Tom Hyland – Listen carefully: that scratching you hear is the scribbling of commentators, furiously re-writing history. And if you look closely, you might glimpse a hint of schadenfreude among those who argued all along that East Timor could never be free and are now saying: we told you so.

Annemarie Evans – Australian armoured vehicles patrol the streets of East Timor's capital, Dili, amid the burned-out shells of houses and food warehouses looted by marauding gangs, who for weeks have laid waste to neighbourhoods and forced tens of thousands of terrified civilians into refugee camps.

Peter Boyle – Commenting on the Australian troop deployment to East Timor on May 31, the Australian's Paul Kelly said, "this intervention is both military and political. Its primary purpose was to respond to East Timor's security crisis... But this is not just a military intervention. It is a highly political intervention...

Jon Lamb – While the fighting between different factions of the East Timor Defence Force (FDTL) and the East Timor National Police (PNTL) has ceased with the arrival of the Australian-led international security force, sporadic street skirmishes and violence by unruly gangs continue.

Diane Farsetta – Is the Southeast Asian island nation of East Timor a success story or a basket case?

The unfortunate thing about overseas is that it is full of foreigners, and they have different traditions from us. That seems to be the gist of some lamentations here about the state of East Timor.

Maryann Keady, Dili – East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri says that he is a marked man and vows to not leave his government post without a fight. As violent civil unrest in East Timor continues and an Australian-led intervention force digs in, Asia's youngest country's political future is very much in doubt.

Up to 2,000 protesters paraded through Dili in a convoy of trucks and motorcycles to call for the dismissal of East Timor's prime minister Mari Alkatiri and his government.

Mark Dodd – The column of unarmed East Timorese police had walked less than 100m when the shooting began.

Two soldiers stepped forward, one of them armed with an M-16 rifle. What happened next was random and mind-numbingly brutal.

Tom Allard – Rosinha Erica Nunes is the kind of young woman that East Timor needs to cherish if it is to emerge as a viable country. A final-year high school student from a neighbourhood where few bother finishing their secondary education, she had the marks, and the ambition, to go to university next year.

Ian McPhedran, Dili – East Timor is a nasty little political jigsaw that will keep Australia guessing and engaged for decades to come. As rival gangs battled it out this week on the dusty back streets of the sweltering capital, former military officers sat stewing in the hills begging for dialogue and leadership, but refusing to lay down a single high-powered assault rifle.

Peter Symonds – Just over a week after its first troops landed in East Timor, the Australian government is conducting an unrelenting and barely disguised campaign of "regime change" in Dili. Two senior East Timorese ministers resigned on Thursday as part of a compromise deal brokered in a tense, two-day meeting of the country's consultative Council of State.

Lindsay Murdoch and Tom Allard, Dili – Two of East Timor's most powerful ministers resigned from the embattled government in Dili yesterday, risking a further escalation of violence if security forces loyal to Rogerio Lobato, former minister for the interior, take revenge for his forced exit.

Paul Toohey – Saturday morning, things went crazy. The Australians had landed but, apart from a group of some 30 commandos nursing SR-25 semi-automatic rifles who had taken position around the United Nations compound, they were nowhere to be seen.

Tom Allard in Dili and agencies – Soldiers loyal to the East Timorese Government say rebels led by Major Alfredo Reinado ambushed them as they approached his stronghold for peace talks, casting new light on last week's fierce gunfight captured by a television crew.

Helen Hill – The Australian Government and media have demonised East Timor's PM without knowing all the facts,

It is almost a week now after the arrival there of Australian peace-keepers but peace, you'd have to say, still seems a way off.

What, earlier this year, started out as basically an industrial dispute between disgruntled soldiers and the East Timorese Government, in April escalated when the armed forces split along both ethnic and political lines.

Jon Lamb – In response to ongoing clashes between the East Timor Defence Force (FDTL) and rebel soldiers and police, the East Timorese president, prime minister, foreign minister and speaker to the parliament sent a joint communique on the evening of May 24 to the Australian government requesting that it send troops as part of an international force to restore security.

Maryann Keady – Three years ago, I wrote a piece talking about attempts to oust Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri in East Timor, then a new struggling independent nation.

Max Lane – On May 24, East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and the speaker of East Timor's parliament Lu'olo sent a letter to the governments of Australia, Portugal, Malaysia and New Zealand as well as to the United Nations asking for assistance in the form of a military presence in order to respond to civil disorder in the East Timor capital Dili, and

Dili – East Timor dumped its defense minister Tuesday and the government showed signs of further unraveling, as desperate residents scuffled over scarce food in the capital and looters ransacked the prosecutor's office of vast numbers of files.

Mark Dodd, Dili – East Timor President Xanana Gusmao has assumed sweeping new executive authority, invoking emergency powers under the country's constitution to help resolve the political crisis.

Tom Allard and Mark Forbes in Dili – A humanitarian and political crisis was escalating in East Timor last night, as mobs looted government food warehouses, burnt properties and shot and bashed ethnic enemies.

Lawrence Bartlett, Sydney – The explosion of violence in East Timor was the result of an accumulation of ethnic, economic and historical grievances in the young country and the failure of the government to address them, analysts say.

