Resisting RAMSI: intervention, identity and symbolism in Solomon Islands.

Allen, Matthew G.

The act of colonisation imposed upon the politically fragmented and linguistically and culturally diverse peoples of Solomon Islands a monolithic set of foreign laws and customs. In many parts of the islands, most famously on the densely populated island of Malaita, these laws were fiercely resisted. Local traditional or customary law, described here under the rubric of kastom law, was invoked as a symbol of resistance against foreign hegemony in general and the imposition of colonial law in particular. The Constitution adopted at Independence in 1978 enshrined a complex legal pluralism in which two distinct sources of law, introduced law and kastom law, have not always sat together comfortably. The Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), with its focus on arresting and prosecuting ex-militants and others for crimes committed and allegedly committed during the recent period of conflict (1998-2003), (1) has effectively bolstered the introduced law that is only one strand in the Solomons' pluralist legal system. Malaitans have responded to the RAMSI intervention by invoking kastom as a symbol of difference, unity and resistance, just as they have done many times in the past. It is argued here that RAMSI is the latest 'alien' to attract the symbolic opposition of Malaitan kastom and that this provides a useful, perhaps alternative, lens through which to interpret Malaitan articulations of resistance to RAMSI.

Notwithstanding the anti-Australia and anti-RAMSI rhetoric of the second Sogavare government (April 2006-November 2007), expressions of opposition to RAMSI have mostly emanated from Malaitan quarters. (2) Indeed, though not a Malaitan, Sogavare's political rhetoric nevertheless reflected Malaitan interests, particularly those of former members and associates of the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) which installed the first Sogavare government to power following the coup of June 2000. These men, many of whom were profiting handsomely from the material crime and compensation rorts that characterised the post-coup period and continued despite the signing of the Townsville Peace Agreement in October 2000, had more to lose by the intervention of RAMSI in July 2003 than did their Gaule counterparts (with the important exception of Harold Keke and his followers) or any other island or provincial ethnic grouping (see, in particular, Dinnen 2002 and Fraenkel 2004). Prior to the arrival of the intervention force, armed gangs of former MEF 'soldiers' led by men such Jimmy 'Rasta' Lusibaea controlled the nation's capital, Honiara, and were closely associated with both the first Sogavare government and its successor led by Sir Allan Kemakeza (2001-2006).

It is tempting to interpret Malaitan expressions of opposition to RAMSI primarily in terms of the mission's challenge to the coercive power of former members and associates of the MEF, and the opportunities for pecuniary gain and patronage which that power afforded. However, Malaitan opposition to RAMSI must also be located in a much deeper tradition of Malaitan resistance to the imposition of alien and centralised authority. The invocation by Malaitans of kastom, and of kastom law in particular, as a challenge to RAMSI, especially its policing operations, represents a strong continuity with the past. It is argued that resistance to RAMSI must therefore be (re)interpreted as having fundamentally cultural and historical underpinnings. Resisting RAMSI is as much about asserting culture and identity as it is about strategy, power and political expediency.

This article sets out to situate and analyse contemporary voices of opposition to RAMSI within a longstanding tradition of resisting the perceived imposition of alien hegemony--including the postcolonial state--upon kastom and other aspects of local sovereignty. The first part of the article describes this tradition of resistance, with a particular focus on Malaita where it has historically been strongest. Following Keesing (1992) and Akin (1999), two enduring and interwoven symbols within Malaitan identity and resistance discourses are highlighted: kastom law and compensation. Class, or at least the broader notion of socio-economic inequality, is identified as a further motif within Malaitan identity narratives. The second part of the article examines contemporary articulations of resistance, both against the postcolonial state, expressed as 'the government', and against RAMSI. Again the focus is on Malaitan voices as these have continued to express the most vociferous dissent. The voices that are examined come from the public statements of prominent Malaitans, the published manifesto of the Malaita Ma'asina Forum, and the author's interviews with a number of former members of the MEF conducted during a period of nine months fieldwork in various parts of Solomon Islands in 2005 and 2006. The riots of April 2006 provide an especially instructive case study as they saw a coalescing within Malaitan resistance discourse both of its two key symbols, kastom law and compensation, and the two entities that are its contemporary object, RAMSI and the postcolonial state.

