BY DOUG LORIMER
On July 8, the parliament of the Solomon Islands is expected to approve an Australian-led military and police intervention into its country. The proposal was endorsed by the foreign ministers and government leaders of all 16 Pacific Island Forum member states at their June 30 meeting in Sydney.
Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told reporters after the PIF meeting that, once the Solomons' parliament approves the intervention, 1500 Australian troops 200 of them combat soldiers and 150 armed Australian Federal Police would be sent to the Solomons by the end of July. New Zealand will send up to 200 troops and 40 police.
The Solomons intervention involving the largest deployment of Australian troops to the South Pacific since the second world war was first announced on June 25 by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, three weeks after he "invited" Solomon Islands Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza to fly to Canberra to "ask" the Australian government to restore "law and order" in his country.
Located 1760 kilometres north-east of Australia, the Solomons consists of several hundred islands inhabited by 465,000 people, who are divided into more than 120 tribal groups, each with a distinctive language. More than 80% of the population is dependent upon subsistence farming and fishing.
The only major urban centre the capital of Honaira, with a population of around 40,000 is on the main island of Guadalcanal around the country's international airport, which used to be a US air force base in World War II.
The islands were annexed by Britain in 1893. Despite the islands containing considerable timber and mineral resources gold, bauxite, phosphates, lead, zinc, nickel the British developed little other than copra and palm oil plantations before granting the Solomons independence in 1978.
Around a third of Guadalcanal's 180,000 inhabitants are descendants of immigrants from the neighbouring island of Malaita, brought by the British in the early years of the 20th century to work as labourers on the copra plantations.
The descendants of the Malaitans on Guadalcanal made up the bulk of the political elite that the British groomed to run the country after they granted it independence. Malaitans in Honiara also made up most of the country's local business owners, police and public-sector workers.
During 1997, the Asian "financial crisis" brought the export of hardwood logs from the Solomons which provided 60% of government revenue to a standstill.
With the encouragement of the International Monetary Fund and Canberra, the government of PM Bartholomew Ulufu'alu elected in September 1997 began to implement a "structural reform program" that reduced the budget deficit and met foreign debt service payments by reducing public sector jobs and privatising public services.
Rising unemployment resulting from the collapse of logging activities and the government's austerity measures generated tensions over access to land between the indigenous Guadacanalans and Malaitans.
In October 1998, these exploded into a violent conflict when the Isatabu Freedom Movement (IFM) an indigenous Guadalcanalan armed group led by Harold Keke, a former police officer, started injuring and killing civilians in a campaign to drive people of Malaitan descent out of rural areas of the island.
An estimated 20,000 people were forced to abandon their homes and seek protection in Honiara or on other islands. As a result, Honiara has become a virtual ethnic Malaitan enclave surrounded by roadblocks cutting off rural areas under the control of the IFM.
In response to the IFM attacks, a rival armed group soon emerged on the outskirts of Honiara the Malaitan Eagle Force recruited mainly from Malaitan settler families on Guadalcanal displaced by the IFM and from disgruntled former and serving police officers.
In June 2000, the MEF supported by paramilitary police officers took control of Honiara and forced the resignation of the Ulufa'alu government.
An armistice was signed by representatives of the IFM and MEF in October 2000, under which both groups agreed to hand in their weapons within 30 days. By December 2000, it was estimated that only half the weapons held by the groups had been handed in.
Since then, the economy has continued to contract and the government under pressure from Canberra has continued to reduce public sector employment (other than police), but at the cost of a growing redundancy bill.
Hospitals and rural clinics have either been closed or are inaccessible to most people because of the excessive fees they now charge. Schools function intermittently because teachers are frequently not paid for weeks at a time. There are frequent power blackouts in Honiara because the government cannot afford to pay the fuel bill to run the electricity generators.
On the other hand, fighting between rival, ethnically based, political groups has ceased. The MEF has disbanded. However, many former MEF commanders now lead small armed gangs made up of unemployed Honiara youth engaged in protection rackets in collaboration with police officers.
Keke's IFM, now calling itself the Guadalcanal Liberation Front and believed to number a few hundred armed men at most, has retreated to the mountainous jungle areas along the rugged south coast of Guadalcanal, known as the "weather coast", from where it terrorises local villagers.
While the Australian-led military-police intervention has been publicly presented as an operation to suppress "criminal gangs" and restore "law and order", this is the first step of a broader plan to "rehabilitate" the Solomons.
On June 10, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (APSI) issued a report Our Failing Neighbour: Australia and the Future of the Solomon Islands which has provided the blueprint for Canberra's plans for the Solomons. The ASPI report proposes the formation of a colonial-style Solomon Islands Rehabilitation Authority (SIRA), staffed predominantly by Australian officials, which would take over the Solomons police force and treasury department. The report states that the SIRA will need to have "a strong focus on stimulating private enterprise".
Canberra has pressed Honiara over the last five years to implement a "structural reform program" aimed at privatising government services and businesses, and making those services which remain in government hands like hospitals and rural clinics fee-charging. This "reform" program has simply deepened the desperate situation facing the islands' inhabitants in the wake of the 1997 economic collapse and provided fertile ground for the growth of corruption and petty gangsterism.
The ASPI report notes that the breakdown of civil order in the Solomons is "depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities that, though not huge, are potentially valuable".
Exasperated at the failure of the Solomons government to open up those opportunities while simultaneously maintaining "law and order", Canberra has now decided to send in its own troops, police and civil service bureaucrats to "rehabiliate" the country.
As the APSI report indicates, the real objective of this "police operation" is not to bring security to the lives of ordinary Solomon Islanders, but to make the Solomons safe for Australian investors to exploit the islanders' labour and their natural resources.