Law and disorder

BY TIM HUME

IT'S A surprise to learn at the end of a meal with Jimmy "Rasta" Lusibaea, one of the Solomon Islands' most feared men, that the former warlord stands at just 5ft7. Wearing a singlet in the air-conditioned chill of one of Honiara's Chinese restaurants – his hulking, 100kg physique amply displayed, his Easter Island head crowned with dreadlocks – Lusibaea seems a much larger presence. He looks like a wrestler, like The Lion King: the very picture of a Melanesian strongman.

The 39-year-old was one of the de facto rulers of a lawless Honiara during the four years of the Tensions: the ethnic conflict, begun in 1999, in which scores were killed, 20,000 made homeless, and this dirt-poor but hitherto peaceful Pacific country of 600,000 people brought to the brink of collapse.

In July 2003, at the invitation of the Solomon Islands government, and motivated by post-9/11 fears of the implications of a failed state in their own backyard, New Zealand and Australian forces staged a large-scale military intervention.

The 2200-strong police-led operation was the largest in the Pacific since the Second World War. It swiftly imposed order and disarmed the militants. The intervention force has since shrunk to about 600, including 100 New Zealanders, and steadily assumed a more civilian focus in the guise of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), an ambitious, open-ended exercise in peacekeeping and nation-building which has cost New Zealand $80 million to date. (Australia, the mission's other financial underwriter, has spent $1.78 billion.) The Solomons is now our largest recipient of bilateral aid, with a whole-of-government spend of nearly $185m on the country since RAMSI begun.

When RAMSI forces arrived, Lusibaea, a mechanic by trade, was the "supreme commander" of the Eagle Force, an ethnic militia from the island of Malaita, formed in response to a campaign of violence against their kin who had settled around the capital, Honiara, on the neighbouring island of Guadalcanal. Fuelled by land issues and other festering resentments, the fighting gave a sense of purpose and source of income for many unemployed young Malaitan men who, having gained the upper hand militarily, played at being soldier with impunity.

Thousands fled the capital, returning to subsistence lifestyles in their home villages, as the Eagle Force helped themselves to cars, food, women and whatever else they fancied. They raided the national police armoury of weapons, menaced taxmen in their offices for cash, printed their logo on the nation's stamps. In June 2000, they kidnapped the prime minister.

Lusibaea's talent for warfare made him infamous. He produces from his wallet a mugshot taken from that time. "Look at my eyes," he says. "My family were raised Christian," he says, "but during the fighting I was believing in the devil, believing in what Malaitans believe."

Before their pacification by Christian missionaries, Solomon Islanders were fearsome headhunters. The people of Malaita, the largest and most influential ethnic group, still hold tightly to many of their old customs. Prior to battle, Lusibaea was beaten and put through the fire as part of traditional rituals of invincibility. "If they fire the rifle, I can dodge the bullet," he says. "That's why I'm still alive." The boy who had grown up shooting pigeons with his father's hunting rifle was a natural with an M-16. "It was perfect," he says. He once won a famous military victory over Guadalcanal forces by modifying a bulldozer with a 50 calibre rifle to create an improvised, island-style tank, and driving out an enemy bunker on the outskirts of Honiara.

Today, Lusibaea has the handshake of a corpse, speaks quietly, and waves away the offer of a beer in favour of a fruit juice. After RAMSI's arrival, he says, he was sent to prison, where he was born again. During his incarceration, he reconciled with his former enemies, including psychopathic Guadalcanal warlord Harold Keke.

After formally forgiving each other – a significant step in a society regulated by codes of retribution and compensation – the imprisoned fighters gave up the names of the politicians who had driven each side into war. Lusibaea now employs a number of former Guadalcanal militants in his construction company. "I'm a changed man now," he says.

Yet scores remain unsettled. The personal reconciliation between opposing militants which took place in prison doesn't extend to the majority of their comrades who were never brought to justice. Many Solomon Islanders confide they fear a bloodbath if RAMSI were to leave. "Most people from Malaita don't want RAMSI. Lots from Guadalcanal tell you they do. That tells you Guadalcanal people are fearful of what will happen if RAMSI leaves," he says. "But I can't talk about that."

