Peace in the air, but not on the ground
The visit to Bougainville by an Australian parliamentary delegation, although allowed to see only what the Papua New Guinea authorities chose to show it, was an important step forward on the road to peace on the small island. That the visit elicited a call for negotiations by the PNG prime minister, Paias Wingti, was perhaps its greatest achievement.
The delegation leader, Senator Stephen Loosley, said that Australia could broker and host peace talks, but he stopped well short of suggesting the suspension of Australian military aid to PNG — without which the war could not continue.
While claiming that the conflict cannot be won militarily — thereby recognising that a war is being fought — Loosley denied that Australian aid was being used in PNG offensive operations. The undisputed reality is that it is the Australian government which bankrolls the PNG Defence Force, making Loosley's proposition ridiculous.
Loosley's defensiveness about military aid can be explained by his membership in the federal Labor government, a government which has not only supplied the weapons, ammunition and military training to the PNGDF, but has politically supported and covered for the war. This war is Australia's dirty war, being fought by proxy.
Loosley did, however, concede that Australian governments may have been just a little at fault — somewhere back in the deep mists of time of course, before Labor government. "People say to us in the broadest range of circumstances, 'Look, Australia in colonial times may have contributed to these problems' — in terms of polices pursued, in terms of the arrangements for the [Panguna copper] mine — may have contributed through inadvertence or perhaps neglect."
Such mealy-mouthed obscurantism cannot hide the recognition, long overdue, that the Australian and PNG governments' policy in Bougainville has failed — a policy that has killed over 5000 Bougainvilleans so far.
One political commentator in the establishment press here astutely noted that the sub-text of the delegation's visit to Bougainville was to placate growing criticism of the war in Australia, which has been highlighted by Bougainville support groups and some sections of the left and trade union movement.
The Bougainville Interim Government and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army have long called for a negotiated settlement only to feel the steel brunt of Australia and PNG's military option. The recent cynical posturing of Wingti and Australian government representatives as peace makers is stomach churning — but we can be sure that the people of Bougainville have strong stomachs in their quest for peace and justice.
Activists in Australia must continue to pressure the government, through protest and exposure, to disengage militarily and assist in bringing about a just peace. The war is not over yet.