Pillars and Shadows Statebuilding as peacebuilding in Solomon Islands Pillars and Shadows Statebuilding as peacebuilding in Solomon Islands John Braithwaite, Sinclair Dinnen, Matthew Allen, Valerie Braithwaite and Hilary Charlesworth 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/pillars_shadows_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Pillars and shadows : statebuilding as peacebuilding in Solomon Islands / John Braithwaite ... [et al.] ISBN: 9781921666780 (pbk.) 9781921666797 (pdf) Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Ethnic conflict--Solomon Islands. Peace-building--Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands--History. Solomon Islands--Politics and government. Other Authors/Contributors: Braithwaite, John. Dewey Number: 305.80099593 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 photo: Deference and affection of young armed men of the Isatabu Freedom Movement on the front line at Alligator Creek are palpable in this photo of sisters and women’s leaders of various churches as peacemakers — Simon Schluter, The Age Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2010 ANU E Press Contents Acknowledgments vii Advisory Panel ix Glossary xi Map xiii 1. Peacebuilding Compared and the Solomons conflict 1 2. Historical background to the conflict 13 3. Descent into armed conflict 23 4. Peace processes 37 5. Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands 49 6. Reconciliation and reintegration 81 7. What layers of identity were involved in the conflict? 95 8. Interpreting the conflict in summary 109 9. Peacebuilding strengths and weaknesses 135 10. Statebuilding that contained conflict but shelved specifics that fuelled conflict 151 Appendix 167 References 169 Index 185 v Acknowledgments Thanks to our Advisory Panel for their sage advice on the fieldwork and comments on the book; they bear no responsibility for its deficiencies. Our deepest thanks go to many Solomon Islanders on all sides of the conflict who generously gave of their time and shared their insights and to Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) members and other internationals whom we interviewed in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and in Solomon Islands between 2005 and 2010. The Appendix to this book describes the nature of the interviews conducted by John Braithwaite and all the other members of the team of co-authors for this book who spent time in Solomon Islands doing fieldwork for the research with him. Sinclair Dinnen and Matthew Allen have undertaken their own extensive research in Solomon Islands over many years in addition to these interviews. Matthew’s PhD research on the Solomon Islands conflict will be published in future as a book. It will take much further some of the issues only touched on in this publication. We are fortunate in having such an outstanding community of scholars of Solomon Islands at The Australian National University and beyond, whose work has enriched ours. Their work is cited at relevant points in our text. We especially acknowledge the formidable work in documenting the story of the conflict that has been done in the important books by Jon Fraenkel (2004a) and Clive Moore (2004). Our work would have been much more difficult if we did not have this scholarship to lean on. Special thanks for all manner of support from our colleagues on the project Leah Dunn, Kate Macfarlane, Charlie Beauchamp-Wood and Nick Kitchin. Leah (2005–08) and Kate (2009–10) in turn provided outstanding administrative leadership for the considerable infrastructure of an undertaking as large as the Peacebuilding Compared project. We also thank the Australian Research Council for funding this research. We acknowledge our ANU E Press series editor, Margaret Thornton, managers, Lorena Kanellopoulos and Duncan Beard, copyeditor, Jan Borrie, and anonymous referees for their thoughtful insights and guidance. 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. Please feel encouraged to make comments on the book on the Peacebuilding Compared web site: <http://peacebuilding.anu.edu.au> vii Advisory Panel, Solomon Islands case of Peacebuilding Compared Dr Jon Fraenkel, The Australian National University David Hegarty, The Australian National University Dr John Roughan, Solomon Islands Development Trust Professor Ted Wolfers, University of Wollongong John Wood, Consultant to RAMSI Machinery of Government ix Glossary AFP Australian Federal Police ASPI Australian Strategic Policy Institute AusAID Australian Agency for International Development BRA Bougainville Revolutionary Army COC Christian Outreach Centre DPP Director of Public Prosecutions EU European Union GDP gross domestic product GLF Guadalcanal Liberation Front IFM Isatabu Freedom Movement IMF International Monetary Fund IPMT International Peace