Peace Operation Brings Hope and Optimism

For the first time in recent years, Honiara residents are moving and speaking freely and openly about crimes‹crimes they had personally witnessed but were too frightened to talk about, let alone report them to the police for fear of retribution and compensation.

It is a glasnost (openness) of sorts. This openness was demonstrated in a report by Australia's Special Broadcasting Services television network in August.

In it, a woman refugee who fled the Weathercoast of Guadalcanal and is living in Honiara, talked openly and freely about police burning down 20 villages in a police operation. Last year's operation to capture Harold Keke was sent to the Weathercoast by the Office of the Prime Minister despite protest by then police commissioner, the late Morton Sireheti.

In many cases, it was the rogue members of the police, often armed and in a drunken stupor, who committed such crimes as extortion, intimidation, destruction and defacing of properties, stealing and so on. In the capital, Honiara, the civilians who could not stand up to these men often resorted to the Rasta-for-hire service run by bandits who extorted "compensation" from them.

These criminal activities have significantly abated with the arrival of the first contingent of the 2200-strong Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in Honiara on July 24. Suddenly, the once gun-totting gangsters have melted into the general population and from a distance and for the first time they began talking about surrendering their weapons. Accusations and counter-accusations began to fly. For example, the so-called ex-militants argued that they kept their arms after last year's amnesty expired only because Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza told them to. Kemakeza in turn claimed he told ex-militants from Malaita to keep their guns because Keke was still armed.

As sincere as these claims may seem, there was nothing in the Australian-brokered Townsville Peace Agreement which allowed ex-combatants to keep their weapons if Keke, who didn't sign the pact, did not hand in his weapons by the due date. Now it appears the truth about the cosy relationship between Kemakeza and ex-militants is beginning to unwrap. It was a relationship which allegedly contributed to the draining of the Government Treasury, resulting in non-payments of salaries for teachers’ and nurses‹salaries for extended periods at times.

The mere presence of RAMSI troops exudes an air of optimism and renewed hope for the nation. People from all walks of life have begun passionate discussion about the future for them and their children.

In Honiara, it is rather significant that RAMSI has chosen Red Beach, near Henderson Airport, for its headquarters since it was where the Allies first landed in the Solomon Islands to capture what is now Henderson Airfield from the Japanese some sixty years ago.

Six decades on, Red Beach is the nerve centre for what the Australian Prime Minister John Howard described as a "campaign to weed out corruption in government", to free the country from the enemies within.

Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu joined Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Tonga‹the countries that fought the occupying Japanese in the Solomon Islands‹in the new campaign dubbed Operation Helpin Fren.

While the operation has been hailed as hugely positive, questions are being asked about why Australia did not act earlier. It would have been tidier and cheaper to have done so, are some of the common arguments making the rounds. Why now? is the question that does not seem to want to go away. Why not in 1999, when then Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa'alu was literally on his knees begging for police intelligence support? Why not in 2000, when then Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, brought to power by the mid-year coup, had his pleas for urgent help denied?

Why is the case for intervention in the Solomon Islands more compelling now than in 1999 and in 2000? Why is Canberra so intent on helping Kemakeza, a man whose name is being linked with accusations of alleged corruption that he says he is ready to answer in court? Why denied help to the two previous prime ministers who had demonstrated the will and resolve to fight lawlessness and corruption?

The why now? question is the one question journalists asked of Canberra more than any other questions since the RAMSI force was announced after a meeting between Howard and Kemakeza in mid-July.

Even the mainstream media has been diverted from learning the real reasons behind Australia's decision to send troops to Solomon Islands. For example, journalists were sold the line that Kemakeza requested the intervention. It is not true. Kemakeza was summoned, not invited to Canberra.

It was perhaps the reason why he decided against telling Opposition Leader John Martin Garo that he too had been invited to be part of the Solomon Islands delegation, so that a bipartisan approach could be forged.

Garo learned of the invitation only after Kemakeza had left for Canberra. In the end, Garo had to make do with a written submission, which turned out to be what the Australian Government announced as the scope for the operation. Kemakeza had good reasons for refusing the Opposition's participation. He knew he was going to be carpeted on a number of issues. The last thing he wanted was for that to happen in front of an alternative prime minister. It would be politically unpalatable and hugely embarrassing.

