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Reconciliation and Architectures of Commitment: Sequencing Peace in Bougainville

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Reconciliation and Architectures of Commitment: Sequencing Peace in Bougainville Reconciliation and Architectures of Commitment Sequencing peace in Bougainville Reconciliation and Architectures of Commitment Sequencing peace in Bougainville John Braithwaite, Hilary Charlesworth, Peter Reddy and Leah Dunn THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E P R E S S  E P R E S S Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/??_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Reconciliation and architectures of commitment : sequencing peace in Bougainville / John Braithwaite ... [et al.]. ISBN: 9781921666681 (pbk.) 9781921666698 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Bougainville Crisis, Papua New Guinea, 1988- Women and peace--Papua New Guinea--Bougainville Island. Bougainville Island (Papua New Guinea)--History. Bougainville Island (Papua New Guinea)--Autonomy and independence movements. Bougainville Island (Papua New Guinea)--Politics and government. Other Authors/Contributors: Braithwaite, John. Dewey Number: 327.172099592 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: Children of Resistance and Bougainville Revolutionary Army sides of the conflict arrive at the signing of the Bougainville Ceasefire Agreement in Arawa wearing traditional upi headdresses. Photo: AAP/AFP Torsten Blackwood Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2010 ANU E Press iv  Contents Acknowledgments vii Advisory Panel ix Glossary xi Map of Bougainville xiii 1. Peacebuilding Compared and the Bougainville conflict 1 2. Historical background to the conflict 9 3. Descent into civil war 23 4. Peacemaking on, off and finally back on track 35 5. The architecture of the peace 51 6. Reconciliation and reintegration 67 7. The cost of the conflict 83 8. Layers of identity involved in the conflict 93 9. Interpreting the conflict in summary 103 10. Deep and shallow restorative peace 133 Appendix 141 References 143 Index 153 v  vi Acknowledgments Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowships at The Australian National University supported John Braithwaite and Hilary Charlesworth to plan and read for the Peacebuilding Compared project. ARC Discovery grants then funded its execution. Our thanks are due to Kate Macfarlane who has done a splendid job in taking over from Leah Dunn as manager of the Peacebuilding Compared project. Kate’s careful research and data-management contributions were vital to getting the job finished, as were those of Celeste Ecuyer, Charlie Beauchamp-Wood, Scott Rutar, Karina Pelling and Nick Kitchin. Leah Dunn is a co-author of this book, though she also must be thanked for serving generously in the same capacity as Kate Macfarlane for many years. She participated in two fieldwork trips to Bougainville in which, among other things, she organised a Peacebuilding Conference on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Autonomous Bougainville Government in 2007. The conference was attended throughout two days plus preparatory meetings by the then President, Joseph Kabui, and his successor, President James Tanis, and also by the then Papua New Guinea Minister for Bougainville Affairs, Sir Peter Barter. These leaders have been iterative contributors to this research and to the peace in Bougainville. The conference was also graced by the participation of senior Me’ekamui participants who agreed to a most constructive communiqué drafted consultatively by President Tanis. Leah’s video of the entire proceedings of the conference can be viewed online at <http://peacebuilding.anu.edu.au/ videolib/index.php>. Thanks to our ANU E Press series editor, Margaret Thornton, managers Lorena Kanellopoulos and Duncan Beard, and copy editor, Jan Borrie. Their wonderful publishing model means this book is available free on the Internet and also at a modest price as a handsome hardcopy. This is a special virtue for research of which the important readers are in developing countries. We are also grateful to the helpful suggestions made by the anonymous referees. Our Advisory Panel members were invaluable in assisting with contacts to interview, publications to read and providing sophisticated commentary on drafts as well as other forms of advice. Many were extraordinarily generous with their time. Of course, they bear no responsibility for the interpretive and factual errors that remain in the final text. Fieldwork for the book was conducted by John Braithwaite with Peter Reddy in 2006, building on earlier fieldwork on Peter’s PhD on Bougainville (not