East Timor
Australian troops pulled out of East Timor this week, after a six-year mission to guard the tiny country’s newly won independence from Indonesia. The 1999 deployment of 5,000 peacekeepers was Australia’s largest military venture since the Vietnam War. Initially, the soldiers protected East Timorese civilians from the pro-Jakarta militias that had been terrorizing them in the run-up to the independence referendum. Later, the troops stayed to help the new country provide security. In what the Australian press called the “literal transformation of swords into plowshares,” the military donated its main base to the East Timorese for use as an agricultural college.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Moon dust has earthly elements thanks to a magnetic bridgeUnder the radar The substances could help supply a lunar base
-
World’s oldest rock art discovered in IndonesiaUnder the Radar Ancient handprint on Sulawesi cave wall suggests complexity of thought, challenging long-held belief that human intelligence erupted in Europe
-
Claude Code: the viral AI coding app making a splash in techThe Explainer Engineers and noncoders alike are helping the app go viral
