page_title: Falintil
section_title: Resistance struggle
hierarchical_section_title: Falintil / Resistance struggle
caption_attribution_description: FALINTIL veterans in East Timor. USAID caption: 'Caption: The former combatants from Timor-Leste’s struggle for independence are working for action and recognition as they help draft the Veteran’s law'
context_page_description: 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.
  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".
context_section_description: Throughout the 1980s Gusmão, leading both FALINTIL and the CNNR ((CRRN)) 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. ((In March 1983 i.e. - NOT 1986, a ceasefire was agreed with the Indonesian forces that was broken on 8 August 1983 when Falintil elements attacked an Indonesian engineer unit (Zipur 3) at Bibileo. Subsequently, in reprisal, in early September Indonesian and militia elements killed 200-300 villagers in the Kraras area.))  On 12 May 1983 ((?? is this a reference to the early March 1981 "First National Conference" at which Fretilin declared itself a Marxist–Leninist Party ?)) 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 ((NO, it was 8 August 1983 - Chamberlain has interviewed the leader of the Falintil attacking force i.e. Ular Rihik - see Chamberlain, E.P., The Strugge in Iliomar - Resistance in rural East Timor, 2017, pp. 98–108, free to read on the Internet at https://www.scribd.com/document/350665084.)), 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. ((This is a reference to the Ossohira ambush on 21 November 1986 south of Los Palos - 34 ABRI killed, Chamberlain has interviewed Falintil participants - see Struggle in Iliomar, 2017,pp. 119–122.))
  On 20 June 1988 the Resistencia Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste (RENETIL), the National Resistance of East Timorese Students, was created in Indonesia, reporting directly to FALINTIL and its Commander in Chief Xanana Gusmão. On 31 December 1988 Gusmão officially announced that FALINTIL was now the non-partisan armed resistance wing of the unified resistance movement, which was now to be known as the Conselho Nacional da Resistência Maubere (CNRM), the National Council of Maubere Resistance.
  Between the 23rd and 28 May 1990, CNRM held an extraordinary meeting for the purposes of restructuring the entire resistance movement. It was during this conference that Gusmão officially resigned from the FRETILIN party, whilst remaining Commander-in-Chief of FALINTIL and the president of CNRM. This meeting also saw the formation of the Clandestine Front, which came about from the recognition that FALINTIL, the armed resistance, had been significantly weakened by many years of guerrilla activity against the Indonesian military. The formation of the Clandestine Front was a strategy to organise the population against the occupying Indonesian forces. These events saw an upsurge in activity against the unified resistance movement by the occupying forces, which saw many resistance leaders flee to the mountains or overseas, and led to the arrest of Gusmão on 20 November 1992. Ma'Huno, a member of FRETILIN's steering committee, became the leader of the resistance only to be arrested himself on 5 April 1993. Nino Konis Santana replaced the arrested Ma'Huno as leader on 25 A
caption: FALINTIL veterans in East Timor, 2005
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