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Lead-Up to Operation Lagoon

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Lead-Up to Operation Lagoon Chapter 6 Lead-Up to Operation Lagoon After Operation Morris Dance, Australia's next force projection into the near region occurred in October 1994. Sir Julius Chan, the newly-elected Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG), was taking the initiative on the Bougainville Crisis, a war with secessionists in Bougainville that had begun in the late 1980s.1 He had started negotiations with Australia in May 1994 when, as Foreign Minister, he had consulted his Australian counterpart, Senator Gareth Evans.2 Chan's plan depended on Australia providing diplomatic, logistic and other specialist military support for the deployment of a South Pacific peacekeeping force to Bougainville to provide a secure environment for a peace conference. The agreed trigger for convening a peace conference was the submission of a report from an Australian delegation that had visited Bougainville in response to reports of human rights abuses by the PNG Defence Force (PNGDF). Senator Stephen Loosely, head of the delegation, presented his report in Parliament on 8 June 1994.3 It contained a timetable for a peace process that would begin with community consultations and culminate with a peace conference later in the year. The report recommended that a South Pacific peacekeeping force provide security for the conference venue and delegates. In his formal reply to Loosely's report in Parliament, Evans signalled: Australia could play a role in supporting a small regional peace keeping force, established to facilitate a peace process: this has not been put to us as a detailed proposal, and we await further elaboration of the concept. We would certainly consider any such proposal very sympathetically.4 On the same day that Loosely tabled his report, Defence Minister Robert Ray approved a plan for Operation Lagoon. The plan envisaged a Fijian-led South Pacific Peace Keeping Force (SPPKF) assembling and training in Fiji and deploying from there to Bougainville via Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.5 In the covering minute to the plan, the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF), Admiral Alan Beaumont, wrote to Ray: I am confident we could mount the operation successfully given the appropriate political climate, but because of the ADF's supporting role, the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces] would be key players; without them we would be on shaky ground militarily. ¼ You might note it would require approx [imately] three weeks from receiving your approval 53 Struggling for Self Reliance to proceed until all arrangements were in place to commence the conference.6 Beaumont had set an ambitious timetable, presumably on advice from his Assistant Chief of the DefenceÐOperations (ACOPS), Major General Jim Connolly. For the time being, the only persons officially aware of this plan were six officers at Headquarters Australian Defence Force (HQ ADF), Beaumont, Ray, and probably Evans. It remained as a contingency plan, untested by wider analysis from staff at HQ ADF or subordinate headquarters. The need to keep the Operation Lagoon plan a secret from staff at HQ ADF as well as the environmental commanders and their senior staff was puzzling. Evans had talked freely to the media and in Parliament in June 1994 about Australia supporting a small-scale, short-time deployment of a SPPKF to Bougainville. Chan was reported later to have undertaken some personal lobbying during a tour of South Pacific island countries, canvassing participation in a SPPKF.7 These indicators that a force projection was in the offing did not prompt HQ ADF to begin contingency planning with subordinate headquarters, who would have to plan and execute Operation Lagoon. For their part, subordinate headquarters, such as Land Headquarters, HQ 1st Division and HQ 3rd Brigade, did not take their cue from Evans' statements to conduct any contingency planning either. Lieutenant General John Baker, who was Vice Chief of the Defence Force (VCDF) at the time, commented later that Ray was not as keen as Evans about supporting Chan's initiative in Bougainville. Accordingly, he gave no encouragement to Beaumont to begin more comprehensive planning with lower levels of command.8 On 27 August 1994, PNG foreign affairs officials, following Chan's direction, met Bougainvillean secessionist leaders at Tambea in the Solomon Islands and signed the Tambea Accords. The PNG Government and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) agreed to pursue a peace process that would involve deployment of a SPPKF into Bougainville. This was a clear signal to Australia that more detailed planning was now urgently required. Australian diplomats met in Canberra during the following days to decide on the way ahead. Chan gave further impetus to the Bougainville peace process on 30 August, soon after being appointed Prime Minister. He used his inaugural speech to state that he would lead negotiations for peace in Bougainville with secessionist leaders. Five days after the Tambea Accords were signed, and two days after Chan's announcement of his intentions, Beaumont had still not issued a warning order to subordinate levels of command. He advised Ray on 2 September that he would continue planning in secret.9 Ray may have directed Beaumont to wait for formal agreements between the PNG Government and the Bougainvillean secessionists on the conduct and location of the peace conference before issuing a warning order. In any event, time shortened for subordinate headquarters to plan, check and organise, and for logisticians to anticipate and pre-position supplies. 