Two important preliminary issues must be considered. First we must acknowledge the large body of anthropological literature on the nature and meaning of kastom in Melanesia in general, and the debate concerning 'authenticity' and 'invention' in particular (for example Babadzan 1988, Jolly 1992, Keesing and Tonkinson 1982, Lindstrom and White 1994, Linnekin 1991, and Wagner 1981). Following the broad lines of consensus in this literature, kastom can be regarded as an ideology that is engaged for rhetorical purposes, the cultural contents and historical basis of which are mutable (though it will be argued that some of the cultural elements of Malaitan kastom have been very consistent over time). (3) There can be no doubt that during the conflict, kastom, in particular the practice of compensation, was manipulated by leaders, as well as by many 'rank-and-file' militants, for their personal financial benefit (Fraenkel 2004). However, it is erroneous to 'always perceive pro-Kastom statements made by state officials as no more than insincere manipulations by westernised elites' (Akin 1999:61). Indeed, during the Tension kastom was also mobilised on both 'sides' as a source of collective identity, and as an ideology of grievance and resistance. It is these particular functions of kastom, as opposed to its manipulation by self-serving elites, that are emphasised in this paper.

The second preliminary issue concerns the limitations of the data that are presented, especially the interview material. An important constraint with the data is that the voices examined are exclusively those of Malaitan men. This is a product of the fact that the interviews were conducted in the context of a research project examining the motives and experiences of men who joined the rival militant groups during the Tension (Allen 2007). The interpretations, expressions and representations of Malaitan kastom examined here are, therefore, strongly masculine in orientation. Ideally these masculine perspectives would be counter-posed with those of Malaitan women, particularly in the case of kastom discourses around issues of adultery and household gender relations. Unfortunately such an analysis cannot be undertaken here.

The ex-militants who are quoted in the latter sections of the paper are aged between 25 and 50 years, are from North and Central Malaita and can be broadly described as having 'working class' backgrounds. These characteristics are reflected in the wider sample of interviews--nineteen in total (including with two former Royal Solomon Islands Police officers)--that are drawn upon in the discussion, with the important exception that the wider sample contains a greater proportion of men from North Malaita (To'ambaita in particular).

With regard to the way in which the interview data are treated, we must assume that ex-militants may tend to frame their narratives in terms of legitimate grievance rather than materialist or other purely self-serving motives. This assumed bias can be assuaged, in part, through discourse analysis. The interview material is treated as a collection of individual 'texts' of oral history that can be cross-referenced with 'objective' history, with the texts of other ex-militants, and with the ethnographic present. The fact that there is much consistency and symmetry, not only amongst members of the two main militant groups (that is the Guadalcanal and Malaita groups), but also between them, gives us confidence in delineating and identifying 'collective voices' and common grievances from the interview material.

These issues are examined in much greater depth in Allen 2007 where the interview narratives are juxtaposed against the nature and extent of the documented 'criminal' acts that occurred during and after the Tension. As far as this article is concerned with the Tension period, the focus is limited to the ways in which discourses of kastom are employed by former members of the MEF in their representations of that period and their role in it.

KASTOM, CLASS AND COLONISATION: IDENTITY POLITICS AND RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS

How is it, that over a relatively short period of time, 'Malaita', 'Guadalcanal' and other regional and island-based identities, most notably 'the West', (4) have emerged as what Keesing describes as 'units for which a common cultural identity is being claimed' (1989:26)? Four interrelated factors have contributed to this process of identity formation. First is the act of colonisation and its legacy: the creation of administrative boundaries where before there were none. Second is the characterisation and delineation, in successive waves of hegemonic discourse (and also in academic discourse), of different groups of Solomon Islanders on the basis of criteria such as backwardness or aggressiveness, and the subsequent adoption of these categories by those same groups in their portrayals of themselves and others. The most pervasive characterisation is of Malaitans, and the Kwaio in particular, as violent, aggressive and, sometimes, heathen (see Dureau 1998 and Kabutaulaka 2001).

The third factor is the 'island based deprivation' brought about by regional disparities in resource availability and the suitability of land for plantation development (Bennett 1987:xvii). From the early colonial period, Solomon Islanders were divided into haves and have nots: those in the west, who were able to sell commodities produced on their own land; and those in the east who had little choice but to leave their homes in order to sell their labour for far smaller returns. Malaita provided the majority of people who fell into the latter category, initially selling their labour during the blackbirding period, then on the coconut plantations of the colonial economy and, since the Second World War ('the War'), in Honiara and the surrounding areas of north Guadalcanal (Bennett 1987:168, Moore 2007). As a consequence, there is an element of class consciousness in Malaitans' representations of themselves visa vis other Solomon Islanders and in their view of history.

