Bougainville: Before the Conflict (review)

Events in Bougainville would challenge even the Queen in Lewis ­Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1873), who sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. In 2004 the arch-secessionist Francis Ona, ignoring seven years of peacemaking and the election of an Autonomous Bougainville Gov­ernment within Papua New Guinea, had himself crowned king of an ­independent Bougainville. His ally Noah Musingku, another fantasist and ­creator of fraudulent pyramid schemes, conducted the rites and became Prince David. But when Ona died, he received a state funeral from the state he did not recognize, subsidized (the ultimate insult?) by Australian aid.

Early in 2006, veterans of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and their once implacable enemies in the Resistance united to denounce Musingku's dishonest fund-raising. The Autonomous Bougainville Government demanded that the Papua New Guinea Defense Force arrest Noah and disband and deport his Fijian ­soldiers. Meanwhile, the Bou­gain­villean minister for mines in the Papua New Guinea government offered to negotiate with multinational com­panies to resume copper mining at ­ Panguna or elsewhere. Evidently ­anyone who understood Bougainville politics was misinformed.

Happily, this fine volume has been published just in time for those who accept that we need to reexamine most of the assumptions that inform discussions of Bougainville matters. The conflict in question took its ­present shape with the development ofPanguna copper mine, the main source of Papua New Guinea's domestic ­revenue and an essential element of the country's independence. But landowners resented the environmental damage, the flow of benefits to Papua New Guinea, and the influx of young, single "redskins" to operate the mine.

Panguna provided focus for Bou­gainvilleans' sense of separateness. Deft footwork by national politicians averted secession, but landowners' grievances festered until 1988 when Ona's militants sabotaged the mine. As violence escalated, so did the claims of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). An inchoate civil war, an economic embargo, and guerilla warfare wrecked the cash economy and social services. The PNG Defence Force, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, and the (anti-BRA) Resistance Movement all fractured. The national government lurched between economic and political crises, but the insurgents failed to win diplomatic recognition. After eight destructive years, a New Zea­land–mediated truce initiated the rebuilding of peace. It has taken another eight years of patient negotiation to rebuild a provincial government and restore civil government.

The case for secession rests on the belief that Bougainvilleans differ from other Papua New Guineans, culturally and ethnically as well as geographically. Bougainville: Before the Conflict addresses the question: "Was Bougain­ville somehow inherently different in the combination of its mini-cultures? Or was it just another slice of Mela­nesia, a microcosm that reflected the ethnic diversity of Papua New Guinea and the wider region?" (xxviii)

This handsome volume was produced by Pandanus, the leading publisher of Papua New Guinea studies. It is helpfully illustrated. The editors and contributors have lavished affection as well as care on the project; although they ultimately (and inevi­tably) fail to answer the headline questions, readers will treasure their exhaustive and many-sided investigations. The book's twenty-eight chapters cover natural and social sciences, colonial and postcolonial history, and many participant accounts, mainly by Bougainvilleans.

It is impossible to summarize the richness of these studies, memoirs, and vignettes. James Tanis's reflec­tions ("Nagovisi villages") are unusually eloquent but typical of the analytical and emotional power of these contributions. He left the university to join the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, fought to the end, engaged in peace negotiations, and served as a minister in Bougainville's postwar gov­ernment. He parted company with Francis Ona when Ona boycotted the peace process. Tanis reviews the prewar circumstances of Nagovisi and the land disputes that led to...