Greed and Grievance: Ex-Militants' Perspectives on the Conflict in Solomon Islands, 1998-2003

Chapter 7 The State, Resources, Identity, and Conflict

178 Chapter 7 The State, Resources, Identity, and Conflict this book gives a voice to some of the hundreds of men who joined the militant groups during the recent conflict in Solomon Islands. The voices of these men have thus far been underrepresented in journalistic and scholarly accounts of the conflict. Nonetheless, many of these accounts have portrayed their motives in terms of greed and criminality. This is also the approach to ex-militants that has been taken by RAMSI. Recall that in early 2004 the first head of RAMSI, Nick Warner, stated that the mission “would approach the former militants as a policing issue .” While the role of greed and criminality cannot be entirely disregarded , the material presented here enables us to see the importance of fundamentally political factors in motivating men to take up arms in the conflict. These political factors are strongly informed by the ex-militants’ conceptions of history and of the places of their respective peoples in the historical processes of colonization, development, and nation building . Without a detailed understanding of the socioeconomic and political history of Solomon Islands it is difficult to make any sense of the recent period of conflict. Indeed, the “objective” history of the Solomons indicates that there is considerable merit in the grievance-based narratives of ex-militants; we can see how and why these narratives emerged. A central theme for ex-militants on both sides of the conflict is the historical relationship between their respective peoples and “the government.” Both sides drew upon a rich tradition of resisting the state, particularly its perceived imposition upon kastom and local sovereignty over land The State, Resources, Identity, and Conflict ◊ 179 and resources. Both sides also engaged with discourses of development, highlighting perceived inequities in the geographical pattern of development , the provision of government services, and, especially for Guales, the distribution of primary resource rents. Another important issue that emerges clearly from the ex-militants’ testimonies is their shared sense of frustration. Guales speak about their frustration with successive colonial and postcolonial governments that have “wilfully ignored” the “legitimate” grievances of the people of Guadalcanal. Malaitans similarly express their frustration with colonial and postcolonial governments that have exploited, neglected, and even “hated” Malaitans. The events of the conflict can, to some extent, be seen in the context of both Guales and Malaitans reaching the limits of their historical frustration with the state. For Guales it was the failure of the Ulufa’alu government to meet the Bona Fide Demands that was the final straw. For Malaitans, it was Ulufa’alu’s failure to do enough to “help Malaita,” with the final straw being the resignation of Frank Short and the curtailing of police operations against the Guale militants. Joan Herlihy, whose work was cited in chapter 3, concluded her 1981 study of development planning in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands by arguing that capturing resources from Western aid donors and establishing macro-governmental legitimacy, rather than rural development, have been the most pressing problems for colonial and postcolonial governments in both countries: “To date the survival of macro-government as an institution has been largely independent of the support of the rural population or of the relationship between the government and the governed” (Herlihy 1981, 362). The events of the Tension indicate that perhaps this disjuncture between the state and the rural populace can no longer be sustained. Significant portions of the rural populace have grown weary of the state’s failure to deliver rural development and to connect with rural communities more broadly. This failure has been compounded by the relative deprivation engendered by uneven development, itself largely a consequence of government policy. The gap between communities and the state has also been compounded by the rise of patronage politics during the postcolonial period and by the imperatives of “structural adjustment ” in the late 1990s, which saw the effective abolition of the local level of government, Area Councils, in March 1998. The events of the Tension raise the possibility that macro-government can no longer survive without the support of the rural population, at least not in its present form. The sense of relative deprivation and corollary frustration have 180 ◊ Chapter 7 been particularly acute for men. Most of the men who took up arms during the Tension are poorly educated, with checkered employment histories , and many, particularly in the urban context, struggle to make ends meet. At...