{"id":10591,"date":"2013-11-08T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=10591"},"modified":"2013-11-14T06:39:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T19:39:59","slug":"australias-bougainville-challenge-aligning-aid-trade-and-diplomacy-in-the-national-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australias-bougainville-challenge-aligning-aid-trade-and-diplomacy-in-the-national-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Bougainville challenge: aligning aid, trade and diplomacy in the national interest"},"content":{"rendered":"
A decade after the successful peacekeeping mission, and a year and a half before the window opens for a referendum on Bougainville\u2019s political status, the peace process is dangerously adrift.<\/p>\n The pathbreaking unarmed regional peace effort<\/a>, begun by New Zealand in late-1997 and led by Australia from early 1998 to mid-2003, is cited as a model of innovative and flexible peacemaking<\/a>. It ensured large-scale fighting didn\u2019t resume and it bought time to prepare for an orderly political settlement. Sadly, those preparations have been insufficient to ensure a workable and sustainable political outcome. The Papua New Guinea Government, donors, neighbours and officials on Bougainville have failed to build the capacity the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) requires to remediate the causes of the earlier conflict<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although there have been positive developments, most indicators are far from encouraging as the mid-2015 to 2020 window for a referendum approaches. Misunderstandings between Port Moresby and the ABG<\/a> remain, while economic imperatives to resume mining as the only realistic basis for autonomy or independence add new pressures. Unemployment<\/a> among young men, damage to social, economic, and physical infrastructure<\/a> and strong pro- and anti-independence views persist in different areas. At the moment the most likely referendum outcome\u00a0 is a clear-cut but far from unanimous vote for independence, which PNG is likely to refuse to ratify. That’s an outcome that Bougainville is unprepared for, and would be destabilising<\/a>. Although the risk of renewed conflict is fundamentally a challenge for PNG and the ABG to manage, Australia has a major stake too. Even if a PNG\u2013ABG stand-off didn\u2019t lead to violence, it would squeeze Australia uncomfortably between impulses to accept the results of a peace process we sponsored and the imperative to stand by the more influential partner, PNG. Our interests would be even sharper if violence re-emerges, given our strategic, business and reputational stake<\/a> in PNG, potential for disorder to spread, public opinion and our security partners\u2019 expectations.<\/p>\n But a reintervention after mid-2015 could be much larger and more costly\u2014closer to the more complex missions in Solomon Islands or even Timor-Leste\u2014than the limited effort appropriate from 1997-2003. Military aspects of those later interventions cost $350 million and $4.3 billion, respectively, while ten years on we\u2019re still spending $125 million annually<\/a> on post-conflict reconstruction in Solomon Islands via a scaled-down RAMSI. Renewed violence would also present a more dangerous peacemaking environment than that of 1997-98.<\/p>\n The new Government\u2019s decision<\/a> to more closely align Australia\u2019s foreign, development, and trade efforts to advance specific interests as well as poverty-reduction could assist. An Australian-led development effort to assist Bougainville is needed to forestall another peacekeeping mission. While this initiative would require greater investment (Bougainville\u2019s current share of PNG aid isn\u2019t much higher than its proportion of the population) such an effort could make up crucial lost ground in areas such as public safety, community awareness and legal, business and administrative capacity.<\/p>\n This categorically wouldn\u2019t seek to replicate the RAMSI-style shadow government necessary following the collapse of governance in the Solomons. Rather, it’d forestall the need for an intrusive reintervention. While dialogue between Port Moresby and the ABG has increased a bit and Australian assistance was starting to rise under AusAID, a much<\/i> more concerted pre-referendum focus is required and must be coordinated with regional partners. Australian elements would include:<\/p>\n While PNG sovereignty concerns and some continuing Bougainvillean suspicions about Australia\u2019s motives<\/a> would need to be handled sensitively, this should be manageable given all sides\u2019 strong interest in preserving peace. Neither autonomy nor independence would be an outcome which would necessarily ensure or exclude the possibility of violence. The essential requirement is that the referendum process is conducted reasonably smoothly, is seen to be legitimate (requiring realistic options to choose between meaningful autonomy or independence), and that all parties can live with the result.<\/p>\n Bougainville presents potential risks and rewards for the new government, but the greatest risks are from Canberra\u2019s inactivity. Alternatively, the rewards for taking a proactive approach are potentially high. Australia has an opportunity to show that we can do more than \u2018send in the troops\u2019\u2014that we have the nous and resources to avert the need for military intervention through concerted whole-of-government action to create the conditions for lasting peace. In many ways this would be the missing conclusion to the story of Pacific stabilisation operations begun by the Howard government in Bougainville in 1998. Preventive diplomatic action conducted in close cooperation with our regional partners would establish Australia\u2019s credentials as a peacemaker when the region could use calm and far-sighted leadership.<\/p>\n Peter Jennings is the executive director of the ASPI, and\u00a0Karl Claxton is an analyst at ASPI<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Image by Flickr user\u00a0Australian Civil-MilitaryCentre<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An ASPI report published this morning sets out a plan to help deliver a sustainable solution for the future of Bougainville. A decade after the successful peacekeeping mission, and a year and a half before …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[626,77,246,99],"class_list":["post-10591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia-and-its-region","tag-bougainville","tag-pacific","tag-peace-building","tag-south-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>An ASPI report<\/a> published this morning sets out a plan to help deliver a sustainable solution for the future of Bougainville.<\/p>\n
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