This time round, Malaysia is alone among the northern neighbors in sending troops to take on warring gangs laying waste to Dili and to try and keep mutinous police and soldiers from killing each other.

Television footage of poor people burning each other’s houses, mobs stripping government offices of filing cabinets, and machete-wielding hoodlums with blood lust in their eyes has sapped enthusiasm for helping fund the great democratic experiment in the region’s poorest country.

In Indonesia, where the international humiliation of losing a province that had been part of the republic for 24 years is still keenly felt, there was never any thought of doing more to help than closing the border with West Timor.

Indonesia’s archly conservative Kompas newspaper reflected a common view in Jakarta: "The decision by East Timor to authorize foreign powers, notably an Australian force, to tackle security in the country has stunned many people. A question and protest immediately arises: Why did East Timor become independent if it needs a foreign power to ensure security?"

Even in Australia, which led the intervention force that in 1999 delivered independence, the wretchedness of the fledgling country has emboldened critics of Canberra’s role in its creation.

Conservative commentator Piers Ackerman, writing in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, said the "kumbaya crowd which pressed for East Timor’s independence must shoulder much of the blame for the failure of its dysfunctional government."

Even Prime Minister John Howard, who won public acclaim for insisting in a 1998 letter to the Indonesian president that the East Timorese be given a choice between independence and autonomy within Indonesia, is showing frustration with the appalling failure of the leadership in Dili.

"It came to this path because of poor governance," the normally measured Howard harrumphed. "And I have a right as prime minister of Australia, given the commitment we have made, to say to the political leadership that it carries a very heavy responsibility and it’s in their hands to deliver a better future for their people."

But the fact is that East Timor is close to being declared a failed state. Like it or not, Australia will have to lead the expensive international effort to put things back together again.

Luiz Vieira, head of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration mission in East Timor, said in an interview in his Dili office that the task of hauling the nation out of anarchy was daunting.

"I can’t think of anything that will be an easy solution," he said. "The one thing the media has failed to capture is the complexity of the situation. There’s a lot of animosity. There’s a long memory."

The view of many keen watchers is that the divisions now apparent in East Timor were papered over when its people were fighting for their liberty. With Indonesia gone, the East Timorese have found a new adversary: themselves.

Australians are slowly coming to terms with the magnitude of the task ahead. Around 700,000 at the time of Indonesia’s exit, there are now close to a million East Timorese — courtesy of possibly the world’s highest birthrate.

Since independence the economy has gone backwards, with the average income now about 1 US dollar a day. Half the workforce is illiterate and the hoped-for billions in oil and gas revenues shared with Australia will hardly make a dent in an unemployment rate estimated at 50 per cent of the workforce.

Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson is hoping to get Asian nations to help lift the burden of reconstruction.

"It’s in all our interests that we don’t have a failed state in our region," he said in Singapore while attending a regional security conference. "We can’t afford to have Timor Leste become one of those, and in doing so become perhaps a haven for transnational crime or terrorism."

What Nelson is asking for is East Timor’s politicians to be given a second go after comprehensively squandering their first chance at nation-building.

Analysts are calling for radical change in governance before a new heap of money is poured into the tiny territory that has already soaked up so much.

Hugh White, a respected former defense department official who now teaches at the Australian National University, says Canberra ought not to be too sensitive about sovereignty issues and start demanding a bigger say in how East Timor is run.

"The really important issue is that the law and order problems on the streets of Dili are very much a reflection of the deeper political struggle that we have seen taking place," Professor White told Australia’s ABC Radio. "So nothing we do on the law-and-order front is going to make much difference unless we an also find a way to help address those deeper political problems."

Within East Timor, there are rivalries between those in the western region close to Indonesia, who feel they are denied jobs and opportunities by those in the east, who think they deserve precedence because they fought longest and hardest for independence.

There is anger that the governing elite insisted on Portuguese being declared the national language. And there is the frustration of those who fooled themselves into thinking that freedom would bring security, prosperity and international respect.

Most problematic of all is the scourge of all developing countries: corruption.