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Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Australia's policy shift
Dr Elsina Wainwright, Program Director - Strategy and International, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Speech to the Sydney Institute, 27 April 2004
Australia's policy towards the South Pacific has changed profoundly in the past year, to one of increased engagement with the region. The first step in this policy shift was the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). And towards the end of last year, the Australian Government announced an Enhanced Cooperation Package of around 300 police and public servants to help Papua New Guinea address its governance and law and order challenges.
How did this policy shift come to pass? This paper examines the situation in Solomon Islands prior to the assistance mission, and some of the factors behind the change in policy. It then looks at the progress of the mission, the challenges ahead, and the implications for the broader region. It also analyses some of the issues facing Papua New Guinea, and Australia's assistance to PNG.
Solomon Islands prior to the assistance mission
In the years leading up to last year's intervention, Solomon Islands acquired many of the characteristics of a failing state. It was virtually paralysed by a political and security crisis.
Solomon Islands consists of over 1,000 islands in an arc to Australia's northeast - in between PNG and Vanuatu. It was a British Protectorate that became independent in 1978, and now has a population of around 450,000 people. Its state institutions did not achieve great traction, either during the colonial period or after independence. Traditional social and political structures proved to be very resilient, and there was little sense of nationhood among Solomon Islanders. By the end of the 1980s economic development had slowed, while land and population pressures continued to increase.
From 1998-2000, Solomon Islanders endured an ethnic conflict between the ethnic groups the Guadalcanalese and Malaitans. The conflict stemmed from the settlement over a couple of generations and economic success of Malaitans on the island of Guadalcanal. Resentment on the part of the Guadalcanal men soon led to the formation of militias on both sides. Clashes ensued, and the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF), with its close links to the Royal Solomon Islands Police, came to dominate Honiara. In June 2000 Solomon Islands police officers aligned with the MEF gained control of a national armoury, and Prime Minister Bart Ulufa'alu was deposed in a de facto coup.
The ethnic conflict was to a large extent brought to a halt by the Townsville Peace Agreement (TPA) of 15 October 2000. However, core parts of the TPA - such as the weapons surrender - were not implemented effectively, and the TPA expired in October 2002 leaving a society still in considerable disarray.
By 2003 Solomon Islands had become a state that had in many respects ceased to function. The ethnic conflict had morphed into a law and order crisis, in which ex-militias and armed criminal gangs held the rest of the society to ransom. Ex-militias and gangs had links with some politicians and members of the police force, and there was a broad climate of criminality and impunity. The police were either involved in criminal activity or powerless to do anything about it.
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