Give peace a chance

Special Report

By Michael Field

A year back and the boys might have been carry ing rifles but these days, they thrill at the cheap Gameboy given to them by a New Zealand soldier.

A little girl shelters from the sun under a new umbrella and like the rest of Bougainville wonders what the future

might bring.

The decade-long war was bad enough; the imminent flood of money raises new questions about the role of development and investment in people who have noth

ing left.

It was Arawa on April 30, the official end of the war on Bougainville which pit ted the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) and its military wing, the

Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA),

against the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF).

For war’s end it was a strangely sub dued day. The 2000 or so Bougainvilleans who gathered looked like a people on the very edge of survival, relieved rather than happy to have survived to see even the fragile peace.

The toll of people killed directly by war, or indirectly from the effects of war, is around 15,000 which, for an island of just 160,000 people, is enormous.

The other cost was high too. Pacific for eign ministers and officials for the peace ceremony landed at Aropa airport which, two years before, had been the scene of one of the few set-piece battles between the BRA and the PNGDF.

Once an international airport, its run way is pock-marked and suitable only for

military aircraft. Every single building is

destroyed.

A helicopter ride along the coast to Awara shows virtually every building destroyed. Outside the gutted hospital five ruined ambulances stand. A ship wreck lies beside the wharf, the jungle is growing into former public buildings.

At the ceremony Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer pledged

Asloo million in aid for Bougainville, most of it likely to go into infrastructural investment.

The United Nations Development Programme is kicking in $4 million while the European Union is being urged to come up with money too.

One senses a new cargo cult growing with the treasures going to the mainly Australian companies likely to build the new schools, hospitals and infrastructure facilities.

New Zealand is a little more circum spect about it with their Foreign Minister Don McKinnon saying he would prefer the economy of the island would have to be labour intensive and based on agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and, some day, tourism - its wild beauty has big pulling power.

Instead of providing bulldozers, argues McKinnon, he wants to see local people employed with shovels rebuilding the roads.

“The people on Bougainville have abso lutely nothing, and it will be the little things that will make so much difference.”

He noted that mining was not on the agenda of the Bougainvilleans.

Downer said “Australia has no other agenda than the agenda for peace” and pointedly added “we have no mining agen da.”

Bougainvilleans have long wanted to separate from first, New Guinea, and then Papua New Guinea.

But it was Bougainville Copper Ltd’s (BCL) huge open caste mine at Panguna in the rugged highlands that brought this to war. Its future will determine whether min ing has any place in Bougainville’s eco nomic life.

McKinnon does not think so saying it would now cost around half a billion dol lars to re-open. “Some day the mine may open, it will probably be a decade away,”

McKinnon said.

In fact Anglo-Australian owned Rio Tinto, majority owners of BCL, have qui etly said they are not interested in re-open ing Panguna.

They’ve written off the millions lost and point out that the cost is not justified given the relatively low yields at the site now. A decade ago Panguna provided just over 40 percent of PNG’s export income.

Now it provides not a cent to anybody.

While BIG/BRA are seemingly locked into a conspiracy theory over the mine, the real pressure created by Panguna is differ ent. Bougainville, like the PNG mainland, Lihir, Guadalcanal and New Caledonia, is believed to offer other mineral deposits. No one is, however, seriously interested in exploring given the lack of a credible exploration and mining regime on the island.

There is a paradox though.

Former mine worker Francis Ona, founder of the BIG/BRA who refuses to join the peace process but does not active ly oppose it, heads the clan which owns the Panguna mine land.

BCL has continued to pay into the Ona family trust fund which is now estimated to be worth $lO million. BIG vice presi dent Joseph Kabui, on whose land the tail ings have been dumped, is worth about the same.

PNG peace negotiator Sir John Kaputin said because of the negative role of past development on the island the leadership had to be “sensitive to Bougainville’s needs”.

Bougainville MP John Momis said at the peace ceremony that the crisis had been the result of the island’s people being “mere spectators” in economic activities.

“It is now the role of the government and others who played the major role in terms of resource exploitation to see how best they should address this problem,” he said.

BRA military commander Sam Kauona made the point that the war had come after his people had been marginalised in the

development process.

Kabui reminded PNG Prime Minister Bill Skate that the issues behind the war had been political. “I must remind Mr Skate to address the cause of the crisis which is the issue of politics.” ■