{"id":68984,"date":"2021-11-30T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T01:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=68984"},"modified":"2021-12-03T14:02:56","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T03:02:56","slug":"no-short-term-solution-to-solomon-islands-strife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/no-short-term-solution-to-solomon-islands-strife\/","title":{"rendered":"No short-term solution to Solomon Islands strife"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Echoes and omens abound as Australia steps in to stop riot, arson and looting in a South Pacific capital.<\/p>\n

Honiara offers a reprise of previous tragedy that\u2019s a grim foretaste of the future facing Melanesia.<\/p>\n

A capital city riot has become an extreme expression of political and economic failure in the South Pacific\u2014unusual but not unprecedented.<\/p>\n

Political \u2018big men\u2019 clash. One side pushes too hard or just rolls the dice. Politics boils as an elite struggle for power becomes a free-for-all in the streets. Thousands of idle young men and women are ready to rumble, to smash windows and do some \u2018free shopping\u2019.<\/p>\n

Consider a roll call of South Pacific capital city riots: the Sandline affair<\/a> in Port Moresby in 1997 when the military revolted and dispatched Julius Chan\u2019s government; the parliament siege<\/a> in Suva in 2000 that ended the government of Mahendra Chaudhry; the 2006 Dili crisis<\/a> that saw an attempted coup and resignation of the prime minister, Mari Alkatiri; and the 2006 riot in Nuku\u2019alofa<\/a> that destroyed much of the central business district.<\/p>\n

Honiara has a special place in this blackened list. In the Solomon\u2019s capital, controversial prime ministers face riots. Five years of unrest and conflict led to the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI<\/a>), the $3 billion intervention that ran from 2003 to 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After the 2006 election, Honiara suffered dreadful destruction and looting\u2014to stand amid the ruins of Honiara\u2019s Chinatown in 2006 was to feel a great shock at what the Solomons had just done to itself. Although not on the same scale, more riots erupted in 2019 when Manasseh Sogavare won his fourth term as prime minister.<\/p>\n

As Anouk Ride commented after the 2019 unrest in Honiara, \u2018[R]iots in Solomon Islands are not \u201cirrational\u201d or \u201cchaotic\u201d behaviour. They arise at moments of key political transitions, they have specific targets, they enjoy a degree of social support and they serve a symbolic purpose<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s deadly strife in Honiara was about politics, but it was also a chance for free shopping. The initial Malaitan protestors soon had company. Everyone could join in. Among the conventions of Pacific city riots: the taxis keep running so the loot can be carried away.<\/p>\n

Mihai Sora\u2019s paints the picture:<\/p>\n

The protests rapidly morphed from a provincial\u2013national feud to a violent release of pent-up angst<\/a> over daily hardships exacerbated by the global health and economic impacts of Covid. These hardships are felt acutely in vulnerable developing countries such as Solomon Islands, with the repeated imposition of states of emergency, perennial resentment at perceived corruption and brazen chicanery among MPs, and a predominantly young population frustrated with a lack of education and job opportunities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Personal security is now an issue for the capital city elites of the South Pacific; it\u2019s no longer just a Port Moresby syndrome. The people who run government, the professionals and those who do business have to worry about the safety of their homes and the security of their families.<\/p>\n

The Pacific still has strong societies and weak states, but the small middle class can no longer be as confident in the social and religious conservatism that has underpinned island stability. Mostly, this is a discussion about Melanesia, but the barbed-wire-and-bars security consciousness is on show in the capitals of Polynesia.<\/p>\n

Capital city riots are a violent moment when the Pacific youth bulge flexes its muscle.<\/p>\n

Half the region\u2019s population is aged under 23. The bulge is \u2018particularly acute in Melanesian states,\u2019 Catherine Wilson writes, and the demographic dividend<\/a> can deliver disillusioned young people living on the margins of the cities.<\/p>\n

Youth bulges with lots of unemployed males mean revolution, from the Protestant Reformation to the young recruits for 20th-century facism. The bulge tips over societies, Samuel Huntington reckons, when those aged between 15 and 24 exceed 20% of the population: \u2018Young people are the protagonists of protest, instability, reform and revolution<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n

Amid all the complexities and difficulties of Solomon Islands, credit Australia for an instant, unhesitating response: troops and police<\/a> on the way within 24 hours of Sogavare\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s action this time is carefully expressed in limited language, marking important differences with the RAMSI model.<\/p>\n

RASMI was a regional effort, endorsed by the Pacific Islands Forum; it became a 14-year intervention because of a highly ambitious agenda of change and reform. Australia did most of the cash and carrying of RAMSI, but it always embraced the regional label that burnished the mission\u2019s legitimacy.<\/p>\n

This time, Australia is acting bilaterally under the terms of the 2017 security<\/a> treaty negotiated with Solomon Islands when RAMSI finished\u2014although as soon as Prime Minister Scott Morrison got the call he was on the phone to fellow leaders in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.<\/p>\n

Morrison stresses that Australia\u2019s sole aim is to \u2018provide stability and security\u2019 for Honiara: \u2018It is not the Australian government\u2019s intention in any way to intervene in the internal affairs<\/a> of the Solomon Islands; that is for them to resolve. I\u2019ve made that very clear. Our presence there does not indicate any position on the internal issues of the Solomon Islands.\u2019<\/p>\n

Such language expresses a great irony: Australia is intervening to steady the government of Manasseh Sogavare. Once he damned RAMSI as an Australian parallel government usurping sovereignty. Now he turns to Canberra to save his government.<\/p>\n

The stoush with Canberra was at its most intense during Sogavare\u2019s second period as prime minister (2006\u20132007), when he expelled the Australian high commissioner from Honiara and threatened to eliminate Australia from RAMSI.<\/p>\n

In February 2007, Australia\u2019s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, published a \u2018letter to the people of Solomon Islands\u2019 that amounted to a denunciation of Sogavare.<\/p>\n

Downer attacked \u2018a deliberate push to undermine RAMSI, to tarnish its reputation\u2019, the \u2018outrageous\u2019 and \u2018insulting\u2019 attempts to smear the mission, and Australia\u2019s concern at attempts to undermine Solomon Islands institutions designed to ensure the government was accountable.<\/p>\n

And that was the public version of the argument.<\/p>\n

By the time Sogavare was farewelling RAMSI in 2017, during his third term as PM, much history was forgotten amid the gentle thanks.<\/p>\n

In saving Honiara today, Australia will do as little as possible to help the political fortunes of the Solomons\u2019 prime minister.<\/p>\n

Acting as the responsible power in the Melanesian arc is always going to be tough. Whatever credit Canberra receives will be accompanied by kicks; it\u2019s the inevitable mix for the nation determined to be the South Pacific\u2019s central power.<\/p>\n

Being the region\u2019s key economic and security partner is a pricey responsibility. Few bouquets. Plenty of bruising jobs. Australia\u2019s interest in the political stability of the region means we must help to hold it up by holding it close.<\/p>\n

Helping out Sogavare, however, is proof of that cynical observation about no good deed going unpunished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Echoes and omens abound as Australia steps in to stop riot, arson and looting in a South Pacific capital. Honiara offers a reprise of previous tragedy that\u2019s a grim foretaste of the future facing Melanesia. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":68986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[416,227,228,99],"class_list":["post-68984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-government","tag-ramsi","tag-solomon-islands","tag-south-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNo short-term solution to Solomon Islands strife | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/no-short-term-solution-to-solomon-islands-strife\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No short-term solution to Solomon Islands strife | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Echoes and omens abound as Australia steps in to stop riot, arson and looting in a South Pacific capital. 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