included vii ReconciliationandArchitecturesofCommitment in the summary of the types of interviews listed in the Appendix; Reddy 2006) and by John Braithwaite with Leah Dunn and Hilary Charlesworth in two subsequent trips to Bougainville and Port Moresby in 2007. Peacekeepers and other international players were also interviewed in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu between 2005 and 2010. Our deepest thanks are to many Bougainvilleans and other Papua New Guineans on all sides of the conflict who generously gave their time and shared their insights, often on multiple occasions, in anonymous interviews. We thank the entire present and former staff of the Peace Foundation Melanesia, all of whom were particularly helpful in assisting us to meet key players, but special thanks to Clarence Dency and John Latu. Thanks also to the PNG Government, the Autonomous Bougainville Government, the Buka Open Campus of the University of Papua New Guinea (particularly Albert Nukuitu) and to the National Research Institute (particularly Jim Robins). We benefited from participation in the wonderful Melanesian research community in Australia and at The Australian National University. Particular thanks to two of John Braithwaite’s PhD students who worked on Bougainville theses, Kylie McKenna and Peter Reddy. We enjoyed many stimulating conversations with both of them. Peter is a co-author of this book because he participated in the first wave of data collection for a month in Bougainville, whereas Kylie was at an earlier stage of her work when the writing was substantially complete. We are grateful to Kylie for insights from her 2010 fieldwork in Bougainville, which was completed just before this book went to press. Among our many generous colleagues, we single out Anthony Regan as a mentor to us throughout this research process. We were fortunate that all three of our major fieldwork trips overlapped with periods when Anthony was in Bougainville. Many were the evenings after our fieldwork when Anthony was able to correct what we thought were great insights acquired in the course of the day. He was also a gracious and wise colleague back in Canberra and an admirable contributor to the peace in Bougainville. Anthony’s own most up- to-date contribution, Light Intervention: Lessons from Bougainville, will be published soon by the US Institute of Peace Press. We recommend it as the single most informative source on the past, present and future of the Bougainville peace process. John Braithwaite and Hilary Charlesworth The Australian National University June 2010 viii Advisory Panel for the Bougainville case of Peacebuilding Compared Dr Volker Boege, University of Queensland Dr Bob Breen, The Australian National University Anthony Regan, The Australian National University Dr Ruth Saovana-Spriggs, The Australian National University Professor Edward Wolfers, University of Wollongong ix Glossary ABG Autonomous Bougainville Government AusAID Australian Agency for International Development BCL Bougainville Copper Limited BIG Bougainville Interim Government BLF Buka Liberation Front BRA Bougainville Revolutionary Army BRF Bougainville Resistance Forces BTG Bougainville Transitional Government IMF International Monetary Fund NGO non-governmental organisation PMG Peace Monitoring Group PNG Papua New Guinea PNGDF Papua New Guinea Defence Force TMG Truce Monitoring Group UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNOMB United Nations Observer Mission Bougainville UNPOB United Nations Political Office Bougainville xi Map of Bougainville xiii 1. Peacebuilding Compared and the Bougainville conflict The story in brief Bougainville suffered a terrible civil war for a decade from 1988 that pitted separatist forces of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) against the national military and police of Papua New Guinea. The fighting evolved to set Bougainville factions against one another in the worst killing. This book argues that peacebuilding in Bougainville was shaped by bottom-up traditional and Christian reconciliation practices and a carefully crafted top-down political settlement. These two processes operated in symbiotic fashion, each making space for, and reinforcing, the other. There are important lessons in how each was designed and how one was connected to the other. For the student of peacebuilding, there is much to learn from the genius of this symbiosis between a top-down architecture of credible commitment and bottom-up reconciliation. It has been a peace that has progressively become more resilient since 1998. The sequential sustaining of the peace has been patient—what Volker Boege (2006) has called
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