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.

Under the UNTAET administration, the transition to full independence had gone quickly and smoothly. A kind of euphoria gripped East Timor, spreading its warmth to the nation's many international well- wishers.

But contrary to popular perception, East Timor was not, and is not, a naturally coherent nation with a primordially distinct identity. The euphoria of independence allowed politicians to turn a blind eye to the many divisions, or at best to paper them over with flimsy rhetoric.

Unfortunately East Timor's well-intentioned international supporters seemed happy to swallow the myth of East Timor's unity – hook, line and sinker. From deep within this myth there are already voices, unwilling to face reality, asking whether the current mayhem has been inflicted on East Timor by outside provocateurs (read: Indonesia).

So what are the main fractures in the foundations of East Timorese society?

Ethnic divisions

A gap has opened up between those in the west (adjacent to the border with Indonesian West Timor) and those in the east.

In the East Timor Defence Force, officers with origins in the east of the country have given themselves superior nationalist and military credentials, discriminating against soldiers from the Indonesia-tainted west. This division has infected the unemployed and angry youth of Dili, where east-oriented and west- oriented gangs are now fighting it out.

Language

East Timor's political elite is dominated by speakers of Portuguese, but they are a small minority. Portuguese was never widely mastered in East Timor, even during Portuguese colonial times, yet now the country's leaders are making an attempt to force the language on to a largely indifferent, even hostile, majority.

This bizarre project is going to take many years to complete (if it can be done at all) and in the meantime those who don't speak Portuguese are feeling increasingly disconnected from their country's political and administrative elite.

Class

East Timor's four years of independence have allowed the emergence of a tiny but very powerful class of newly-rich. Outside their villas, the dirt-poor scratch a living in what is easily Asia's poorest nation.

Many of the very rich are of mixed Timorese and European ancestry, people who collected their business capital during years of residence abroad (including in Australia) while the majority of East Timorese suffered under Indonesian rule.

Naturally, this racial and historical difference does nothing to endear the wealthy to the impoverished masses.

Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is probably the most important institution for the maintenance of stability and social solidarity in the country. Yet the Church too is riven by division.

In the first place, there is a division between "secular" Catholics and the more fervent, orthodox church establishment.

The two sides have clashed on issues as diverse as family planning (East Timor has a birth rate far above the economy's rate of growth) and the teaching of religion in schools.

Beyond this, to the horror of the Church's hierarchy, the rural masses practise forms of Catholicism that are entwined with indigenous animist beliefs. These are giving rise to some wacky messianic movements, such as Colimau 2000, whose members (all Catholics) believe that some of East Timor's dead resistance leaders will return to life and lead them to a new age of prosperity and justice.

Colimau 2000 thrives in some parts of the nation's west, and has been linked by some with the disaffected "rebels" of East Timor's western region.

On East Timor's Independence Day in 2002, I wrote in The Canberra Times "when the party is over and the euphoria has vanished, the new nation will find some menacing guests in its front room: economic crisis, political turbulence and confused identity".

These guests haven't gone away and they are now wreaking havoc. As Australian troops fan out into the wild streets of Dili, we can best support them by refusing to allow the shallow, romantic myth of East Timor's special identity and its primordial unity to blur our vision of what we are dealing with.

[George Quinn heads the South-East Asia Centre, Faculty of Asian Studies, in ANU's College of Asia and the Pacific. Email: george.quinn@anu.edu.au.]