It would be interesting to see if the allegations of UN troops being somewhat slack on the job when the shootings occurred are also true (me thinks yes…but could there also be some pay off involved?) Conspiracies conspiracies.

Why did Reinado launch a coup attempt and try to kill both Horta and Gusmao? You can certainly understand his strategy up to that point. By manoeuvring himself into a position as commander of the leaderless rabble of petitioners, he hoped eventually to garner enough bargaining power to cut himself a deal and win a pardon from the government despite the seriousness of the charges he faced. That strategy wasn’t getting anywhere, according to Neil Campbell’s article, because Horta and Gusmao remained determined to deal separately with the rebel soldiers and Reinado i.e. they wanted to cut a deal to bring the petitioners back into the fold, but they weren’t going to cut a deal with Reinado. Hence Reinado’s increasingly bellicose rhetoric, in web postings and otherwise.

However, it’s a long stretch from that sort of frustrated tactical manouevring, and something as desperate and seemingly pointless as a coup attempt. What could Reinado have hoped to achieve, with the Australian and other forces there to ensure that he could not be in a position to actually sieze political power himself?

I’ve been puzzling about this all day. The only scenario that makes any sense at all is if Reinado had cut a secret deal with Fretilin powerbrokers, that if he succeeded in bumping off Fretilin’s hated rivals in Horta and Gusmao, he would be rewarded with a pardon. After all, with Horta and Gusmao dead, the only coherent political force remaining in the country would have been Fretilin. The UN may well have had no choice but to acquiesce in the formation of an all-party government of national reconciliation, which would certainly have been Fretilin-dominated.

It may seem like a bizarre conspiracy theory, but in East Timor bizarre conspiracies are often true. However, with Reinado dead we’ll probably never know.

Having F-111s near to hand also helped the cause.