“They’ll come at you with slingshots, machetes, sticks … ”
That’s a young Australian soldier describing the revenge-minded gang members, often in the pay of corrupt political parties, who comprise one of the greatest threats to stability in troubled, oil-rich East Timor.
Little, usually friendly but highly adaptive and fearless in large numbers, Timorese thugs are a lot like Ewoks. (My comparison, not the Aussies’.) Like the vicious spacebears from Endor that helped defeat the Galactic Empire, they improvise deadly weapons from local materials. There are the rebar arrows I described in a previous post. Then there are crude cutlasses, dart guns and javelins – any of which could kill you, especially when wielded by an angry, 500-strong mob, as was the case recently when a New Zealand squad found itself swarmed by warring gang members. Shots were fired in that case, and the New Zealanders fortunately escaped.