Monitoring Team kastom custom or customary law kiap patrol officers in colonial Papua and New Guinea MEF Malaita Eagle Force MP Member of Parliament nabe placid or peaceful NGO non-governmental organisation NPC National Peace Council NZAID New Zealand’s International Aid and Development Agency OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development PMC Peace Monitoring Council PNG Papua New Guinea PPF Participating Police Force (police component of RAMSI) RAMSI Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands SDA Seventh-Day Adventist Church SICA Solomon Islands Christian Association SSEC South Sea Evangelical Church TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission UK United Kingdom xi Pillars and Shadows UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund UNPOL United Nations Police Force US United States of America waku Chinese/Asian person wantok People with whom one shares a set of mutual social obligations. Literally translated as ‘speaking the same language’. wantokism the wantok system WWF World Wide Fund for Nature xii Map of Solomon Islands xiii 1. Peacebuilding Compared and the Solomons conflict Statebuilding that neglects specific sources of conflict The Solomon Islands conflict of 1998–2003 is often read simply as a story of a failed or fragile state. It was not a state that had been built and then failed. Rather it was a state that had never consolidated after decades since independence of taking at least as many steps back as steps forward. It was not a formed state; up to this point in its history, it has been a state in a process of formation. In this book, we conceive peacebuilding as the craft of supporting institutions, including non-state institutions, in a process of growing to provide human security. We do not conceive it as a process of following an outside architect’s plan to erect core pillars of the state such as law, economic governance and public administration. We will argue that there is little that is generic about statebuilding in Solomon Islands and much that is shadowy in a distinctively Solomons way. There is a formal state defined by the nation’s Constitution, but it is shadowed by economically, politically and diplomatically powerful figures who have shaped the nation’s history, and particularly its history of conflict. In our text, we consider William Reno’s (1995) metaphor of the shadow state and the earlier metaphor of the shadow (or underground) economy. And we ponder the possibility that when pillars of the state are driven into the sand of shadow governance that envelops the formal state to influence the outcome in moments of crisis, a false sense of security is created. We read the Solomons conflict as occurring at the conjunction of a complex of fragilities—some in the Parliament, some in the police, some in a fragmented nation where the dignity of ethnic identities was exploited, some in the global political economy, others in institutions that regulate a scramble for key resources: land, forests, fish. Given this intricate knot of fragilities that is a legacy of Solomons history and culture, the peacebuilding1 that has been done has been surprisingly successful. And in the event, this conflict that seemed forebodingly out of control did not spread to most villages of the nation, affecting 1 We use peacebuilding in the most general sense here to mean any peacemaking, peacekeeping, pre-conflict prevention of violence and post-conflict building of commitment to peace by any means, whether by local or international actors. 1 Pillars and Shadows only Honiara and its surrounds, the Weather Coast, parts of North Malaita and pockets of Western Province. Perhaps 90 per cent of villages continued peacefully working at their village economies throughout, not dependent on the modern state and economy, and therefore also not greatly affected by the statebuilding intended to rebuild peace. We conclude in the final chapter that while peacebuilding in Solomon Islands made many large and small mistakes, people learnt from these mistakes. This learning of greater humility in peacebuilding could be one reason why the Solomons peace has not failed so far. On the pessimistic side, we find it to be slow and costly learning. We wonder if there is not some inevitability about this. Nevertheless, we draw some lessons from the Solomon Islands intervention on how slow learning might be quickened somewhat by rethinking the peacebuilding craft. This rethinking involves overcoming fear of ‘mission creep’. It means seeing ‘peacebuilding creep’ as about mission contraction as much as mandate expansion. The craft of peace as learned in Solomon Islands is about enabling spaces for dialogue that define where the mission should pull back to allow local actors to expand the horizons of their peacebuilding ambition.