On 21 July 2003, Australia, a key ally in America's Middle Eastern war, decided to launch its own imperial project -- invading the Solomon Islands with around fifteen hundred troops. They didn't notice in Paris or Beijing, but for the people of the South Pacific, this event may prove as momentous as the starting of the American war on Iraq, or the fall of the Berlin Wall. For twenty-five years and more, first Britain and then Australia have been busy dismantling the formal structures of empire. In an age of neo-colonialism, it was safer to control client states at arms' length. But just look at the
army that Australia is sending to the Solomon Islands: three hundred police, one hundred civil servants, in addition to numerous economic advisers, "aid" workers and businessmen. Most are Australian, but there is also a smaller contingent from New Zealand. With the active support of the Solomon's own ruling-class for intervention, this combined force should prove more than enough to control a nation of half a million people or so.
Ironically, this transformation in Australia's regional ambitions has been
met with little protest. One supporter of the intervention is the Green
Party, widely tipped to displace Labor in next year's elections in
Melbourne and Sydney. Labor itself has backed the troops. Even the peace
movement has been slow in stating its opposition. The Melbourne left has
organised one weekday demonstration against the occupation. Less than
twenty people showed up. Julie from the Moreland Peace Group explains, "We
didn't mean for it to be so small." Of the vibrant anti-war networks which
mobilised half a million people to march against the Iraqi war, just one
has even debated the intervention, and while the speakers from the floor
were hostile, it was noticeable that none of the top-table "experts" would
oppose the troops.
Rick Kuhn is an activist with the Trades Council and the anti-war movement
in Canberra. He argues that the lethargy has deep roots, "The peace
movement here has been weaker ever since we sent troops to East Timor in
1999. The troops didn't do anything to stop the genocide, and how could
they? After all, it was Australia who had armed Indonesia through the past
forty years. The left and the Greens and much of public opinion supported
Australian intervention in 1999. Ever since then, the attitude has been
that what the Americans do is imperialism, but when we do it, that's
different." Certainly, after Iraq, Australian Prime Minister John Howard
seems to have been emboldened. Six months ago, his government was wary of
any intervention in the Solomons, now the invasion is already underway.
The position of Howard seems strange. Polls find that two-thirds of
Australians believe they were lied to over Iraq, similar percentages to
Britain. But while Blair is fighting for his political life, Howard's
personal ratings have not fallen. There seems to be tacit support for some
of the way in which Howard has related to America‚s war. George, for
example, is a life-long Labour voter. Mention figures on the British right, and his face reddens with anger. Mention the Australian Liberals,
and the same hackles aren‚t there. He tells me, "Of course, I didn't like
the way we became America's poodle. But you've got to understand, in
Indondesia, just to our North, there are two hundred million people who seem to
hate us. We‚re a small country, just twenty million people. The Brits
wouldn't save us, we've got to have American support."
Other factors are also important. According to Sarah, a socialist activist
from Melbourne, "We're getting older as a country. There are a lot of
people about who remember the fifties with nostalgia. They're his voters.
Howard always plays up to them."
Writing in Australia's main left-liberal magazine, Arena, Judith Brett
suggests that something more substantial is underway. John Howard is a
subtle politician, a self-invented populist, aware of the importance of
national myth. His parents were members of Australia's interwar fascist
party, the Young Guard. Indeed Howard has not been shy in appropriating
old symbols of conflict, Gallipoli and Don Bradman. His party has succeeded in
appropriating myths of nationhood that once made Labor the natural party
of government. A vague culture of mateship and scepticism still exists.
But Howard has succeeded in sanitising it into a still blander notion of
service. To be an Aussie -- in his supporters' eyes -- is to accept whatever
the state says.
For whatever reason, there does seem to be some similarity between
politics here and Britain in the early 1980s. In the UK, Thatcher used
anti-immigrant racism (exemplified by the electoral success of the
National Front) as the battering ram to smash through a pro-union
pro-welfare consensus. Here, Howard, seems to have used the success of
Pauline Hanson's One Nation in the late 1990s in a similar way, taking the
fears on which the far-right thrived and using them in mainstream
politics. Refugees are held in jails in the middle of the outback.
Students fees were introduced for the first time and are now being raised.
Healthcare has been cut back.
Graham is a researcher for the National Union of Students. He suggests
that there are economic factors behind the lack of struggles as Australia
shifts right. "The economy has been growing by about four per cent a year, for
practically the whole of the last decade. It's more than ten years since
the Australian economy last went into recession. Where else in the world
has that happened? There has been a real boom for the rich. I won't say
that the economy has grown because of Howard, but its growth has helped him. People
get frustrated. They won't protest."
