UNIKEN August 2003 • 16

Intervention in the Solomons - half way to nowhere
The public case has been carefully crafted.  An independent report by a government sponsored think-tank outlines the concept of cooperative intervention.  The Foreign Minister nods sagely at its launch.  Images of rape and pillage on the Weathercoast of Guadalcanal incite the media.  Corruption, involving up to 90 per cent of public revenue, is portrayed as being at is portrayed as being at the heart of the crisis of governance.
    Within a fortnight, a formal request from Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister is “expected”.  John Howard’s rhetoric skilfully interweaves rampant criminality, the spectre of a failed state, and the global tentacles of terrorism – touching a raw public nerve.
    Potential charges of neo-colonialism are raised publicly and discussed rather than sidestepped.  The debate becomes one of detail rather than principle.
    The deployment of Australian forces, spearheaded by the police but with military protection and logistics, is now underway.  The formal request for assistance and limited commitments from New Zealand and the Melanesian islands provide a semblance of legitimacy.  Half-speculated time frames for the intervention force range from three months to a year.  They suggest a finite commitment and the potential to exit but specific objectives are carefully avoided.  There is hardly a public murmur.  The necessity for action appears irrefutable.
    Yet only half a step back from the excitement of the moment, the gloss begins to tarnish rapidly.  Action is undoubtedly necessary – a circuit breaker to halt the current spiral.  But is Australia treating the symptoms rather than the cause? Have we thought through a genuinely sustainable solution or do we run the risk of recycling the very policies that have brought us to today?		     Restoring law and order and government administration in the capital, Honiara, has a comforting ring.  Yet does that mean that employment opportunities and disposable income will again be concentrated in the capital? Surely offsetting the so-called 'Port Moresby' syndrome should be at the heart of our Pacific policy.  And how is the target of an able and enterprising public service to be achieved without revisiting fears in Guadalcanal, the country’s largest island lastword

by Stewart Woodman

    Vague references to longer-term support for development and education do punctuate
    Australia’s policy statements.  But the tension between island capacity and desired ends and the challenge of
and home to Honiara, of an 'invasion' by Malaitans – the very root of the recent civil war?
    The challenges faced by Solomon Islands however, run much deeper.  Even with a more effective central administration, how the government will engage the nation at large remains problematic.		 Tidying up the balance sheets in Honiara may look attractive from outside … But that priority is predicated on the assumption that Solomon Islands has the capacity to pursue nationhood within the mould with which we are most comfortable. tailoring support to the Islands’ character remain unacknowledged.  Development strategies must accommodate geographic and ethnic diversity.  Education must be linked to opportunities lest its impact be offset by social dislocation and disenchantment.  Traditional social structures must be
    The islands are numerous and dispersed.  Communication and transport are limited and unreliable government services including the police and public works have collapsed.  For years, operating budgets have been starved and maintenance absent.
    For most Solomon Islanders, tied to a subsistence economy, their primary point of reference is not Honiara but their local village and island communities.  It is not that a sense of nationhood is lacking.  Rather, it is the government’s inability to deliver the tangible benefits of nationhood.  Outside the few larger towns, the traditional chiefs and the church remain the custodians of community stability and support.
    The wisdom of tidying up the balance sheets in Honiara may look attractive from outside.  In context, it may even be valuable.  But that priority is predicated on the assumption that Solomon Islands has the capacity to pursue nationhood within the mould with which we are most comfortable.  That ambition is doubtful.  Natural resources are limited and their exploitation difficult to regulate.  Ownership of land remains jealously guarded at the local level.  A young population is set to explode in size.
 integrated into the way ahead.
    Cooperative intervention may well create a brief opportunity for Solomon Islands to redefine its concept of nationhood and a future development strategy.  But is Australia prepared to commit the much more substantial resources necessary to enable the island nation in the longer term? And will we be able to resist the past temptation to try to shape it as little more than a pale image of ourselves?
    On those two propositions hangs the ultimate test of cooperative intervention – a bold initiative with the capacity to transform our region or a misguided step half way along the road to nowhere?

Stewart Woodman is a professor in the school of humanities and social sciences at University College, ADFA.  In 1998 he prepared a strategic review for the Solomon Islands government.