The Age, “Fijian soldiers on run with conman”:
Five former Fijian soldiers on the run in Bougainville with a wounded conman have sought assurances they will be safe if they hand themselves in following an armed raid on their jungle base.
Notorious conman, self-proclaimed king and leader of a private army Noah Musingku was shot in the neck during Tuesday’s raid by former combatants fed up with his activities that threatened the island’s fragile peace process. [. . . ]
Unconfirmed reports said four of his guards were killed by the raiders who torched the camp and engaged in a shoot-out with Musingku’s men.
I guess the proposal for the UN to disarm Musingku didn’t go so well then. And the NZ Police training of their Bougainvillean counterparts hasn’t enabled them to restore order.
State failure in the Pacific
This incident demonstrates the intractability of state failure. Multilateral peace talks and foreign peace monitors had only a temporary effect on bringing order to Bougainville. During Bougainville’s long resource war, Papuan offensives, Australian military aid, the attempted use of mercenaries, a long blockade and the training of local paramilitaries only made the situation worse. Now it seems that the collapse of legitimate authority was permanent. It’s another example of the “Africanization of the South Pacific” or the Pacific “arc of instability.”
Pacific mercenaries
I always thought the employment of Fijian mercenaries for false promises of up to a million dollars by a conman and self-proclaimed monarch would end badly. While the South Bougainville Freedom Fighters may have succeeded where the government could not, disarming a dangerous warlord, this incident does seem to show a dangerous trend. If I may quote myself from a previous post:
But, as is argued in “Fiji, the war in Iraq, and the privatization of Pacific island security,†there are plenty of employers who will pay more than the national army. [. . . ] Currently, thousands of Fijians are serving with PMCs in Iraq, and several were lured to Bougainville by a con-artist warlord, where they raised local tensions. Pacific mercenaries could exacerbate the local problems in civil-military relations.
Great post. I really enjoy your coverage of the Pacific, and specifically the africanization of the area as you put it. Just hope that AU and NZ are up to patrolling the region which they are already doing a good job of.
Keep up the great work. A good niche of coverage
Left by Chirol on November 24th, 2006