Australia and the arc of instability.(The Pacific)

MORE THAN SEVEN years ago, as the United Nations was organising its hasty independence ballot in East Timor, it was clear to sceptics that the ballot would solve nothing and that an independent East Timor would face continuing low-level civil strife. Today, the so-called independent government survives only with the support of foreign, mostly Australian, security forces.

A year after that ballot, the independent Solomon Islands began to implode. Six years later, the local government is maintained in power by foreign, mostly Australian, troops and police, to the growing dismay of the local government, whose freedom of action is sharply constrained by an increasingly frustrated Australian government.

Twice in the intervening years, Australia has deployed armed forces and police to both countries in an attempt to stabilise their collapsing security. In the Solomon Islands, Australia has further provided a team of senior administrators to try to rein in the pervasive corruption and administrative chaos. The problem for Australia is that, in both cases, the problem lies not with hostile rebels but with the local government itself. And in both cases, the local politicians do not like having their failings brought into the light of day. If there is an arc of instability in Australia's immediate region, it is clearly a Melanesian problem.

For the most part, Melanesia comprises Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, West Papua and, to a considerable extent, East Timor. Indigenous Fijians are also Melanesian as are the Kanaks of New Caledonia although, in both cases, an admixture of Polynesian culture has modified the Melanesian, for example by institutionalising a system of hereditary chieftainship.

In the post-colonial era, Melanesia has developed into a collection of politically independent and highly nationalistic but economically mendicant states largely sustained by overseas aid, some of which comprises outright grants while a large proportion is in the form of barely manageable debt. Foreign investment in sustainable industry is limited, infrastructure is poor and badly maintained, internal security is problematic and official corruption widespread.

WEST PAPUA

ANOTHER PROBLEM, also in Melanesia, looms ahead in two Indonesian provinces--Papua and Irian Jaya Barat, popularly referred to as West Papua. Irian Jaya Barat includes the western part of Indonesian Papua (the so-called Bird's Head or Vogelkop) while Papua takes in the rest as far as the Papua New Guinea border. Papua was supposed to have been further divided but the move was deemed unconstitutional by Indonesia's Supreme Court. The two provinces together boast a population of around 3 million, of which perhaps 10 to 15 per cent are trans-migrants from Java. Irian Jaya Barat has a population of some 800,000 and is home to the key oil-producing centres, while Papua also produces oil and is home to the giant Freeport copper mine, the second-largest in the world.