Falintil

Falintil (or FALINTIL) originally began as the military wing of the political party FRETILIN of East Timor. It was established on 20 August 1975 in response to FRETILIN’s political conflict with the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT).

The name FALINTIL is an acronym of its full name in Portuguese, Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste. In English this translates as "The Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor".

FALINTIL gained most of its initial military units when most the former Portuguese garrison forces in the territory switched allegiance to FALINTIL in August 1975, after the Portuguese withdrawal.

At the time of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 FALINTIL consisted of 2,500 regular troops, 7,000 who had some Portuguese military training, and 10,000 who had attended short military instruction courses, for a total of 20,000.

The first commander of FALINTIL was Nicolau Lobato. Lobato was killed during a battle with the Indonesian armed forces in 1978 and Xanana Gusmão was elected as his replacement during a secret national conference in Lacluta, Viqueque in 1981. This meeting also saw the formation of the Revolutionary Council of National Resistance (in Portuguese Conselho Revolucinario de Resistencia Nacional or CNNR), which was the first step in uniting the different resistance movement factions under one umbrella organisation.

Throughout the 1980s Gusmão, leading both FALINTIL and the CNNR resistance unification movement, began distancing himself from the FRETILIN party and began attempts to make FALINTIL non-partisan, and to make it the armed resistance wing of the unified resistance movement. On 12 May 1983 Gusmão proclaimed the convergence of all nationalists in their struggle against the Indonesian occupation and by April 1984 Gusmão had proclaimed the ideological independence of FRETILIN from the overall resistance movement, and began to re-structure the armed resistance movement. In the first week of June 1986, FALINTIL fighters attacked an Indonesian Army engineering unit, killing 16 soldiers. On 31 August 1983, the Indonesian Army commenced military operations around Viqueque, about 100 miles from Dili. A spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra, said about 3,200 troops in four battalions, including special forces, were deployed with tanks and troop transport aircraft. On 5 May 1985 Gusmão sent the FRETILIN Central Committee, operating in exile, a message informing them of the structure of the CNNR and assuming the title of Commander in Chief of FALINTIL. Significant progress in the unification of the resistance movement occurred in March 1986 when FRETILIN and UDT agreed to the creation of the "nationalist convergence". In the meantime, the FALINTIL guerrilla force continued to attack Indonesian troops. Diplomats in Jakarta later admitted losing between 20 and 35 Indonesian soldiers killed in a FALINTIL ambush in June 1986.

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