ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the UN's efforts to develop and later reform the police and defence forces as a primary pillar of liberal peacebuilding to examine peace figuration in Timor-Leste. Securitising Timor-Leste through developing new police and defence forces was seen as a major component of the UN peacebuilding project, a gradual exit strategy for international police and military forces, and a means to make Timor-Leste a viable post-conflict state. The UN involvement in Timor-Leste is characterised by multiple missions, which modified their mandates six times within thirteen years. The chapter argues that the UN's good intention to bring security and long-term stability to post-conflict Timor-Leste by developing defence and police forces produced multiple unanticipated consequences that adversely contributed to the prolongation of instability and insecurity, created unaccountable and authoritarian police and defence forces, and developed institutionalised sources of conflict. The chapter analyses the origin of incompatible rationales of international and local actors for securitising Timor-Leste.
