Tranquil No More

Easy-going life in the Pacific Islands is being eroded by the fallout from the duelling between Western governments and terrorist gangs.

Pacific Islands tourism and export industries are being threatened with ruin if they ignore security regimes the United States, Europe and other powers demand that they accept.

Fiji...one of its many islands.

From July 1, Pacific Islands countries that haven't complied with strict new international port and shipping security rules risk having their export trade paralysed by importer countries.

The ports of their main export customers won't accept their ships and cargoes. Most ports will hit the deadline on time.

Pacific Islands tourist traffic, now the region's biggest industry, could become blocked by similar barriers.

Airlines that from January 2006 ignore new cargo security rules will have their aircraft barred from airports in America, Australia and New Zealand.

The cost of much tighter security forced on the Pacific Islands will add to the burden of transport security rules imposed by big economic powers since the 2001 attacks in the United States and the nightclub and bar bombings in Bali that killed more than 200 mainly Australian tourists.

In a speech to the Economic Association of Fiji on how terrorism and the war against it could damage Pacific Islands economies, the Pacific Islands Forum's Secretary-General, Greg Urwin, said Pacific Islanders must now accept compromises about the ease with which travellers have been able to move through their region.

He says the Pacific Islands are targets for international organised crime which itself is a platform from which terrorists can work.
"The motivations may be different, but if you have established the methodology for trans-national crime you have in essence established the methodology for terrorism," he says. The region's improving telecommunications and transport links are tools for terrorism.

"I think it is fair to say that many within the region would not consider the risk of a terrorist attack in this region as a highly likely one."
However, as the New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, as current chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, put it recently "the problem to be confronted in our region is not so much that terrorists will seek to attack the citizens or institutions of Pacific countries. It is rather that the Pacific might present a tempting target for either an attack like in Bali or as a base from which terrorist cells might undertake the planning and groundwork for an attack somewhere else."

New Zealand hosted a three-day meeting in Wellington in May at which Pacific Islands officials discussed what challenges terrorism present the region with.

A counter-terrorism official from the United States' State Department told the meeting that islands countries that are frequented by a lot of tourists are easy targets for terrorism. The Pacific Islands must make it hard for terrorists to cross their border since they are attractive places for a Bali-style attack, the official claimed.

In the last few years the United States has used threats and financial sanctions to close down or curb the activities of Pacific Islands offshore financial centres it claims are being used by money launderers who could be moving money around for crime and terrorist organisations.

Vanuatu has been boycotted by some United States banks under United States government pressure. Nauru continues to be attacked and threatened for what the United States Government says is its lax attitudes about passport sales. Nauru last year buckled to United States pressure for the closure of Nauru-registered offshore banks.

New Zealand and Australia are funding anti-terrorism and port security projects in the islands.

According to Clark, the European Union, France, Japan and the United States are ready to do so too.

However, in the region, some officials say they are alarmed about the diversion of aid money for bread-and-butter aid projects to security schemes as a sop to placate United States and Australian paranoia about security.

Nadi Airport...There is little or no doubt that the region is being targeted for such criminal activities as the transit of illicit drugs, people smuggling, money laundering and identity fraud.

Urwin told the economic association meeting that while the terrorism threat should not be overstated, and while he does not think that islands governments should automatically fall in line with just any "international agenda," the present problem is also that many Pacific Islanders understate the terrorism risk.

There is little or no doubt that the region is being targeted for such criminal activities as the transit of illicit drugs, people smuggling, money laundering and identity fraud, he says. "We are being targeted because of our lack of strong uniform legislation and inadequacies in human, financial and technical resources. In other words, good preparation is better than reaction and there is growing evidence that trans-national organised crime in the region is evolving to meet new needs and activities.

"Trans-national organised crime groups are flexible and where there is a market involving a variety of markets and activities such as drugs, people, weapons, money laundering, fraudulent schemes of one kind or another, they have the ability to diversify their activities in all these areas.

"Such groups are utilising the opportunities that come from globalisation, including advances in technology such as the Internet to commit crime on a wider scale, and increases in trade and travel volumes within the region that stretch the resources of law enforcement agencies."