Lusibaea holds himself aloof from his country's healing process, spearheaded by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission launched by South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu last year. He is angry that the militants have not received the immunity from prosecution he claims they were promised in signing a peace agreement, while the politicians who allegedly orchestrated the conflict have gone unpunished.

He will abstain from joining in the peace process – which he says has so far engaged "only the spectators, not the players" – until this is rectified, and former militants are rehabilitated. By "rehabilitated", he clarifies, he means given jobs, and possibly some form of compensation "for protecting the capital".

"Life is hard for them," he says. "Most companies won't employ them, because they are psychologically haunted. They have this kind of aggressiveness." Many remain in the bush, retain access to their arms caches, and are prepared to remobilise if the time is right. "The boys are up in the hills," he says. "They've got their firearms. The people are feeding them."

Lusibaea is upfront about trying to use the threat of remobilisation as a "bargaining chip" to force a pardon, and a release of his jailed comrades. "There's enough guns to start again," he says, then begins boasting. "A rebel group don't need 10 guns. When they walk through the town with their powerful weapons, we count them off – that's my gun, that's my gun, that's my gun. If we kill, we get it. That's how we build our armoury."

His taunts sound like the language of the fringe, but Lusibaea is campaigning for a parliament seat this year. With widespread support from his tribal area – where chiefs in some electoral districts have decreed that no candidates shall stand against their war hero – he seems likely to succeed. He has his eye on a couple of key roles in parliament. "I will win in a landslide," he says.

FOR SEVEN years now, from a high-security base situated on a former beach resort outside Honiara, RAMSI has proved a successful deterrent to the lingering threat posed by Lusibaea and hundreds of others like him.

"We're not naive enough to think there might not be a cache of firearms somewhere up in the hills, but after all these years we haven't seen them," says New Zealander Peter Marshall, commissioner of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force.

The mission's 99-strong New Zealand contingent includes 45 territorial soldiers, 36 police and 18 civilians, engaged in the protracted, delicate work of restoring civil order, rebuilding the shattered machinery of government, and promoting good governance. The effects of their stabilising presence, say locals, can be seen everywhere in the capital. More buildings along the seaboard. More cars on the road. More shoes on people's feet.

Rather than occupy himself with the political scheming of former militants, Marshall is focused on the more pressing challenges of rebuilding "from the ground up" the compromised force he inherited in 2007, and tackling a perceived crime problem in the demographic nightmare that is Honiara.

"During the tension, the police were part of the problem as opposed to the solution," says Marshall, who has been on a heavy recruitment drive to replenish a force rid of corrupt officers.

Efforts to improve policing standards have been bolstered by RAMSI's provision of Australian and New Zealand officers to act as advisers to their Solomon Island counterparts. Superintendent Bazz Bailey, commander of the New Zealand police contingent, mentors a local assistant commissioner, and can see the change RAMSI has made since his previous six-month deployment in 2004. "In most cases these days there's an expectation the RSIPF officer will lead, and the [Australasian] officer would only get involved if necessary," he says. "Back in '04 it was us leading all the arrests."

The major challenge facing police, says Marshall, is the explosion of Honiara's population, due to urban drift and high birth rates. The shabby capital, built on the bones of an American military base left behind in World War II, is the country's only real urban centre, and a magnet for young people from throughout the scattered archipelago who arrive in their thousands every year, looking for work. There is none. They invariably find themselves staying with relatives in crowded shacks of the city's squatter settlements, with limited sources of income other than crime.

New Zealand soldiers are routinely called on to support patrols of the city's hotspots on the weekends. Lt Alan Cockerill, a Wellington policy analyst who recently completed a four-month RAMSI territorial deployment, says his troops would typically encounter young men fuelled on qwaso, a volatile local homebrew. With former militiamen keeping a low profile, the drunken weekend mobs are likely to be the most hostile situations New Zealand soldiers will face. But despite being classified as a low-risk mission, there have been casualties. In 2004, an Australian policeman was shot dead by snipers, and in 2008, a Kiwi constable survived an attack by a group of machete-wielding men.

