New Thin Red Line

Guadalcanal's Red Beach on a steamy hot morning in July.

A warship moves in toward the beach and landing craft fan out from her side. On shore a man mows the lawn that will be shortly trampled across by hundreds of soldiers and at his ramshackle house nearby, children laugh, play and quickly learn to pose for photos.

Watched by a solitary Solomon Islands policeman, Australian soldiers and engineers make a first landing at Red Beach on Guadalcanal from their assault ship HMAS Manoora moored in Iron Bottom Sound.

This was not the 1942 landings commemorated on war memorials across America; this was 2003 but in the echoes of the earlier war one can readily find reasons for the civil war that has made a tragedy of the modern Solomon Islands.

An ancient land of Melanesians, deeply divided tribally and linguistically, the Solomons was a British colony with its headquarters on small Tulagi Island, largely left alone with most people making a subsistence living. The Happy Isles came to an end in 1942 when Japan invaded, reaching Guadalcanal where it immediately started building an airstrip. Its strategic implications were immense, threatening Australia, so the U.S. Marines were sent in, storming across the beaches facing Iron Bottom Sound. One of the bloodiest battles of World War II and 50 vessels lie on the bottom.

Honiara had not existed prior to the war but with the American occupation it became the key base camp, inevitably growing into a town.

After the war the British did not return to Tulagi and instead set up in the new Honiara, attracting people from Malaita Island, across the sound. For the indigenous Guadalcanal people, Guele, with a different matrilineal based culture and language, it was another invasion, silently resented for years.

Academic Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka has written that his Guele people grew up "detesting the fact others who have settled on our island are often disrespectful of our customs and of us . . . Such disrespect manifests itself in actions such as murder, the settlement of our land and the plunder of our resources."

The first Australian soldiers flown into the Solomons march toward Red Beach in combat formation.

Oddly enough the tension burst to the surface coincidentally with the filming in Guadalcanal of the movie The Thin Red Line, which was about the war on the island.

Although the Solomons is often labeled a "failed state," the reality is that for 85 percent of its 495,000 people, the state never existed anyway; and spread across 100 islands they have lived a successful if plain subsistence lifestyle.

The civil war saw initial success to the variously named Guadalcanal militant groups, then a counter-attack and coup in 2000 by the Malaita Eagle Force complete with a significant part of the police armory, as well as restored World War II armaments.

Numerous deaths, economic destruction, corrupt and inept politicians and the manic behavior of a Guadalcanal warlord, Harold Keke, began to draw increasing regional concern, some of it self-interested particularly on the part of Australia and New Zealand who saw the situation as a threat to their own security.

This climaxed in June with Australian Prime Minister John Howard suddenly announcing combined military and police intervention. Although Pacific Islands countries were not consulted initially, Canberra quickly drew in the rest of the Pacific, notably Fiji, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

The results were the scenes on July 24, 2003: at 7 a.m. an Australian C-130 Hercules swept into the wartime-named Henderson Field and off-loaded the first squad of soldiers. Another came in shortly after with Fijian soldiers aboard, designated to secure the airfield. At nearby Red Beach the Australian amphibious assault ship HMAS Manoora (originally the USS Fairfax County) off-loaded 400 soldiers who quickly built themselves a base camp around a now-closed resort. With an air-bridge operating from Townsville, Australia, and charter flights coming in, the force quickly built to over 2,200 soldiers, police and support personnel. There were even unmanned drone aircraft while the Australian navy expanded to run patrols throughout the country, including the New Georgia Strait-the celebrated "Slot" which the "Tokyo Express" used to run down in wartime.

Operation Helpum Fren, pidgin for "help a friend," quickly and peacefully overwhelmed any militants who might have thought of making trouble.

A returning Fiji patrol gathers around the Tagimoucia Gate at Solomon's Henderson Field. The new gate, to the growing military camp, is named after a flower unique to Fiji's Tavenui Island.

Just before the landings, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza, his own role under much closer scrutiny now, told the nation there was nothing to fear.

"We will be welcoming hundreds of our regional neighbors 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."

Australian Nick Warner, the intervention coordinator, who warned the militants they have no choice but to surrender their guns, now holds the real power in the Solomons.

"This open letter that we send out will be addressed to all former militants and will be to say this is serious, you're running out of time, we're willing to talk, we're willing to explain, don't make a mistake on this issue," Warner told reporters.

Early in August Warner went to meet Keke on Guadalcanal's Weathercoast and won a promise that the warlord would surrender his weapons. Indicative though of the cruelty present and problems to come, Keke revealed that six members of the Anglican religious order called the Melanesian Brotherhood, taken hostage in April, were dead.

It seemed like a casual detail to Keke.