Australia and other countries that treat themselves as priority targets for terrorist attacks because of their adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the Middle East, worry that the Pacific Islands lack trained staff and technology support for detecting explosives, drugs and fraudulent documents and have weak forensic analysis abilities.

Corrupt governments and increasing poverty are considered to make parts of the region easy meat for organised crime, targeted at individuals in the public and private sectors where work conditions and pay rates are poor.

Urwin told the economic association: "Tourism obviously depends on air services and cruise ships. If international airlines are unable to land at Pacific entry points because ICAO (International Civil Aviation Authority) security rules are not met, and if for parallel reasons Pacific airlines are prevented from landing in Australia, New Zealand, Guam or Hawaii, the impact on the Pacific's tourism sector could be potentially devastating.

"The economic implications of the region's exports not being accepted by its major markets outside the region would be equally serious. Every country which wants to avoid the risk of serious disruption of trade and tourism will need to face the issue of compliance. The alternative is to risk serious economic damage. Unfortunately, many of the smaller countries are dependent on imports, so the cost increases due to security measures, insurance, freight, documentation and procedures, will increase the cost of our exports and imports."
Security began to become an issue in the Pacific Islands in 1992 when the annual Forum summit adopted the Honiara Declaration on law enforcement cooperation in the region.

Preoccupied with such home-grown economic worries as creating jobs for fast growing young populations, HIV/AIDS, vulnerability to climate change, the over-exploitation of natural resources, problems of pollution and waste disposal, natural disasters, weak telecommunications and transport infrastructure and challenges of governance, terrorism has not been a priority for the islands, Urwin says, because "it is one seen as something new and different."

The Forum Secretary-General has worked on legal and law enforcement programmes for fighting trans-national crime. These efforts include the development of model legislation, the formation of combined law agency groups, the strengthening of the sharing of information by law enforcement agencies, the development of a Pacific Financial Intelligence Unit, the establishment of trans-national crime units and a Pacific trans-national crime coordination centre.

Since the September 2001 attacks, the United Nations Security Council has adopted counter-terrorism resolutions. Other international organisations like the Financial Action Task Force (an anti-money laundering agency), International Maritime Organisation and the International Civil Aviation Organisation have toughened up their anti-terrorism outlook.

Urwin says the Forum is obliged by international law to implement internationally agreed anti-terrorist measures within certain timeframes. The Forum Secretariat with Forum members and regional specialist law enforcement agencies and their international partners have drafted model counter-terrorism and anti-organised crime law and organised drafting assistance for individual countries. Defences against organised crime will be extended to combat terrorism.

"Most Forum islands countries are dependent on tourism and trade and a safe environment for economic growth and sustainable development," Urwin says.

"Where tourism is concerned, perception is everything whether it be in relation to the environment, the people or security conditions.
"The dependence of the region's economies on trade and tourism makes it imperative that we do all we can to face the challenges without creating additional fear in our societies.

"The principal aim of terrorist groups is not only physical attacks on people or infrastructure but also the instilling of fear of the possibility of an attack. Such fear once it is abroad can have serious effects on the people living in the region and people who may want to visit the Pacific.

Bali bombing...picking up the pieces.

"A change in the perception of the Pacific as a safe destination could seriously affect the number of people visiting our shores."
After the Bali bombings, tourists changed destinations. Arrivals in Bali fell dramatically while visitor numbers in other Asian regions and the Pacific Islands continued to climb.

A Bali-style attack or fear of attack could destroy the markets for Pacific Islands tourism.

"The perception that a state may in some way be soft on terrorism or may be compliant with it, may also have negative consequences with the way a state deals with the world," Urwin says.

"The perception that a country is allowing the laundering of terrorist funds could cause a financial backlash‹the prohibition of banking transactions, especially by United States banks with that country, and not necessarily just with any offshore centre it may have set up."

The region's main ports are expected to meet the July 1 deadline for implementing the new port security regime.
The latest ICAO security measures to increase security on hold baggage will come into force on January 1, 2006.