Singapore – Petty regional divisions have been stirred up for political gain in East Timor which is still struggling to define its identity after centuries of foreign domination, analysts say.
The worst crisis since Southeast Asia's poorest nation gained independence four years ago reached its peak Monday when unpopular Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri resigned.
Alkatiri had faced demands to quit since late May when firefights broke out between factions of the military, and between the army and police, which degenerated into gang violence in the capital Dili.
The unrest followed Alkatiri's sacking in March of 600 army deserters – nearly half the nation's military – after they complained of discrimination.
Gangs that later began burning and looting houses in Dili claimed to be acting in the name of Loro Monu, the western part of the country, or Loro Sae, the east. Scattered gunfire terrorized Dili residents.
"East-West rivalry never existed in East Timor," said Loro Horta, son of the country's Nobel Prize-winning former foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta.
"Now it has been manipulated to the point I believe it is going to be the main challenge for the future," said Loro Horta, 27, who has just completed a master's program at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.
Damien Kingsbury of Australia's Deakin University agreed the East-West issue was exploited. "That's a pretty artificial distinction," he said. "This has only really arisen in the last few weeks."
East Timor's prosecutor general Longuinhos Monteiro and an international team of prosecutors have been investigating who was behind the violence. He said last week that former interior minister Rogerio Lobato faces charges including distributing state weapons to civilians.
Alkatiri will also be questioned this week over allegations he authorised the arming of a hit squad tasked with silencing his opponents, Monteiro said Tuesday. The former prime minister has repeatedly denied the allegations.
East Timor has only about one million inhabitants and the Roman Catholic bishop of Dili, Alberto Ricardo da Silva, told AFP in Dili this month that its people do not think about regional differences. "Political parties want to... use that and want to divide. They want to make provocation," he said.
At the same time, Kingsbury said the sacked soldiers did have legitimate grievances. Younger recruits, for example, felt older veterans of the fighting against Indonesian occupiers – much of which occurred in the east of the country – received preferential treatment.
Horta and Kingsbury agreed Alkatiri, who is widely seen as having an authoritarian style of leadership, was technically right for firing the army deserters. But the matter should have been handled "with a great deal more delicacy and sensitivity," said Kingsbury.
He said Major Alfredo Reinado, who declared himself leader of the sacked soldiers, "came into the picture after the soldiers resigned" and had his own personal grievances.
Horta – whose father is a possible candidate to replace Alkatiri – said Reinado had been the subject of a previous case of indiscipline when he commanded the country's navy, which consisted of two small boats.
In the tightly-knit world of East Timorese politics, Horta's mother is also a possible candidate to be the new prime minister. Anna Pessoa is the current Minister for State.
The violence that began in late May left at least 21 people dead, drove about 60,000 into Dili refugee camps, and prompted the government to seek the intervention of more than 2,200 foreign peacekeepers to restore order.
Horta said the groups which terrorized Dili were mostly "criminal gangs, groups of unemployed thugs going back to Indonesian times."
After 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule, Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and occupied it for 24 years until a United Nations referendum in 1999 when East Timorese voted for independence.