Dark Side of Paradise: Conflict in Melanesia

[Today is Oceania Day! The following is the first post in the series by special guest blogger the strategist. ”“ Younghusband]

Ask New Zealanders what springs to mind about Oceania, and the answer will involve palm-fringed islands and blue lagoons – paradise. Pacific islands are holiday destinations, places to escape winter. It’s easy to forget that there’s a dark side to Pacific life; people are surprised when an insurrection or coup occurs.

This is odd, as anyone who lived through World War Two, or was born in its shadow, will know. Names of Pacific battles – Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, Kokoda Trail, Tarawa – signified great violence. And since the 1960s Oceania has been plagued by political conflict, particularly in Melanesia – the chain of islands stretching from New Guinea to New Caledonia:

• wars of independence in West Papua (1963 onwards), East Timor (1975-99), Vanuatu (1980), New Caledonia (1980s), Bougainville (1988-1997);
• ethnic warfare in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) and Papua New Guinea’s highlands (ongoing);
• military coups in Fiji (four since 1987) and Solomon Islands (2000), and mutinies in PNG, Fiji and Vanuatu.

So, why the ‘trouble in paradise’? The causes of instability are complex. They include ill-disciplined armies and paramilitary police, volatile ethnic politics, and attempts by states, often weak post-colonial constructs, to impose authority over clans.

The rugged Melanesian terrain has influenced the development of many clan-based ethnic groups, confined to small territories, each with distinct languages. Fiercely independent, these groups resist state control. Large mines are a particular source of trouble. The state appropriates land, resources and mining income, and mining destroy forests, rivers and gardens. Local people protest, and sometimes protest turns violent.

A good example of this is Bougainville’s Panguna mine. From 1972-1989 CRA mined copper and gold on the island of Bougainville, which is notionally part of PNG. Expats who worked at Panguna talk about how the coastal town of Arawa resembled a resort, of scuba diving in crystal water, of playing on the golf course.

Paradise lost. In 1989 Bougainville rebels – angered by land loss and environmental destruction – attacked the mine. Fighting between the rebels and army forced the mine to close and expats to flee. A brutish state of anarchy and civil war ensued in which 10,000 Bougainvilleans died. The conflict also destabilized PNG’s economy and government – the army mutinied in 1997 after the government hired foreign mercenaries to take down the rebels.

In 1987/88 New Zealand brokered a peace deal. By then Arawa was a ruin. The port was smashed. Roads were trails in the undergrowth. The golf links were smothered in tall grass. Mine plant machinery lay rusting. The peace has held, but Bougainvilleans are determined that Panguna, a symbol of violence, must not re-open.

Bougainville is a salutary lesson of how order can quickly turn to chaos. It also suggests that a stable Melanesian government is one that leaves communities alone without trying to ‘develop’ or control them. Such governments, with help from New Zealand and Australia, could be guardians, protecting local communities against rapacious outsiders, such as Asian timber loggers who plunder Melanesia’s rainforests, and guarding maritime frontiers against dangerous intruders – terrorists, drug smugglers and gun runners.