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To understand the way of the East Timor ninja, one has to look at the nation itself. After becoming formally independent in 2002, East Timor remains very much a fledgling — even experimental — state with a pack of international institutions and NGOs propping up a government that has limited capabilities of its own. The police chief's ninja-fighting bravado was spurred by the mysterious murders of a teenage girl in December and an infant child in January. But, critics say, his campaign masks the misdeeds and brutality of the country's own police, who are slowly taking back control from a force of international peackeepers. Moreover, the threat of "ninjas" resonates deep in the psyche of a nation still traumatized and torn by years of occupation and civil strife. "This idea of a masked man, of a covert agent that's difficult to identify — a kind of ghost — haunts this place," says Silas Everett, country director for East Timor at the Asia Foundation.
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