Of serious concern to Canberra was a letter, allegedly written by Kemakeza to President Megawati Sukarno Petri, inviting Indonesia to intervene in the law and order situation.

A copy of the letter was hand carried by his Foreign Minister, Laurie Chan, to the Asia-Pacific Foreign Ministers' Security meeting in Bali last April. It was there that Chan is said to have met secretly with senior Indonesian officials.

A copy of this letter somehow found its way to Canberra. It was the final straw on the camel's back. Suddenly, there was a 360-degree turn-around in Canberra's assessment of lawlessness in the Solomon Islands. With an upsurge in militancy against westerners from hardline Muslims, coupled with last year's Bali bombings, Canberra could not stomach the thought of a security loophole in the form of a Muslim presence in the Solomon Islands.

Up to this point Australia's support for Kemakeza had been unwavering. In December, when the Opposition was moving a vote- of-no-confidence in the Kemakeza Government, Australia in private conversations and meetings had made it plain that it was opposed to a change of government since it feared worsening political instability in an already volatile environment.

But by the time the letter to Indonesia had surfaced, Australia had amassed an impressive dossier about questionable conduct by the Solomon Islands government. For example, the police appeared to have a free hand to do whatever they wanted to do without government's approval. Regular payments of public funds to certain police officers angered Canberra.

In the last eighteen months or so, the Solomon Islands public's perception of Kemakeza was tinged by the belief that he too was compliant in his relations with ex-militants and rogue policemen.

Australia had other considerations too. Why, a few months ago, did an Iranian businessman suddenly appeared in Honiara?

There are other theories about the reason for Australia's sudden direct intervention in the Solomon Islands.

One is that Canberra used the Solomon Islands to divert domestic attention from a potential furore over Australia's participation in the war in Iraq. Tony Blair (the British Prime Minister) and George Bush (the US President) are embarrassed by their failure to find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Official inquiries are being held in the United States and Britain, and it is argued that Prime Minister Howard would face a similar public backlash if he did not act quickly to divert domestic attention. If this argument proves correct, then Howard's tactical move has worked.

A survey published by The Australian newspaper in early August found that 87 percent of Australians support the intervention in the Solomon Islands. Still others view the Solomons' intervention as part of a grand plan by Australia to control this part of the global paddock. This argument appears to hold water.

Howard announced on the eve of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Summit in Auckland last month a A$15 million package to establish a regional police training post in Fiji.

The stakes in the success or otherwise of the operation in the Solomon Islands are high. Success will serve as a very important yardstick to gauge the support or otherwise of similar joint operations in the future. Whatever the truth, after four years of strife the people of the Solomon Islands simply have had enough. They are willing to take a gamble on anything that has the potential to liberate them.

As RAMSI began work, there was no love lost between Kemakeza and the ex-militants.

In July/August some cabinet ministers turned against Kemakeza by blocking a proposal for a costly investigation by a p rivate firm to establish the extent of government's domestic and external debt. Those who opposed the submission included deputy prime minister Snyder Rini, who argued successfully that the job would be a waste of taxpayers' funds since details of government debts were readily and freely available from the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands.

Allegations of money laundering in Honiara are rife. High-powered sources in the Ministry of Finance claim that they have instructions to pay a group of Chinese in Honiara weekly sums of up to SI$80,000.

"In a month, we would have paid upwards of SI$300,000," I was told. Some officials suggested that the Chinese are just a conduit for laundering money that moves ultimately to local politicians so that there is no physical evidence to show who really gets it.

In the last eight months or so, Honiara's situation has become like an onion. Peel off one layer and there's another one.

It is early days yet to speculate on the success or otherwise of RAMSI. Kemakeza conceded in a television interview that RAMSI could lead to the downfall of his government. Asked why, he said, "Many of my ministers are implicated and we are not above the law."

His response suggests that by accepting Canberra's intervention he might have underestimated the far-reaching implications of Operation Helpum Fren. It is perhaps because of how unsure he is about the scope of the operation that he was so defensive when Members of Parliament raised questions and sought clarifications during the debate on the legislation to authorise the intervention.

Kemakeza explained that "different taskforces" which he subsequently established, would work out the details.

Perhaps he did not foresee that these taskforces could very well be the people who decide the size and depth of a grave to bury his government in. Whatever happens, Solomon Islanders will be at the funeral not to mourn but to celebrate passage into a new and hopefully better world.