Don't welcome Canberra's Solomons move over

Max Lane, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong New South Wales, Australia

Paulo Gorjao writes in his article Welcoming Australia's regional initiative (The Jakarta Post, July 17) that "Indonesia should politically support Canberra" in its intervention into the Solomon Islands. The Australian government, in conjunction with New Zealand, intends to send troops and police to establish what it calls "law and order". Australia will also send civilian officials to work on the Solomon Island's financial policies.

This policy should be seen as a mini version of the kind of interventionist foreign policy being pursued by U.S. President George W Bush in Afghanistan and especially Iraq. Australian policy is primarily motivated by the similar interests as that which motivates Bush, namely, the desire to protect commercial interests.

Gorjao refers to the report, Our failing neighbor: Australia and the future of Solomon Islands, produced by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's (ASPI) paper. This states very clearly that Australian government "policy towards Solomon Islands must be designed with the aim of serving our national interests". The ASPI report claims that the alleged breakdown of civil order in the Solomons is "depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities that, though not huge, are potentially valuable".

The report says: "Prior to the ethnic conflict, bilateral merchandise trade between Australia and Solomon Islands peaked in 1997-1998 with AUS$106 million (comprising $101 million in exports and around $5 million in imports). Since then it has almost halved to a low in 2000-2001 of $56 million ($52 million in exports and $4 million in imports), before recovering slightly in 2001-2002 to $64 million, comprising exports of $62 million, but only $2 million in imports."

The lack of interest in social stability and welfare in the Solomons has been amply demonstrated by Australian government pressure on the Solomon Islands government in the economic field. The 1997 Asian economic crisis hit the Solomons hard when it nearly halved the value of timber exports to Asia -- the largest source of Solomons' foreign earnings.

The Solomon's government was pressured to implement a severe economic austerity drive that helped cause a big jump in unemployment. At the same time social services were slashed. Rising unemployment resulting from the collapse of logging activities and the government's austerity measures generated tensions over access to land between the indigenous Guadacanalans and Malaitans.

It was these tensions that created the initial clashes between the Isatabu Freedom Movement (IFM) an indigenous Guadalcanalan armed group and the Malaitan Eagle Force -- recruited mainly from Malaitan settler families on Guadalcanal displaced by the IFM and from disgruntled former and serving police officers. However, this miniwar ended in an October, 2000 armistice between the two groups.

The Australian government repeated its harassment of the Solomon Islands economy again later. In June 2002, the Solomon's government asked the IMF, World Bank and donor countries for a substantial injection of funds to help deal with another impending economic crisis. The Australian government demanded a further reduction of jobs and government spending in return for any Australian aid.

That same month, the Solomons government handed control of its finances to a New Zealand "public sector and economic reform" consultant, Lloyd Powell, as Permanent Secretary of Finance. Powell heads a NZ company with a history of overseeing neo- liberal "reform" in more than 20 Third World countries, including the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga and Kiribati. At Powell's recommendation, Honiara retrenched 1300 public sector workers in November 2002. The Australian government was also to insist that the health and services sector be restructured to impose higher fees for ordinary people.

In this situation of worsening economic conditions, remnants of the previous armed groups have carried on some low level of activity.

What "instability" does exist in the Solomons is nothing more than the direct result of the social disruption caused by neo- liberal policies forced on the people of the Solomons by the Australian government, the IMF and the World Bank (and acquiesced in by a weak and corrupt Solomons government). Accusations of a failed state ready to fall into the hands of terrorists are just as nonsensical as the claim that the Saddam Hussein government had weapons of mass destruction ready to deploy against the West with 45 minutes of the orders being given.

Like George Bush, John Howard is interested in a policy of recolonization of developing countries. Australia is not a huge superpower like the United States and cannot aspire to occupy a country of the size and complexity of Iraq. So Howard targets a tiny country of 450,000 people.

The Australian government policy towards the Solomon Islands should, in fact, be opposed.

First, it will deploy foreign police and troops to strengthen a corrupt system based on economic policies causing unemployment and hardship.

Second, it serves to strengthen a general foreign policy approach being adopted by at least the U.S., UK and Australia governments which downgrades respect for the sovereignty of Third World states.

The Australian government may argue that the Solomons government and parliament has invited the Australian police, troops and officials. However, these invitations have been issued in a situation of virtual duress and by a government long severed from the interests of the people of the Solomons. The Australian government's contempt for the sovereign rights of the Solomons people had already been reflected in its insistence on economic policies for the Solomons decided in Canberra.

The Solomons' political elite has happily acquiesced in all this looking out only for its own narrow interests. Perhaps the Indonesian elit politik will feel equally unconcerned -- or maybe they will think that lip-service will score some good political points as they did with Iraq.

In the end, all these elites --Indonesian, Solomon Islands, New Zealand and Australian -- seem to share the same mental outlook. In any case, the Indonesians, like the Australian people also, would be better advised to be concerned about this new policy and oppose it.