Upfront
Lead Us Not Into Baghdad
Australia Won't Leave Solomons Soon
To succeed at the kind of nation rebuilding that the U.S. is attempting in Iraq or that Australian and other Forum countries will face in the Solomon Islands requires a unique kind of intelligence that the U.S. has proved it does not have in Iraq nor, I suspect, does Australia-though Prime Minister Howard promises the mistakes of the colonial era will not be repeated.
I notice that whenever I talk about the Australian-led intervention I keep using the word "historic." And it is. We are witnessing a sea change in Pacific history, a movement of the tide away from the era of independence that began shortly after World War II. But from another point of view, this is an anti-historic action in the sense that it runs counter to the usual direction we think history goes-toward the ever-perfectible future, as Americans habitually believe. But Australia's intervention seems on the surface to be a reversion to the era of colonialism.
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While Australia was smart enough to leave Iraq, without casualties, as soon as President Bush declared an end to active hostilities, it is entering a situation in our own Oceanic neighborhood that has the potential to be just as boggy and complex as what is happening to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The U.S., and to a lesser extent Australia, are enamored of their high-tech weapons and sensing devices. Americans especially think every problem has a technical solution.
But to do well in these kind of missions, there is a non-technical kind of intelligence needed. You don't just need good maps and a functioning GPS system, you need people on the ground who speak the local languages and understand what's happening behind the thin veneer of public interactions with the occupying power.
Several times a week National Public Radio in the U.S. broadcasts a news story in which they interview U.S. soldiers in Iraq who routinely express their fear and frustration-and their astonishment that Iraqis are shooting at them.
These young men are lost in a world they don't understand and for which their superiors never prepared them. I hope we won't be hearing similar stories coming out of Radio Australia over the next few years. And it is going to be years.
The Solomons intervention is the Next Big Thing in Pacific history, and that can be seen in this issue with Solomons coverage both in our Notes section, and in Robert Keith-Reid's column on the following page where he discusses the precipitous British pull-out of the Solomons in the 1970s and the legacy of that hasty departure. On page 14, in our interview with Solomon Islands academic Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, we get a much-needed insider's perspective on what Australians and Islanders will be facing together there.
And, just so all hope is not lost for the Solomons, there's an environmental story on page 32 about an ambitious eco-forestry project in the Solomons that has the potential to prevent the trashing of island environments by large-scale logging-and keep local communities in control of their own lands.
Control and sovereignty are going to be issues at the heart of the Solomons makeover. The veneer of a western, democratic government in the Solomons has always been just that-a very thin veneer. It is a country that will have to re-grow a culture of public service and of justice, a point that Kabutaulaka makes quite plainly. Strong men have long been able to position themselves so that they can drain the public resources without consequence. And until criminals are brought to public justice, the anarchy will continue. The complication will be that some of those criminals are in the current government.
But according to Kabutaulaka, the difference between Iraq and the Solomons is that the Solomons people support the intervention. "The people are fed up," he says. But what may not be different is that the troops and police going into the Solomons may not understand their surroundings or the dynamics of the society they will enter. This operation will need real intelligence, real wisdom and real human skills. All the technology in the world will not deliver a successful operation in these kinds of circumstances.