The formal reason given for the sending of the troops to the Solomon
Islands is to bring an end to fighting between ethnic armies including the
Guadalcanal Liberation Front and the Malaitan Eagle Force. The broad
context is the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-8, and the crisis in
South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia, after which the economy of the
Solomon Islands contracted by around a quarter. In 1998 and 1999, some
sixty people were killed in fighting between militias, which culminated in
an attempted coup in January 2000.
As the fighting intensified, Australian businesses were instructed to
leave the islands. The effect of their departure was disastrous for the local
economy. It was like a strike by capitalists, and at the very moment when
infrastructure was most needed. Local mining and timber businesses ground
to a halt. Debts to international bodies rocketed. The Australian
government first raised the possibility of intervention in a document, Beyond Bali,
warning that the whole Pacific region was potentially prey to Islamic fundamentalism. A second document, narrowed down Australia's range of immediate targets to just one. Our failing Neighbour argued that events in the Solomons represented "a significant economic loss for Australia". To guarantee the long-term security of Australia's shipping fleet, intervention was required.
The opinion of the Solomon Islanders hemselves is routinely invoked to
support intervention. Laurie Chan is the foreign minister of the Solomon
Islands. He has repeatedly endorsed the sending of troops. "I'm absolutely
happy. I think my country's very happy." Meanwhile, in Australia, Ray
Harris is drawing up the Greens' program for a "bottom up" aid project to
accompany the intervention. "Lots of people on the Australian leff", he
argues, "have taken a condescending position. The Socialist Alliance, for example, calls
for the troops to be removed. But not one single person or group in the
Solomons has spoken out against intervention."
A number of trade unions and women's groups have indeed supported
intervention, claiming that the most important task is to put an end to
the ethnic infighting. The Solomon Islands Council of Trade Unions voted
to welcome the troops, arguing that something must be done to stop the
existing cycle of "extortion, intimidation, blackmail, and widespread
corruption". Yet Harris's point is still exaggerated. For anti-intervention
voices do exist. Terry Brown is bishop of Malaita. He accepts that the
Solomons "have serious economic and security problems", but goes on to
argue that they are "not in a state of anarchy and chaos". Since 2000, he
insists, the ethnic tensions have abated. "There is the occasional killing
or act of violence. There are still many guns about. But the vast majority
of Solomon Islanders live in peace and quiet."
Serge Vohor is Foreign Minister and Deputy PM for neighbouring Vanuatu. He
says, "We don't want to be recolonised. I think we been fighting for our
independence, free from colonisation power, colonist power, and we like to
be free. We don't want to have someone who exploits us again". Vohor has
threatened to arrest Australian Federal Police officers in Vanuatu for
spying and for trying to manipulate politics in his country. Similar
sentiments are widespread in Papua New Guinea, whose southernmost islands
border the Solomons. Nobody there expects Australia's imperial ambitions
to be satisfied quickly. Why are they sending economic advisers and civil
servants, if they expect to leave the islands soon? And after the
Solomons, where will Australia turn its attention next?
Nic Mclellan of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre supports the sending
of police, to put an end to the immediate violence, but opposes the
troops, and especially the sending of civil servants to take over the
running of the state. The Pacific Concerns Resource Centre is the biggest NGO in the
region. It opposes the intervention, pointing out that whenever the
Solomons Islanders themselves have been consulted as a group -- as they
were during the 2000 ceasefire negotiations -- they opposed the idea of
foreign domination.
The day that the troops arrived, one of their first actions was to attack
and chase off local film-makers reporting the seizure of dolphins for
private export trade. The business is lucrative, but widely detested by
local people. It may seem like a small issue, but it raises the fears that
the Solomon Islanders have of occupation, even while their leaders acquiesce.
At the Moreland Peace Group, discussion carries on through the evening.
While the speakers accept that some intervention is needed, they are
divided as to how long it should be allowed. The mood from the floor is
much more critical. "We can't trust Howard -- here or there", one
contributor argues. Another suggests that the most important task is to
bring hope to the people of the Solomons themselves. "Why are they calling
for intervention? It is because they feel weak. We need to show them,
through our solidarity, that they are strong." How about East Timor,
Northern Ireland, Kosovo, hadn't there been local support -- at the start --
for wars of humanitarian intervention? And did that mean that those wars
had been justified? Perhaps the group could organise a speaking tour for
trade unionists from the Solomons? Other suggestions were more fanciful.
Perhaps we could sponsor a Solomons dolphin?
Most activists are convinced that Australian intervention can only work out
for the worst. Of all the humanitarian interventions, by Britain, France,
America or Australia, how many have been followed by democracy? Where have
conditions improved for those whose lives were used to justify the
sending of troops? Many people in Australia and the Solomons remain
undecided, or even supportive of the troops. They accept them as a
temporary measure. Yet no attempts are being made to prepare either public
for the longer intervention that is coming. In the months head, anti-occupation sentiment an only grow.
This article was originally written for the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa.
