Global Policy Forum

By Nick Squires

The preventive war rationale: 'Weak and failing states can become Petri dishes for trans-national crime, including money laundering, gun running, drug trafficking and perhaps even terrorism,' said Elsina Wainwright, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a semi-independent think tank.

Where the writ of the white man's burden runs this time: The Solomons is part of an 'arc of instability' to Australia's north, stretching from the secessionist Indonesian provinces of Aceh and Papua to Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, Vanuatu and Fiji.

Canberra is making its biggest military intervention since 1945 to restore order to the Solomon Islands, a tropical paradise wracked by civil war. In a dramatic shift from its traditional hands-off approach, Australia is to send hundreds of police and troops to restore order in the Solomon Islands, a little-known corner of the south Pacific plagued by civil war, gang violence and corruption.

The Australian government agreed last week to spearhead a regional force, which could include contingents from New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The intervention follows pleas for help from the Solomon Islands' Prime Minister, Sir Alan Kemakeza. In what will be Australia's biggest military intervention in the Pacific since the Second World War, the force will include a warship and up to 1500 police and troops.

'The assistance that is being contemplated includes substantial policing, law and justice and economic assistance, backed up by significant operational support from the Australian Defence Force,' Prime Minister John Howard told parliament on Wednesday. 'It would be dangerous for the police to go in without adequate military back-up.'

Canberra fears that without armed intervention the Solomons, an archipelago of nearly 1000 palm-fringed islands once known as the 'Happy Isles', could degenerate into ever greater lawlessness and provide a haven for drug smugglers and terrorists.'Weak and failing states can become Petri dishes for trans-national crime, including money laundering, gun running, drug trafficking and perhaps even terrorism,' said Elsina Wainwright, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a semi-independent think tank.

The proposed intervention will be debated by a special meeting of south Pacific foreign ministers in Sydney tomorrow. It will then go before the Solomon Islands parliament early next month, where it is expected to get strong backing.

The Solomons is part of an 'arc of instability' to Australia's north, stretching from the secessionist Indonesian provinces of Aceh and Papua to Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, Vanuatu and Fiji. For years Australia has been reluctant to intervene in such troubled countries, fearful that it would be labelled a neo-colonialist bully. Howard specifically ruled out sending police or soldiers to the Solomons as far back as June 2000, 'particularly without any defined exit strategy'. His new willingness to become involved in the Solomons, a former British colony, reflects heightened security concerns in the wake of the New York and Bali terrorist attacks.

'If we don't fix up Solomon Islands, nobody will be able to,' Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer said. 'We're the only country with the capability to do this.'

Australia is anxious to restore order to the country's judiciary, national finances, police force and prisons as part of a 10-year, £340 million rescue package. The initiative, which Downer has dubbed 'co-operative intervention', is underscored by fears that without serious help the Islands will become an economic and political basket case.

The Solomons epitomise the ideal of a South Seas tropical paradise, but that image masks a history of slavery, poverty and ethnic conflict. Lying 1000 miles north-east of Australia, the Solomons were declared a British protectorate in 1893. A patchwork of tribes speaking more than 80 languages, the islands had no tradition of nationhood.

In the Second World War the Solomons were the scene of bloody fighting between US Marines and the occupying Japanese. After the war the islands returned to Britain, before being granted independence in 1978. But the country struggled to engage with Western-style democracy and suppressed tribal animosities re-emerged.

Tension grew over land and jobs between the inhabitants of the main island, Guadalcanal, and settlers from neighbouring Malaita island. Both sides formed militias and when fighting erupted five years ago, an estimated 20,000 Malaitans were driven off Guadalcanal.

In June 2000 the then prime minister, Bartholomew Ulufa'alu, was ousted in a coup. A peace agreement signed in October 2000 failed to end the violence. Two months ago an Australian missionary, Lance Gersbach, was beheaded while working at a Seventh Day Adventist hospital on Malaita. Gersbach was killed over what appears to be a long-festering land dispute among local tribesmen.

Hugh Laracy, an expert on the Solomons at the University of Auckland, said the death seems to have been connected with traditional pagan beliefs which are still entrenched in parts of the archipelago.

'There's a long tradition of resentment of outside authority. Land is an extraordinarily sensitive issue. It might be that some lunatic young man took it upon himself to redress a grievance,' Laracy said. Earlier this month 10 villagers were reported to have been killed and more than 350 forced to flee their homes after violence broke out along the rugged and remote Weathercoast on Guadalcanal.

The area is under the brutal rule of a warlord, Harold Keke, whose ragtag militia has attacked villages, terrorised locals and last year killed the local MP, the minister for women, youth and sport. This week William Morrell, a former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester police, called for Australian and New Zealand special forces to be sent to the region to restore order.

Morrell, 47, who was recruited from Britain in January and has previously served with the United Nations in Kosovo, said: 'The situation on the Weathercoast requires a military intervention because police are not trained to deal with such situations.' Australia's planned deployment represents 'a paradigm shift' in its foreign policy, according to Paul Kelly, a political analyst at The Australian newspaper. 'It is driven by the recognition that the prime source of instability today is the failed state and that only Australia can exercise the leadership role in the Pacific,' Kelly said.

But the Australians will have their work cut out. Aside from ethnic tensions and violence, renegade members of the police force are in possession of weapons looted from police armouries, and the economy is close to bankrupt. Primary schools are frequently closed and many public servants have not been paid for months.

The breakdown of order has also forced the closure of the country's main export businesses: a gold mine, a palm oil plantation and a tuna cannery. All that is left now is the sale of fishing licenses to countries like Taiwan and Japan, and the exploitation of the islands' fast- dwindling tropical forests for timber.

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