James Dunn – East Timor's descent into violence and anarchy, and towards civil war, chaos came as a shock, including to this columnist who has been involved in the affairs of this community for more than 4 decades, especially their ordeal during Indonesia's harsh occupation.

Prime Minister John Howard had ignored the difficult task facing East Timor in the wake of the ruinous Indonesian occupation, Australian Democrats Leader Lyn Allison said today. Australia should have done more to help, she said.

Tom Hyland – The UN, Australia and the East Timorese Government had multiple warnings of the looming internal security crisis that has plunged Dili into violent chaos.

Washington – A US-based pressure group has warned Australia that its invited military intervention in East Timor to quell unrest did not entitle it to interfere in the country's government.

Anthony Deutsch, Dili – East Timor's capital descended into chaos Saturday as rival gangs set houses on fire and attacked each other with machetes and spears, defying international peacekeepers patrolling in armed vehicles and combat helicopters. The prime minister said a coup attempt was underway.

We have watched the unfolding situation in Timor-Leste this past week with deep concern. We do not believe that events had to escalate to this point. Like others, we do not have complete information about the current situation and its causes. Below are our initial reflections:

Rita A. Widiadana, Sanur – The joint Indonesia-Timor Leste Truth and Friendship Commission will continue its work despite the outbreak of violence in Timor Leste, an official said Friday.

George Quinn – On its independence day almost exactly four years ago, the people of East Timor seemed literally to be singing on the same page. The independence movement had grabbed a massive win in the referendum of 1999. Indonesia's sour response and the brutality of its militias had been a gift to the new country's sense of solidarity.

Mark Forbes – Wide-eyed youths brandish machetes, armed militias rampage through the streets, terrified civilians flee, soldiers lay siege to police headquarters and your sleep is broken by rifle bursts, heavy machine guns and the thump of grenades. Welcome to East Timor, the world's youngest nation on the brink of becoming its next failed state.

Hamish McDonald – Australian warships silhouetted in the calm blue waters, a squat Hercules on the airfield surrounded by young soldiers armed and wired to the teeth, and John Howard warning the nation that it's all very risky.

Aren't we seeing a bit too much of this in our region? What happened to preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping?

Damien Kingsbury – Australia's renewed intervention in East Timor will help defuse what was growing into an explosive situation, and which threatened the fledgling state.

Mark Forbes, Dili – The thud of grenades and chatter of machine-gun fire was drowned out by the drone of a huge, grey Australian Hercules yesterday carrying the men locals pray will deliver them from the carnage enveloping Dili.

Events in East Timor and the response internationally have given rise to a variation on gunboat diplomacy. It is gunboat democracy. In colonial times, a country would position a gunboat off the coast of a minion and that would be enough to sort out the native unrest.

Dylan Welch – Fighting was raging around East Timor's capital today ahead of the promised deployment of up to 1300 Australian troops to restore order.

Jill Jolliffe and Rob Taylor, Dili – Heavy casualties have been reported in the centre of Dili where a fierce gun battle raged between rival military factions today.

Rory Callinan, Dili – The large rock flying past the windscreen raised the alarm. For the previous two days I had travelled with impunity through the Dili suburbs of Becora and Fatuahi, where residents of the East Timorese capital had been engaged in running battles, armed with knifes, bows and arrows, spears and swords.

Ambitious politicians misjudge the mood in the military and soon the shooting starts, with the factions fighting over the pathetically small spoils of power. And an impoverished people scrambles to get out of harms way, while watching their aspirations for a better life disappear.

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Widespread disenchantment with East Timor's government, a poorly led military and widespread poverty and unemployment are fuelling the worst unrest since the small country's 1999 vote for independence, analysts say.

Jon Lamb – Heightened tensions within East Timor and rumours of further violent clashes have subsided with the passing of the Fretilin congress, held in Dili on May 17-19. The congress was a test of support for Fretilin leader and East Timor's Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

Vera Devai – The Australian Government was hampering the investigation into the death of a TV news cameraman in East Timor because of its political ties with Indonesia, NSW police said today.

Guido Guilliart, Dili – A surge in violence in East Timor's capital left one soldier dead and seven others wounded Tuesday, the government said, as Australia and New Zealand offered to provide troops to help restore calm.

Mark Forbes, Dili – Crowds danced to a cover version of Van Halen's Jump in the forecourt of East Timor's battered government headquarters on Saturday night – celebrating the anniversary of independence – the scene of last month's rampage by youths and rebel soldiers that left at least five civilians shot dead.

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – East Timor's Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri avoided a leadership challenge this week but it is doubtful his rule will ensure any peace in the world's youngest nation.

Katrina Strickland – There is a scene in the ABC's new mini-series, Answered By Fire, in which a journalist tells a couple of United Nations police that the Australian government received intelligence ahead of East Timor's 1999 independence referendum about the likelihood of post-ballot violence.

Graeme Blundell – David Wenham and a cast of East Timorese amateurs are stunning in a new ABC drama about the bloody history of the world's newest nation

It has been easy not to remember the tragedy of East Timor, so overwhelmed did we become by September 11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and terrorist bombings in Madrid, Bali and London.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – Mari Alkatiri was so confident he had stitched up the leadership of East Timor's ruling Fretilin party that by morning tea at the party's national congress yesterday he was belting out a melancholy nationalist anthem over the PA system, accompanied by an organist with a push-button rhythm machine.