Southeast Asia is a land full of ancient cultures religions, mysteries, and unfortunately hatred. Ethnic chaos has dominated this land for centuries. Not one country has come to signify this more than the tiny nation of East Timor. This land was rouged in the late 1990s until the United Nations stepped in to rectify the conflict. This paper will demonstrate this by first looking at the history behind East Timor, the Indonesian attack, and the role the United Nations played in this issue. The deplorable past of East Timor thoroughly illustrates the troubles this island faced.
             Since the 16th century and so forth, the island of East Timor was a Portuguese colony recognized as Portuguese Timor. The Dutch took power over the western portion of the island in 1613 and claimed several of the surrounding islands. In 1860, a treaty divided Timor into eastern and western portions, as the Dutch and the Portuguese had fought over the island. Portugal was granted the eastern portion of the island and the western part was given to the Netherlands. Portugal largely neglected the colony, and used it mainly to exile political prisoners, along with ordinary prisoners. When World War II broke out, Portugal was known to be neutral, but Portuguese Timor was engaged by Dutch and Australian forces, which we're expecting to be invaded by the Japanese. The military initiative angered Portugal along with bringing Portuguese Timor into the Pacific War, but it seemed to slow down the Japanese expansion. The assistance of Timorese volunteers cost the civilian population dearly; Japanese forces seized food supply and burned down villages. By the end of the war, between 40,000-70,000 Timorese had died during the subsequent Japanese occupation. Eventually, Indonesia was born after the Netherlands had given up its colonies in the Dutch West Indies including West Timor. The western portion of Timor was recognized as Indonesia by the Dutch in 1949. East Timor remain...