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In Conflict, Identity, and State Formation in East Timor 2000-2017, James Scambary analyses the complex interplay between local and national level conflict and politics in the independence period. Communal conflict, often enacted by a variety of informal groups such as gangs and martial arts groups, has been a constant feature of East Timor’s post-independence landscape. A focus on statebuilding, however, in academic discourse has largely overlooked this conflict, and the informal networks that drive Timorese politics and society. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork, Scambary documents the range of different cultural and historical dynamics and identities that drive conflict, and by which local conflicts and non-state actors became linked to national conflict, and laid the foundations of a clientelist state.
Author:
In Conflict, Identity, and State Formation in East Timor 2000-2017, James Scambary analyses the complex interplay between local and national level conflict and politics in the independence period. Communal conflict, often enacted by a variety of informal groups such as gangs and martial arts groups, has been a constant feature of East Timor’s post-independence landscape. A focus on statebuilding, however, in academic discourse has largely overlooked this conflict, and the informal networks that drive Timorese politics and society. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork, Scambary documents the range of different cultural and historical dynamics and identities that drive conflict, and by which local conflicts and non-state actors became linked to national conflict, and laid the foundations of a clientelist state.
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Abstract
Chapter one provides an introduction to conflict in East Timor centred on interpretations of the 2006 Crisis. It describes and critiques the main frameworks used to understand conflict and politics in East Timor. It then poses an alternative theoretical framework that informs the central arguments and structure of the book.
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Chapter two details the multiple and often highly localised cultural, historical, social and political factors that generate contemporary conflict in East Timor and led to the emergence of such a diverse array of contemporary informal security groups.
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Chapter three demonstrates how these factors have continued to influence events and shape conflict in the independence era. Special attention is given to how the conflict of 2006–2007 played out at a local level in both urban and rural areas, some of the factors that drove conflict and their continuities with pre-existing tensions.
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Chapter four documents the origins and nature of the two main national level forms of informal security groups – veterans’ and martial arts groups. It describes their roots within East Timorese cultural beliefs and history, and their networks within contemporary political structures.
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Chapter five focuses on urban informal security groups. It sets out a typology of the different types of groups and their origins, with a number of case studies. This chapter challenges dominant western oriented notions of gangs and delinquency through an ethnographic exploration of localised constructions of crime and violence. There will also be a discussion of how multiple and overlapping identities and group memberships link localised and personal disputes to broader tensions or conflicts.
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Chapter six constructs a case study of an urban squatter settlement in Dili. Drawing together themes from earlier chapters on group motivations, identities and origins, it shows how population movements affect settlement patterns and conflict dynamics, linking rural and urban conflict. At the same time, it adopts an ethnographic lens to view informal security groups in the more positive terms of migrant adaptation and resilience.
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Chapter seven builds on the profile of communal conflict dynamics described in previous chapters to trace the evolution of peacebuilding approaches in East Timor; how a range of misapprehensions and assumptions have hampered the effectiveness of both government and international agency driven initiatives. It then examines a number of contemporary approaches that have showed progress towards addressing the fluid, multi-layered nature of conflict.
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Chapter eight combines the preceding chapters to show how the same cultural, social and demographic dynamics that drive conflict and lead to sudden escalations in scale have also contributed to emergent clientelist configurations of power. It describes how networks and kinship alliances described in earlier chapters have been successfully mobilised to entrench the current government in power.
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Chapter nine considers the implications of these conflict dynamics and emerging configurations of power for the future. It then argues for a more multi-level approach that looks beyond rural/urban, liberal/local and modern and traditional dichotomies to see the linkages between local and national-level politics and conflicts.