As dawn broke over the haunting mountains of Guadalcanal an Australian air force Hercules swept into Henderson Field. Nearby Australian land craft slipped up onto Red Beach .
That was July 24, 2003, and days later Australian Prime Minister John Howard made a one day visit to Honiara , the capital of the Solomon Islands . Hundreds of delighted and relieved islanders, cheered, believing he had saved them from ethnic conflict.
Australian Government spin doctors came up with a warm pidgin name, ‘’Helpem Fren’’ and the new Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was painted in Pacific colours, disguising Canberra’s domination.
An Oxfam Australia and New Zealand report out today questions the direction RAMSI is taking.
Pointing to April’s riots and arson, which destroyed Chinatown in Honiara, Oxfam warns that too much money and resources is going to reconstructing Solomon’s government institutions rather than reaching those most in need.
‘’Unless this issue is addressed effectively, there will remain a risk of repeated incidents of violence and dissent,’’ the report says.
The Solomons is an unlikely nation; an archipelago with a total land area of 28,450 square kilometres with just 552,438 people, speaking 120 distinctive languages.
Over 85 percent of them live in rural areas in subsistence lifestyles.
A British colony, it was left undeveloped by London and forced to independence in 1978 with virtually no infrastructure.
Honiara had only come into existence in World War Two when Japan swept down to Guadalcanal and built an airfield. The US Marines had landed on a piece of coastline that became an enormous camp and after the war became the capital. It attracted hundreds of men from Malaita Island across Ironbottom Sound.
The patralineal Malaitan presence slowly festered on Guadalcanal whose indigenous society was largely matrilineal. In the late 1990s exploded into civil war and the Solomons crashed in June 2000 coup. Honiara became a Malaita camp and the plains and Weathercoast of Guadalcanal became battlefields.
RAMSI – lead by mainly Australian and New Zealand soldiers along with Fijians and Tongans – ended the fighting but the politicians who had led the Solomons to disaster remained in power.
Oxfam NZ’s director, Barry Coates, says the report shows RAMSI was trying to create a strong central state in a Melanesian society which did not universally accept such a model.
‘’One of the things that is happening is RAMSI is aligning itself with the central state and is managing to alienate itself from people who do not have central services,’’ he says.
Greater input was needed from Melanesians and without it ‘’there will be continuing dissatisfaction and a potential for conflict.’’
The report noted the way that just outside Honiara people lived in poverty.
Less than half an hour from Honiara ’s centre, people were living without running water, health care and electricity.
‘’These conditions contrast markedly with those in the capital, where the economy is experiencing an unsustainable artificial boom — high market prices, more cars on the road, inflated rental prices for housing and increased power shortages (one Solomon Islander suggested these are due to expatriate dependence on air conditioning, which short-circuits the national electricity grid).’’
Many young people, faced with no opportunities, were restoring to a live of homebrew alcohol, marijuana and prostitution.
‘’The increase in prostitution, including that of children, appears to be in reaction to the deepening economic divide rather than purely a reaction to the influx of potential customers to the Solomon Islands.
Islanders welcomed the rapid improvement in law and order, but had little understanding of RAMSI’s role. There was a widespread lack of confidence that the economic development would benefit all.
‘’The simmering dissatisfaction evident among both rural and urban communities in Solomon Islands … indicates that there is a pressing need to develop alternatives to current economic reform policies and to create initiatives that are more targeted towards reducing poverty, inequality and potential conflict and improving the quality of life for all citizens of Solomon Islands.’’
Oxfam says in the Solomons there was uncertainty about RAMSI’s tenure and the motives behind those supporting regional intervention. And while RAMSI kept calling for accountability from the Solomon Islands Government, it lacked openness itself.
‘’There is a clear need for RAMSI to provide greater clarity about its objectives, to provide a public timeframe for activities, and to acknowledge the limits to its capacity.’’
While the intervention had been dressed up as a Pacific effort, Oxfam says 94 percent of the civilian advisors came from Australia and New Zealand .
Oxfam interviewed islanders for their views on RAMSI.
‘’Peace is more than just returning of arms; we need peace in the home, peace in the heart, peace in the community — you need to be able to settle into your own life — need a secure livelihood,’’ Margaret Maelaua of the Malaita Council of Women told Oxfam. This was not happening now and things were ‘’broken down’’, she said.
Peace campaigner Betty Luvusia of Guadalcanal says grievances still remain.
‘’It is not really peace. Fights still take place — people see someone they had a problem with, someone from the other side and they beat them up. The police and RAMSI have not addressed this.’’
An unnamed Malaitan told Oxfam: “The respect for and integrity of RAMSI has gone down by the day. Until the last four months, people were happy to wave to RAMSI when they drove past. Today, people are not interested. When RAMSI officers wave to people from their vehicles, people don’t wave back. Why? We have stopped trusting RAMSI. It’s not doing any good to our nation.”