Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste: Finding a Way between External Intervention and Local Dynamics

Abstract

This article highlights the importance of interaction between peace missions and local dynamics, drawing on Tsing's work on frictions. It is centred on the United Nations (UN) peace intervention in Timor-Leste, discussing different examples of frictions, which have the potential to undermine or empower the peacebuilding efforts underway. The analysis stresses the unpredictable effects of applying the UN liberal peace model. It is argued that processes of friction, often consisting of an incremental build-up of intermediate results shape and form the (un)sustainability of any peacebuilding process initiated by an external intervention and, consequently, should be identified and analysed in order to enhance or minimize their positive/negative contribution towards building peace.

Beyond Hybridity to the Politics of Scale: International Intervention and ‘Local’ Politics

“…Essentializing binaries abound when hybridity is used to explain particular cases, with careful caveats frequently discarded. In East Timor, for example, Hohe () describes a ‘clash of paradigms’ between the ‘Western‐style paradigm of statebuilding’ and ‘resilient traditional structures’ (also Chopra and Hohe, : 289); Wallis () charts the merging of the liberal with the local; Grenfell (: 90; also Hicks, ) distinguishes between the donor‐dominated ‘state, as a modern institutional form of governance’ and ‘tribal‐traditional’ governance; and Freire and Lopes () dichotomize local dynamics and external intervention.…”

“…By ignoring this, UNAET entrenched a ‘major “gap” between government decision‐makers and… people in the villages’ (Cummins, : 34, 38). This generated calls for hybridized international‐liberal/local‐traditional peacebuilding (Chopra and Hohe, ; Freire and Lopes, ; Hicks, ). Policy makers appear to have embraced these recommendations, leading some to identify East Timor as a paradigmatic case of successful hybrid peacebuilding (Richmond, ; Wallis, ).…”

Peacebuilding in Timor-Leste: United Nations missions and the post-intervention context

“…Nevertheless, throughout this period the UN was criticized for its inaptitude for an effective capacitation of local agents (Ximenes Guterres 2012; Ramos-Horta 2012), as well as for its difficulties in involving with local traditions and custom (Hohe 2002;Richmond and Franks 2008;Freire and Lopes 2013;Candio and Bleiker 2001). 1 Despite criticisms, the decision was to reduce the UN presence substantially assuming that the situation was stabilized, and the UN Office in East Timor (UNOTIL) was set up (United Nations 2005).…”

Talking past each other: Regional and domestic resistance in the Burundian intervention scene

“…Friction should be understood as an interaction across difference (Tsing, 2005: 4); it points to various moments in which different forces, ideas and practices collide with each other, thereby frustrating any linear understanding of peace-and statebuilding. Having said this, the notion of friction defies any neat conceptualisation (Björkdahl and Höglund, 2013: 292) and may even remain unnoticed (Freire and Lopes, 2013). As a response, we suggest that frictional encounters can be made intelligible by retrieving intertwined articulations of domination and resistance (see also Björkdahl and Höglund, 2013: 292).…”

“…Based on these deliberations, we analyse the intervention in Burundi as a political process in which regional forces struggled to define peace for the small Great Lakes country -a place where domestic elites and armed movements were themselves in conflict over the future of the state. By unravelling the frictional encounters between domestic and regional forces, we expand on previous applications of friction in the critical peacebuilding literature, which primarily look at the interplay of international and local forces, ideas and practices (inter alia Freire and Lopes, 2013;Van der Lijn, 2013).…”