54 Lead-Up to Operation Lagoon Chan met with the secessionist military commander, General Sam Kauona, at Honiara on 2 September 1994. They signed Commitment for Peace on Bougainville the next day. The document contained arrangements for a ceasefire, nomination of Arawa as the peace conference site, a schedule for the peace process and the tasks that would be required of the SPPKF (including the creation of a secure environment in three neutral zones and collection of arms at those zones prior to transporting delegates to Arawa). There would be a ceasefire from midnight on 12 September and the peace conference was planned to begin on 10 October. They scheduled discussions for raising the SPPKF on 9 September in Nadi, Fiji. Chan's insistence that the peace conference would begin on 10 October caught his own and the Australian Government by surprise. When he first proposed this timetable late in August, his advisers and departmental officials, as well as the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby, had advised him that it was unworkable.10 However, Chan maintained his position: the conference would begin no later than 10 October. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) now had less than six weeks to prepare and deploy a SPPKF comprised of contingents from Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu to Bougainville. Beaumont nominated the Land Commander, Major General Peter Arnison, as his lead joint commander for Operation Lagoon. His staff sent a copy of the Lagoon contingency plan to Arnison's staff three days later on 5 September. By then, Arnison had sent his senior planning officer, Lieutenant Colonel Justin O'Connor, to the Gulf of Carpentaria to brief Brigadier Peter Abigail, Commander, 3rd Brigade, about Operation Lagoon, in anticipation of him becoming the combined force tactical commander. After the briefing on 5 September, O'Connor told Abigail and two of his senior staff that he would be convening a planning conference on 9 September to consider a planning directive that was being developed by staff at HQ ADF. Abigail insisted that his Brigade Major, Major David Morrison, attend. O'Connor later tried to dissuade Morrison from attending because it was not time for the tactical level of command to be involved.11 Morrison insisted and went. He recalled: I think it was very opportune that I was there. This was the first time all of the `doers' met for Operation Lagoon. The navy, the air force and the movers [probably 11 Movement Control Group] were in the loop. There were about 12 officers there who represented organisations that would have to make things happen. The meeting opened with a briefing from the Land Commander, General Arnison, followed by some intelligence people and then [Lieutenant Colonel] Bob Shoebridge told us about what had been happening in Canberra. I had no idea that HQ ADF had known about this operation for months and that very little real planning had gone on, especially in the logistics and administrative areas.12 55 Struggling for Self Reliance Beaumont's draft planning directive went well beyond providing strategic guidance. It specified tasks for Arnison and then went on to include operational and tactical details. After a day of deliberation, the members of O'Connor's planning group produced notes for a concept for operations and a draft directive to Abigail. In this draft, Arnison directed Abigail to present a concept for operations on 15 September to the staff at Land Headquarters so it could be refined before transmission to HQ ADF for approval. Arnison had given Abigail and his staff a significant challenge because they knew very little about the situation in Bougainville, Rules of Engagement (ROE) for a combined force, or the potential threat to the SPPKF. Morrison recalled later: I left Sydney with a very loose draft directive [from Arnison] for the Commander [Abigail], my notes from the meeting and some other loose paperwork that I had managed to gather. At this stage everything about this operation was loose.13 Morrison flew back to Townsville to find that Abigail had returned from the field to meet him and find out what Operation Lagoon was all about. Even with the sketchy information they had, Abigail knew he had to begin developing concepts and anticipating what would be required to support the SPPKF.14 Offsetting the tight deadlines and gaps in information, Abigail, Morrison and Major Ian Hughes, Abigail's senior logistic staff officer, were used to producing plans and getting 3rd Brigade into action at short notice.
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