And they

Opinion

And they went marching in

Now that the Bougainville peace conference is over, without having been held, we can look at the situa tion and make preliminary observations. The Bougainville “question” was already a hopeless tangle, but with Sir Julius’ inputs, a new jumble of problems was added to PNG’s difficulties. There seem to be three Gordian knots that have to be disentangled.

There is first, the PNG-Bougainville conflict which, I believe, will never go away and is symptomatic of things to come as witness the growing discontent around the Fly River area. Second, there are serious problems related to a Regional Peacekeeping Force that have been overlooked. Lastly, there is the question of the relation of Pacific militaries to interna tional aid donors’ foreign policies.

From the outset, media coverage of the conference was anything but satisfactory. The ABC seemed reluctant to do more than cover the broadest communiques, leaving specifics to the news divisions of the different national troops. This arrangement left much to be desired. Apart from inexperience these media appendages were mostly government-owned and so their releases were usually pointless or biased. We may never know the exact details of the Honiara Accord.

Even before the troops left for Townsville, ABC broadcast a statement by BRA leadership that they played no part in invit ing the peace-keeping army in, and that such troops setting foot on Bougainville would be deemed enemies and dealt with accordingly.

Then came the vacillations of BRA, the few shootings, and other minor incidents which boosted an already ominous sense of failure. But whatever unknown motives the BRA may have been harbouring, it is obvious the main stumbling block to the whole exercise was the presence of PNG troops in Bougainville. For by this time BRA was arguing that the com ing of the Regional Peace-keeping Force meant the departure of PNG troops.

And BRA leadership had a perfect right to be suspicious, since WingtiV 1 peace ’’offensive of April 1993 was still fresh in their memories - not to mention the whole far-from-exem plary record of PNG military presence in Bougainville. The long and short of it all, however, is that the peace conference was one preposterous exercise in futility, a disaster so com plete that its ramifications will take years to drain.

The other matter that needs notice is the romantic nature of the idea of an RPF. Now the UN peace-keeping forces are dominated by countries (USA, UK, France, etc) with very long

traditions of liberal democracy, rule of law, and protection of human rights, and so can be trusted to give equal effect to the rights and lawful claims of contending parties. This is certain ly not the case with the Pacific islands. Tonga cannot be a democracy by a long shot - a pro-democracy movement is emerging here but it is not the most popular item on the plate of the ruling elite. And Rabuka’s version in Fiji can be a huge joke. PNG’s civil rights record, again, is degraded by her behav iour in Bougainville, and completely nullified if combined with a sin of omission (shared by Australia) in the case of Irian Jaya.

But what Sir Julius seems to miss most is the fact that the Defence Forces of the Pacific islands are merely private armies of their ruling parties. As such, his RPF is merely a device for maintaining the status quo, defusing initiative and arresting political evolution. Surely he must have realised that may have been the main motive for Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu jumping at his suggestion.

The RPF is an agent of fear, of showing people their places vis-a-vis their masters and, above all, for retention of power. No wonder the BRA was intimidated though they refused to accept the place allotted them by PNG and Australia in the last seven or so decades.

Exactly because the proposed RPF is only a blown-up ver sion of the islanders’ private armies, the US, Britain and France should refuse to have anything to do with this type of devel opment. Militaries here protect interests which are opposed to values promoted by the great powers, especially democra tic and liberal values. Aid for island armies then would ulti mately frustrate the foreign policy of the donor.

Therefore what the Pacific islands need is not an RPF but the dismantling of their little armies. They are a drain on the economy and command huge slices of the national budgets.

They divert foreign aid which can be more beneficial to the people if employed in other sectors. They discourage active public participation, protect nepotism, favouritism, ultra-con servative privileges and illiberal public policies.

We shall never need armies in the islands.We should only reform our laws, retool our police forces and revolutionise their law-enforcing capabilities.

And then attend to education, but not vocational or tech nical training alone. For what damage can compare to that wrought by vocational or technical knowledge in a smoking cerebrum that has not been cleansed and made whole by humane studies? ■

From

Futa Held

in Tonga