The Solomons: as intervention begins (2003)

At the end of July, Australia and New Zealand sent troops to intervene in the Solomon Islands.  The Australian government argues that it has a continuing obligation to intervene in the Solomons to stop ‘terrorism’. Apparently this Christian country is a potential source of Islamic fundamentalism! More plausible is the argument that Australia’s long-term economic interests, above all the security of her shipping fleet, demands action.

The crisis in the Solomon Islands began with the failure of the Asian Tigers in 1997-8. Recession destabilised the entire Pacific region. The fruits of the crisis have included the war in East Timor and the terrorist actions in Indonesia and the Philippines. The economy of the Solomon Islands has shrunk by around a half in the past six years. The population of the Islands is about half a million. The most important industries are mining, timber and shipping. Yet as all these industries have gone into permanent decline, so unemployment has soared and social tensions with it. Factions of ethnic militias formed, basing themselves on Malaitan or Guadalcanal ethnicity.

Small armies have been able to impose terror on local populations, extorting businesses, forcing curfews at night. In 2000, the fighting between different groups came to a head. Malaitan rebels attempted a coup, which failed, and unarmed Australian troops were sent to broker a ceasefire. Since then, the fighting has tended to diminish.

Dr Kabini Sanga is Solomon Islands academic living in New Zealand. ‘Over a number of years’, he writes, ‘thousands of Malaitans were working and living in different Islands in the Solomons. That explains some of the problems we are having now. Thousands of Malaitans have also settled on lands around the capital, Honiara, on Guadalcanal. Seeing their land being taken by others has fueled anger in young Guadalcanal men. In Honiara, hundreds of young unemployed people (we call them lius) roam the streets daily. These are the victims of modernisation and development.’ Sanga criticises the sending of the Australian and New Zealand troops. ‘An armed intervention towards maintaining the situation as it has been is not likely to solve the problem.’

The sending of the soldiers to the Solomons is tied up with the policing of the current neo-liberal world order. As well as fifteen hundred soldiers, Australia is also sending civil servants and Treasury advisers to take over the running of the local economy. Meanwhile, Canberra’s eyes are settling on Papua New Guinea, as a plausible next step in the creation of an Australian pacific protectorate.

On preparing for the Solomons, the Australian and New Zealand states has been able to fall back on the enthusiastic backing of radical voices, Labour in both countries, and the Australian Greens, whose most radical step has been to call for a future programme of ‘bottom-up aid’ to accompany the Australian take-over of the Solomons economy.

The people of Australia and New Zealand are repeatedly told that the troops are only being sent because local forces asked them. The current Prime Minister of the Solomons, Sir Allan Kemakeza, has indeed welcomed the occupation. But his track record hardly inspires confidence. Kemakeza was sacked while he was deputy prime minister after receiving large cash payments from Taiwanese businessmen.

Stuart is a trade unionist active in neighbouring Papua New Guinea. He acknowledges that there has been some local backing in the Solomons for the Anzac troops. ‘Of course we do not agree with the Australian recolonialisation of the country but it has been so mismanaged that most people would like the infrastructure to be rebuilt by the Australians.  The village medical centres have no medicines and the teachers are often paid several months late. When the Australians were in power money did get to the bush now it is only spent in Port Moresby. The violence in Solomon Islands was not that bad, it is actually a lot more dangerous in Papua New Guinea. But the Malaitan Eagle Force were an alternative power and if they got involved in a compensation argument they were heavily armed and so would always have the upper hand.’

Part of the explanation for the welcome given to the Australian troops also relates to the history of the past thirty years. In whole swathes of the global South, these years have seen practically no development. Far from catching up with the West, people are falling further behind.  Millions have become disenchanted with the old nationalist strategies of using the state as the means to secure economic development, but they have not been able to take up alternative tactics and have fallen instead into pessimism.

We seem to be at the mid-point in a familiar cycle. A hundred years ago, Western armies were sent off to occupy the world. When the colonial adventures began, local people often welcomed them. They hoped that their lives would improve as the rich powers spread. The lived experience of colonialism showed that this did not happen. Millions died. Wealth was concentrated in ever fewer hands. Fifty years later, the Western armies began to return home, defeated by the impossibility of governing hostile peoples.

Critics of empire all over the world will surely hope that opposition can begin, before the routine of occupation takes hold. The crisis that America is facing in Iraq suggests that even in the Pacific such a chance remains open.