While many residents complain about the law and order situation, for Marshall, the crime statistics don't show any deterioration. A spate of late night home invasions of expat houses last year, including Marshall's, were exceptional (see Home invasion, right).

Five minutes across town, a New Zealander is helming efforts to rebuild another crucial arm of government. Andrew Minto, brother of activist John, has been the Solomon Islands' commissioner of Inland Revenue for two years, working to develop a tax base that will enable the weak government to provide essential services. The rate of tax compliance in the Solomons sits at about 30%; in the past three years the Inland Revenue has added 1000 businesses to their books and more than quadrupled the government's tax revenues since RAMSI began.

Many businesses were reluctant to pay tax during the anarchy of the Tensions – their contributions often went straight into militants' pockets. "They had armed gunmen in our office, the treasury was raided," says Minto. "A lot of staff are probably still traumatised by what happened."

Both men say there has been major progress since RAMSI began, but their institutions are still unable to go it alone. "The question's always asked: how long will RAMSI be here," says Marshall. "I don't see any change out of five years for them to be going solo. That's being optimistic."

LAST YEAR the Solomon Islands government's foreign relations committee completed its first significant inquiry into RAMSI, a landmark interrogation of the project which canvassed hundreds of people at public hearings throughout the country.

The inquiry ultimately endorsed RAMSI's work, and was followed by the drafting of a "partnership framework", outlining the goals to be achieved by the intervention, and setting target dates for the work to be completed.

RAMSI's deputy special co-ordinator, New Zealander Justin Fepulea'i, says the document is the closest thing to an exit strategy that exists. The dates stretch to 2015 but they are "just indicative time frames", he says. "Some will go on further than that. There's no arbitrary fixed deadline. We want to make sure we go with the job done properly."

The inquiry also provided a forum for concerns about the intervention to be aired. According to surveys, nearly nine in 10 Solomon Islanders support the mission. But a vocal minority, including former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare, resents its continued presence, viewing RAMSI as a neo-colonial occupying force devised only to serve Australasian interests.

By embedding powerful foreign technocrats in advising roles across the spectrum of government, they say, and granting foreign personnel immunity from prosecution, RAMSI undermines Solomon Islands' sovereignty. With so many of the contracts surrounding RAMSI awarded to Australasian-owned firms, the intervention amounts to "boomerang aid".

Sogavare, now leader of the opposition, is criticised by many in his country as a dissident and obstructive voice, whose antipathy towards RAMSI is personal. During his premiership, Sogavare was a central figure in the "Moti affair", the farcical diplomatic crisis between Australia and the Solomons that threatened to scuttle RAMSI in 2006-7.

The scandal began when Sogavare appointed Julian Moti, a Fijian-born lawyer with Australian citizenship who was his close friend, as the country's attorney-general, despite Australia wanting Moti extradited to face historic child sex charges. Moti fled to Papua New Guinea, was arrested, then illegally spirited back to the Solomon Islands after having taken refuge in their high commission while on bail. When RAMSI forces raided Sogavare's office looking for evidence of his complicity, Sogavare retaliated by expelling Australia's high commissioner, the Australian-born police commissioner, and threatening to kick out RAMSI as well.

Yet it is not hard to see how resentments might form towards RAMSI's new colonial class. In central Honiara, Australasians drink espressos in air-conditioned cafes and pile high their plates at hotel buffets, minutes away from villagers squatting in the filth of the markets, selling produce for a pittance. While the intervention is conducted with noble intentions and unfailing goodwill, the zero-risk approach to security means the majority of RAMSI personnel are mandated to live their lives at a remove from the society beyond their compound gates.

Over the past seven years, a simmering resentment towards Australians has developed, from which New Zealanders appear notably exempt.

