Australia Leads Charge in Operation Helpum Fren

A lone dog ran across Henderson Field's runway. A pick-up truck raced off after it but the dog turned back and won its right to roam free. At nearby Red Beach, a man mowed the lawn, two women dug a fence post and young children enjoyed the puzzling sight of what seemed to be the whole world arriving on their front doorstep.

This was dawn, Thursday July 24, and the start of Operation Helpum Fren, the Australian led Pacific Islands Forum intervention into the Solomon Islands. At 7am, an RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) Hercules touched down, scaring the daylights out of the dog. A little later in the fierce tropical heat of Guadalcanal, the assault ship HMAS Manoora sent her landing craft into Red Beach and the waiting media, coordinated by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs' spin-doctors.

An Australian photographer handed a couple of his country's flags to one of the local women and she duly waved it at Manoora. Photo taken and the photographer takes back his flags.

Fiji soldiers...in Honiara as part of the Regional Assistance Mission. .

By day's end, the Henderson Field-Red Beach area was looking like the military camp it was back in 1942; although this time there was no shooting. Mini-vans bought locals out from Honiara who watched curiously the Australians who seemed tense and unsure. The Fijians though evoked a much different reaction with "bula" called out frequently.

"The reception was really good, something we did not anticipate," Major Inia Seruiratu of the Fiji Military Forces said.

"It could be the history, not only the war connection, but I know a lot of missionaries came here from Fiji, so the reception has been very good." Within a week, there were over 2200 mainly soldiers in the Solomons. Australia's naval fleet expanded, helicopters from New Zealand and even unmanned aircraft from Australia were in place. But the biggest problem for the military quickly emerged: boredom.

While the Australians talked about rules of engagement and lethal force, the Fijians with Sinai, Lebanon and East Timor under their belts, were a good deal more relaxed.

"The smile is a very effective weapon because when you smile it shows what's inside you," Captain Albert Vosaicake said, while out on patrol protecting the country's international airport. Smiling in the whole Pacific is very natural. In Fiji, you don't learn to smile, it comes naturally."

Between July 24 and August 15 (when the Pacific Islands Forum summit opened in Auckland), the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) managed to gather in around a thousand weapons, arrest errant rebel leader Harold Keke and mute the power of Malaita Eagle Force leaders including Jimmy Rasta.

Law and order had been restored and the "failed state" saved. But was this massive overkill the way to go? And what will happen after RAMSI pick up what's left of their specially flown in bottled water and go home? Various Solomon Islands governments have sought full-scale intervention since 1999. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark last month expressed angst over the way she rejected these calls.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer early this year flatly dismissed calls for intervention. Behind them perhaps was the knowledge that the situation in the Solomons was a good deal more complex than the headlines suggested and that the real problem was not the rebels on the Weathercoast but corrupt politicians in Honiara.

A series of dramas including the sudden closing of Honiara's banks sounded alarm bells in Canberra and Australian Prime Minister John Howard responded with a full-scale intervention. It was dressed up as a Pacific Islands Forum project, at the invitation of the Solomons Government. But the reality was that the landing date was set and forces put into motion three weeks before the paperwork was done.

Former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare‹one of those deeply implicated in the mess the country was in‹guessed the invitation was a charade when debating the issue in the rarely convened Parliament.

"It'll be nothing short of re-colonising this country," he said. Conspiracy theories hold that Howard was doing United States President George W Bush's work. But in the post-Bali bombing era it's plain now that Australia has its own self-interests at stake. The fate of Solomon Islanders was of less importance in Wellington and Canberra than the growing panic that the neighbourhood was going bad. At any minute, it seemed, this failing nation was going to open its doors to Middle Eastern terrorists, money launderers and drug runners threatening the good folks of Auckland and Sydney.

The viceroy in the operation was Australian diplomat Nick Warner who quickly made it clear in his behaviour that power had transferred, willing or not, from the Solomons Government to the RAMSI headquarters at the newly opened Iron Bottom Sound Hotel. Indicative was the way in which the arrest of Keke was announced by Downer in the Australian parliament rather than in the Solomons.

As if to set the scene for later trouble, Keke then faced an Australian magistrate and was held in Australian custody. Keke's arrest was less dramatic than it appeared: he effectively made himself available and while waiting held a succession of media interviews, each of them labelled "exclusive" and "for the first time".

"The government blames me for everything. But I am only defending my people's land," he said.

"We are not rascals, we are fighting for independence. I am not the main problem for the Solomon Islands, it is corrupt politicians and a police force that is beyond the law."

Kemakeza looks like a man in deep shock. Just before the landings, he told the nation there was nothing to fear. "We will be welcoming hundreds of our regional neighbours who are coming to help us, not harm us," he said. "The policemen and women, army men and women, as well as financial experts who are coming to help us, are professional people, highly trained and tightly disciplined. They are not coming to take over the country. It will be strange at first to see so many foreigners wearing uniforms, driving army or police vehicles around town or flying overhead in their helicopters. "But the majority of Solomon Islanders, who live peaceful and law-abiding lives have no need to be afraid."

Sir Allan Kemakeza...faces allegations of corruption.

The problem for Kemakeza, one he freely acknowledges, is that he faces allegations of corruption himself and he is now obliged to live under the armed protection of Australian Federal Police. The day before the intervention, he was spirited out of Honiara for what the Australian spin-doctors said was a rest.

Later, he admitted that he had instructed Malaita militants to hold onto their weapons. Kemakeza said investigations into corruption will follow, but RAMSI's main priority was the surrender of guns.

"The time for thorough investigations of criminal activities will come," Kemakeza said. He is prepared to face any accusations brought against him. "If investigations find me guilty of crimes, then I will face the law the same as any other man or woman in the Solomon Islands," he said.

"If any of my Cabinet, or any Member of Parliament or any civil servant or any member of society no matter how rich or poor, is investigated and charged with a crime, they will face the full force of the law."

The real stars of the operation were Police Commissioner William Morrell, originally of Manchester, England, and his deputy, Ben McDevitt. Morrell's days, however, look numbered in the face of the growing Australian domination at senior levels.

The last paperwork stage of the forum intervention was concluded in Auckland on August 15 with the last of the Pacific nations who had not signed up for the intervention force doing so.

They also issued a declaration on the force and "warmly commended" each other for the "swift and cooperative response" to the crisis. But they conveniently overlooked the fact that the civil war was four years old. Perhaps the most important item on the declaration was the eighth paragraph which said: "Leaders acknowledged that recovery in Solomon Islands (sic) would be a long-term task, extending beyond the restoration of law and order to economic and governance rehabilitation and reform. In so doing, they recorded their view that the 2000 Biketawa Declaration had proved its value by enabling the rapid mobilisation of support to address the serious situation."

Forgotten in all this is the nation responsible for much of the mess in the Solomon Islands; Great Britain. When it ran the place it did nothing for the people, other than to support a small band of white traders and plantation owners, and when it ditched the country it was with a grossly inadequate civil service and infrastructure, and a woefully wrong political structure. The Solomons is not a "failed state" some media like to portray‹85 percent of the population live outside Honiara and have lived pretty much the same kind of lives they always have. But its people have never really had a functioning central government.

As it was, Helpum Fren is like an elephant sitting on top of an anthill. Of course, there is peace in the anthill‹but nothing can move because of the sheer weight. The real trick will be when the elephant decides to move on.