Australian troops lead peace force to the Solomons
The South Pacific’s biggest military deployment since the war began in the tropical dawn when an Australian air force C-130 Hercules disgorged soldiers and equipment at the impoverished island nation’s main airport.
It gathered pace as amphibious landing craft laden with members of the 2,225-strong force and trucks plowed on to Red Beach, where 61 years ago the US 1st Marine Division launched its first offensive against the Japanese on Guadalcanal.
Solomon Islanders, weary of five years of ethnic violence and plagued by armed militia who hold them to ransom, welcomed the Australian-led deployment of multinational peacekeepers. “They are welcome. We want peace,” said one elderly man waiting since before dawn at the airport in the capital Honiara.
The peacekeepers and police also include contingents from New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Papua New Guinea.
Hundreds of people have died during five years of ethnic conflict between militia from Guadalcanal and Malaita islands.
Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza fled into hiding on Wednesday because of fears that former militia members, who frequently extort money from the government, might make a last-minute stab at derailing the deployment by killing or kidnapping him. Kemakeza returned to Honiara yesterday shadowed by at least two Australian security officers.
“The events which brought us to this place are not something we are proud of,” Kemakeza told a news conference, “but we recognise that the situation is beyond our control and that we needed to ask for help.”
Nick Warner, the Australian head of the intervention force, said it was probably the Solomons’ last chance, but was confident law and order would be restored quickly. Warner said up to 600 troops, police and civilians would be on the ground in Honiara by the end of yesterday.
Australian and Solomons police launched a symbolic first patrol later yesterday, with one unarmed officer from each country walking side-by-side down Honiara’s rutted main street.
That patrol came after an Australian bulldozer cut through scrub under coconut trees to clear a path for trucks unloaded from the Australian naval transport ship HMAS Manoora on to Red Beach, where the battle for Guadalcanal began on August 7, 1942. That five-month battle turned the war in the Pacific against the Japanese. More than 7,000 Americans and 32,000 Japanese died.
Once peacekeepers secure Honiara they may then head to island provinces such as Weathercoast, where warlord Harold Keke rules. “He’s a criminal. We’re really hoping that, when the Australians arrive, they go out immediately and arrest this man,” said Jonathan Visule, a 40-year-old refugee. However, a defiant Keke, who has called a cease-fire, said corrupt politicians had wrecked the Solomons, not his militia.
“My aim is independence,” Keke told Australian television. “If we were criminals or rapists or thieves, we would not be justified in standing up for our rights . . . but as we are right we are justified in keeping our arms.”
Under the intervention plan, former militia members will be given an amnesty to hand in an estimated 1,300 illegal weapons.
There is overwhelming public backing for the force, which is called “Operation Helpem Fren” in the pidgin English that loosely unites the 450,000 islanders and their 60 different languages, living around 1,200 miles northeast of Australia.
New Zealand and Australia have cautioned troops to take a low-key approach to avoid charges of neo-colonialism.
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