New Zealand personnel discover early on the value of the Kiwi insignia on their uniform. "The locals call it the fat chicken," says Major Stuart Brown, a transplanted Englishman who is New Zealand's senior national officer in RAMSI, and who attributes the warm reception to New Zealanders' more natural affinity with island cultures. "They see even guys like me participate in that Pacific culture."

The Australians, for their part, are aware of the sentiment, a senior official confides. "Maybe it's to do with being the big dog on the block: we're an easy target to hate." The Australian style of policing is generally blunter and more direct than locals are accustomed to. "But that's because we need to get results. With all the funding behind this mission, we can't afford to sit back and let things happen on Pacific time."

RAMSI's public relations outreach programmes are careful to emphasise the regional nature of the mission, which includes contributions from 13 other Pacific island states; they downplay the identity of its major funder.

"WE'RE VERY grateful for RAMSI," says Paul Tovua, the Solomon Islands' permanent secretary to the mission.

The relationship with the intervention force is particularly healthy in the wake of the recent inquiry.

"That was helpful. It's the first time we've formulated a plan. There have been some misconceptions that RAMSI is here to do everything. RAMSI is here on a specific mandate, and now everyone knows that's what they're doing."

Less progress had been made in other aspects of the Solomons' recovery. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, launched last year, had been "slow in taking off. Well, nothing's really been done there yet", he says.

The delays were not shortcomings on RAMSI's part. "It's not within RAMSI's mandate. They do help: they provide the atmosphere, the environment, sometimes the logistics. But this is something the people and the Solomon Islands government will have to do."

Across the city, in Chinatown, Jennifer Wate, director of the Solomon Islands Development Trust, laments the pace of reconciliation.

For nearly three decades, since the former British protectorate gained independence near the end of a long wave of decolonisation in 1978, her NGO has been one of the country's most outspoken voices warning about impending crises. Urban drift, political corruption, the depletion of the country's forests, the arrival of HIV: all of which have come to pass. Now she sees it happening again.

"One of the things we've been preaching over the years is for Solomon Islanders to be confident in themselves, to become self reliant," she says.

"RAMSI is here to give our country breathing space, to help give us space to plan ahead. But what we see is there are only a few people using this time to plan for their future."

Under the sheltering administration of RAMSI, she believes the country has slumped all too readily into a familiar state of inertia and helplessness. Solomon Islands society at large, but in particular the political leadership, had failed to register that the stability provided by the new foreign guardians was only temporary. The country was making little headway on the essential work of building peace, addressing the difficult issues that had ignited the Tensions initially, and would likely do so again when RAMSI inevitably left.

"This dependence syndrome is still a big issue," she says. "It's a post-colonial problem. Sometimes I hear villagers say, `I don't think we're ready to have independence'."

Wate doesn't buy that. "But I think we're not ready to have RAMSI leave yet either."

Home invasion

At about 1am one September night last year, Solomon Islands Police Commissioner Peter Marshall was lying asleep in bed with his wife when he awoke to the sound of his security guards yelling out his name.

"The next minute all the glass in the house started exploding," said the New Zealander. "Straight away I knew what we were in for."

Several of Marshall's neighbours had been targeted by armed gangs in home invasions in previous weeks; he had held a community awareness meeting in his own home over the attacks. So he knew what to do.

"Whereas your first instincts might have been to go down the hallway, we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom and sustained about 10 minutes of onslaught, with internal doors and windows being smashed." The intruders – 13 of them, ranging in age from 14 to 29 – were armed with machetes. Marshall armed himself with his police baton and ceremonial sword and pressed himself against his bedroom door as the men tried to bash their way in.

"There was a bit of a scuffle and I managed to break a baton," he said. "There would be times when the door would be pushed open – I thrust the sword through and kept them at bay." After about 10 minutes spent fighting for his and his wife's lives, Marshall's ordeal ended when neighbours arrived and the intruders fled.

They were soon arrested. Marshall said the experience was terrifying. "No argument there. Never been in a situation like that before, never want to either." But it was highly uncharacteristic of his time in the Solomons. "These tinkers were exceptional," he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News