My Say
‘Real’ Security Issues
Are The Major Security Issues In The Pacific Islands A Result Of Outside Forces, Or The Result Of Naïve Or Greedy Local Bureaucr
Security is a now a global obsession, never more so than since the events in America on September 11th. International, national and personal, is has also become a massive industry, even in the Pacific Islands, where in Papua New Guinea and Fiji commercial security business have hundreds of employees.
Security procedure is an irritating, sometimes unpleasant and even insulting intrusion into daily life and personal privacy. In many situation it is unfortunately perfectly justifiable, but always so?
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Since the mid 1990s security has been on the agenda of the Pacific Forum of 16 independent countries.
There are now annual meetings of a Forum security committee. This is somewhat removed from the status of an undemocratic creature called the United Nations Security Council, but the Forum Secretary-General is now able to contact and even convene special meetings of foreign ministers and, ultimately, heads of government, if a dangerous security issue is perceived to be looming on the Forum’s horizon.
Since the Pacific Islands are hardly of any, let alone of the first military magnitude, the advent of the Forum’s security committee aroused some curiosity.
The committee’s quick defensive response was that its primary concern lay not with such hot military issues as the deployment of missile networks or staving of threats of invasion, but with the economic security of its small members. The spectrum of economic security can be as broad as anyone cares to make it.
Water supplies, trade barriers, the impact of oil prices on micro-economies, cyclone disaster management; you name it and the committee probably has a file for it.
Of late, however, the Forum and the annual Pacific Island police chiefs’ conference have been issuing gloomy warnings that suggest the islands are on the verge of being swamped by international crime syndicates, financial conmen, drug and arms smugglers, and perhaps already have been, and that they should now prepare to repel fleets of illegal would-be settlers from Asia.
A question: How dark and large on Pacific horizons are these threats? Or is it that the security committee and police chiefs need meats for justifying their pleasant and leisurely gatherings?
There are a few dark spots in the region, there’s no denying that, but they tend to be home-grown and domestically confinable ones like coups in Fiji and the Solomon Islands and a couple of brief army mutinies in Papua New Guinea, where there is also a fairly massive domestic law and order situation.
It’s also true that PNG, and Australia, are scared by their neighbor, Indonesia, whether it splinters into several independent states or not.
Illegal workers smuggled from China bother Guam and the United States wants to preserve the security of firing test missiles at the Marshall Islands.
There is evidence that Tonga, Vanuatu and Fiji are part of a network of transit points for smuggling hard drugs to Australia and America.
At least one Japanese crime gang is known to have invested benignly in Fiji and rather more are thought to be established in Hawaii and Guam.
But let not students of Pacific Islands affairs be carried away by visions of great criminally managed money laundries thundering away in Nauru, Niue, or the Cook Islands. It’s all done by a few clicks with someone’s computer mouse.
Running back 10 to 15 years, it is true that carpetbaggers have suckered some gullible Pacific Island governments.
The Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji have all swallowed offers of either easy billion-dollar loans or fast, easy profit from the issue of government paper. Fortunately these were regurgitated, with some friendly if blunt external advice and help, and at not a moment too soon.
Tonga has just suffered a bad embarrassment. In Vila, capital of Vanuatu, the new government holds as a souvenir what is allegedly the world’s largest ruby, passed off on the previous administration as a US$175 million loan security.
Security-minded regional committees and police chiefs are right to be wary in their thinking, but the form of mire in which some islands drop themselves tend to have a locally generated odor.
Contact Robert Keith-Reid rkeith-reid@ibi.com.fj.
