Rethinking Governance and Security in Timor-Leste

The social and political turmoil across 2006 to 2008, commonly known as the ‘crisis’, reverberated through Dili and Timor-Leste, resulting in many deaths and injury, widespread material destruction, and massive internal displacement. With the first fractures emerging from within the newly formed state, an initial split in the military led in turn to a splintering across the security sector, resulting in a massacre of police by the military, attacks on the homes of military leaders and bases, and the arming by ministers of para-militaries and the involvement of parliamentarians in fuelling violence. Rather than being a site of mediation for