ABSTRACT
Timor-Leste is the most recently independent state of Southeast Asia, having only formally gained independence in 2002. Its independence from Indonesia, as an occupying power, closely reected the contours of the Cold War, with the invasion of Timor-Leste based on the strong anti-communist orientation of Indonesia’s Suharto-led New Order government and the leftist-oriented Fretilin movement of 1975, at a time when Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos had each undergone communist revolutions.
