Hybrid Peacebuilding in Hybrid Communities: A Case Study of East Timor

East Timor achieved independence in 1999 after 24 years of brutal Indonesian military occupation and more than 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule. With the aid of an international peacekeeping force, a United Nations (UN) mission installed an interim administration that set about preparing East Timor for self-governance. However, while its new-found freedom was much celebrated, persistent tensions, rather than unity and peace, came to characterise East Timor’s society in the post-independence period. These tensions reached a peak in what is now popularly referred to as the ‘Crisis’. From April to June 2006, a rapid series of events resulted in the unravelling of the six-year UN statebuilding project. National level political tensions and divisions within the security services served as a catalyst for a wider communal conflict on a national scale, which was to last for nearly two years.