, the incumbent National Front coalition lost control of four state governments and shed 60 seats, as ethnic minority voters deserted the coalition that has governed since independence, raising questions about Malaysia’s future stability. The 14-party amalgam came into the election with a mammoth 199 out 220 seats, a 91% majority garnered with only 64% of the popular vote in the last election, held 2004. While the NF remains at the helm, its reduced majority means the hitherto typical rule-by-fiat will not longer be possible. Chinese- and Indian-Malaysian voters have opted for ethnic opposition parties, and even some of the country’s 60% Malay majority have voiced their concerns over growing crime, economic slowdown and ethnic tensions, by divesting from the status quo.
In August 2007, the country marked the 50th anniversary of its independence, but one of the world’s post-colonial successes has seen a marked rise in ethnic and religious tensions over the past year, in a Muslim-majority country. (more…)
Fledgling nations can learn from each other – Irish Examiner
February 25th, 2008
Timor-Leste and Kosovo flags (Crossed-Flag-Pins.com)
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2008/02/25/story56145.asp
Simon Roughneen in PRISTINA – To a sea of Albanian and American flags, Prime Minister Hasim Thaci called the republic of Kosovo into being last Sunday week, setting off a diplomatic firestorm, raising Russian- backed Serbian ire and sparking fears that minority ethnic groups from Spain to China would have a new basis for resistance.
Kosovo can draw from examples elsewhere, as well as set what Sri Lanka described as “an unmanageable precedent”.
East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta awoke from an induced coma on Thursday, after an assassination/coup attempt by his former military police chief. The 1996 Nobel peace laureate will have seen Kosovo follow Montenegro and his own former Indonesian garrison into statehood.
In 1999, just weeks after Nato routed Serb forces from Kosovo, East Timor broke with Jakarta, after a brutal military occupation However, political stability is in tatters today. (more…)
Pakistan fears rigged elections – Sunday Business Post
February 17th, 2008
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2008/02/17/story30496.asp
Pressure on Musharraf intensifies, as a poll shows 75 per cent of citizens want him to quit, writes Simon Roughneen.
As the people of Pakistan go to the polling stations tomorrow, there are fears that a fixed election could spark off violence and further unrest in the country.
With President Pervez Musharraf’s ratings bottoming out, it seems that only a fix could shore up the former army chief’s floundering premiership after the parliamentary elections. But such a move could result in an outbreak of violence in the country.
Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, sought to legitimise his rule with rigged 2002 parliamentary polls. He secured a new five-year term as president last year, so will not be taking part in the elections.
However, his party, the Pakistani Muslim League (PML-Q), is facing a hammering. (more…)
East Timor faces new rebel threat – Asia Times/ISN/Asia Sentinel
February 12th, 2008
Jose Ramos-Horta (US Government photo, on World Politics Review)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JB16Ae01.html
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1043&Itemid=172
An apparent coup attempt has left East Timor president Jose Ramos-Horta in critical condition and underlines the shakiness of the country’s transition from occupation through UN fief to fragile state.
He has undergone emergency surgery in an Australian hospital after being shot during an assassination attempt at his residence on Monday in the Timorese capital, Dili.
The leader of the plot, former military police chief-turned-renegade-soldier Alfredo Reinado, was killed during the dawn shootout at Ramos-Horta’s residence, a few hundred meters from Dili’s beach road, just after the president took his usual morning seaside stroll. (more…)
The NATO rift and a bear security market in Afghanistan-Pakistan – OpinionAsia
February 4th, 2008
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai were high-profile speakers at the recent Davos money and markets talkfest, but their presence was swept up by international financial rollercoasters, and bartered out by rogue traders.
Any other year, Musharraf’s faux-humble offer to step aside should the opposition win the February 18 parliamentary elections would have been big news, just below his headline-seeking Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai. At Davos, the latter indulged himself in a bullish stage-managed rubbishing of the US/UK initiative to crown Lord Paddy Ashdown as the new UN czar in Kabul. Ashdown’s regal style, as evidenced during a similar posting as High Representative to Bosnia-Hercegovina suggests that his reputation precedes him.
Benazir Bhutto’s death highlighted the dangers for western-backed potentates in this region, so Ashdown might have got off lightly by being snubbed. Under Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban has re-emerged as major security threat in Pakistan. (more…)
More than talk required to stem Pakistani Taliban tide- Sunday Business Post
January 27th, 2008
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2008/01/27/story29893.asp
As President Pervez Musharraf toured Europe last week, retired military officers capitalised on his absence by calling for him to step down to restore democracy and curb Islamists.
A statement from the Ex-Servicemen’s Society, which has more than 100 members, said his resignation was ‘‘in the supreme national interest’’.
Also taking advantage of his absence was the Pakistani Taliban, which stormed a government Frontier Corps fort in the federally-administered tribal areas on January 15.
Here militants have established a self-styled Islamic emirates, in territory beyond Islamabad’s control.
It follows the Pakistan military government’s accusation that a 34-year-old warlord named Baitullah Mehsud ordered Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, a claim disputed by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), but backed by the CIA. (more…)
Bhutto’s Death Part of Regional Power Struggle – The Irish Catholic
January 10th, 2008
Before her return from exile in October, Benazir Bhutto reflected on the odds that that she could be killed, by asking herself; ” Do I give up, do I let the militants determine the agenda?”
Narrowly-escaping death in a suicide-attack on her welcome-home convoy in Karachi, Bhutto told crowds at rallies in the lawless North-west Frontier Province (NWFP) that she would ruthlessly clamp down on fighters based in the region. However Bhutto’s own credentials in this regard were never perfect. During her corruption-ridden second term in office in the 1990s, Pakistan supported the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, funnelling cash and guns via the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), hoping to set up a client state to its west, as part of plan to counter Pakistan’s giant foe to the east, India.
Al-Qaeda – whose leadership is said to be hiding in these same tribal borderlands close to Afghanistan –claimed responsibility for killing Bhutto in a statement given to The Asia Times by Mustafa Abu al Yazid, their ‘commander’ in Afghanistan. However do not expect full disclosure on the murder. Pakistan has its own indigenous terror groups, such as the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jangvi, that often serve as al-Qaeda muscle, and are now linked to the Pakistani Taliban, backing the original Talibs in their fight with NATO and the Afghan Army across the border. And influential retired army and intelligence bigwigs have talked-up the Islamist cause, which retains covert sympathisers in Pakistan’s Army and the ISI, Pakistan’s enormously-influential version of the CIA.
That such an attack could take place in Rawalpindi, a bustling market town a few miles outside the administrative capital Islamabad, is telling. ‘Pindi is the General Headquarters of the Pakistani Army – so Bhutto’s murder is something akin to Hillary Clinton being shot while speaking at West Point or outside the Pentagon. (more…)