The fourth factor in the historical emergence of island and region-wide identities is the process of resistance to successive waves of outside forces: traders and blackbirders, the Christian missions, the colonial administration and, in post-colonial times, the central government. These forces have exerted themselves in different ways in different places and have therefore tended to contribute to discourses of regional, as opposed to national, unity. Perceptions of socio-economic inequality and longstanding grievances concerning the perceived imposition of foreign hegemony on kastom law and other aspects of local sovereignty coalesced in the area and island-wide micronationalist (5) movements that emerged after the War, first on Malaita and then on Guadalcanal and in the West. None of these movements was as successful, in terms of numbers of followers and extracting concessions from the colonial government, nor as activist and militant, as Maasina Rule on Malaita, described by Keesing as 'one of the most remarkable Melanesian politico-religious movements' (1982:359).

Before examining Maasina Rule more closely, it is important to briefly consider the proposition that foreign forces were resisted more fiercely on Malaita than they were in other parts of the Solomons. It is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle the relative extent and intensity of Malaitan resistance from pervasive discourses of Malaitan violence and backwardness, described by Kabutaulaka as 'the myth of Malaitan aggressiveness' (2001). A significant part of the problem lies in the fact that the symbiotic processes of pacification and conversion to Christianity proceeded at different rates in different places at different times (Bennett 1987:103-124). While large parts of the West and northern Guadalcanal had been pacified and their inhabitants converted to Christianity early in the twentieth century, it was not until the late 1920s and early 1930s that the colonial government began to assert control on Malaita and Choiseul (Bathgate 1985:89-90, Bennett 1987:122-123, Dureau 1998:209, Moore 2007). (6) According to Moore: 'The trader and missionary foothold on other islands was already 30 years old before the Malaitan cultural fortress was entered by foreigners, timidly' (2007:219-220).

The important point here is not that Malaitans were inherently more violent than other Solomon Islanders, but rather that stories of Malaitan violence and heathenism would have been circulating around the islands at a time when large numbers of other Solomon Islanders had abandoned headhunting and raiding and had embraced Christianity. (7) Feuding had intensified on Malaita in the latter part of the nineteenth century due to the advent of iron and guns, making it difficult for prospective traders or planters to establish operations. By 1911, the year in which a South Sea Evangelical Mission (SSEM) missionary was killed by the Kwaio, only a small coastal strip on the north coast had been 'pacified', and the few Christian enclaves in coastal areas were under constant threat of attack (Bennett 1987:121, Keesing 1982:358).

Moreover, Malaitans and the Kwaio in particular, had developed a reputation for their 'treacherous' attacks on labour recruiting ships from the 1870s onwards (Keesing 1992:34). These attacks were motivated by the need to avenge the loss of recruits who never returned, for which blood bounties were put up, and also by loot in the form of trade goods that could be obtained in plundering the ships. The attacks on the Borealis (1880) and the Jane Stewart (1882) resulted in the deaths of five and six Europeans respectively (and probably many more non-European crew members and recruits who had already joined the ships) (Corris 1973:33).

Malaitans continued to be represented as violent and heathen in subsequent colonial discourse. Keesing provides the example of two descriptions of the Kwaio, the first by a district officer and the second, twenty years later in 1967, by a young Solomon Islander working in the colonial administration. He argues that the passages illustrate:

... the pattern of ascribing to the Kwaio both primitive ignorance and savagery, on the one hand, and childlike credulity towards millenarian cultism on the other; it is a pattern which has been handed down from the colonial masters to their neo-colonial proteges (Keesing 1982:366).

One wonders to what extent Keesing's own extensive writings about the Kwaio have contributed to their continued portrayal as violent pagans, characteristics which are often imputed to all Malaitans by other Solomon Islanders. This issue is discussed by Kabutaulaka (2001) who highlights the role of Western academic discourse in the creation of the myth of Malaitan aggressiveness. He points in particular to the Bell massacre of 1927--when a force of Kwaio warriors killed District Officer Bell, his European cadet and thirteen Malaitan police during a tax-collecting mission--which he argues has been fetishised in anthropological and historical writing, particularly in the book Lightning Meets the West Wind: the Malaita Massacre (Keesing and Corris 1980). (9) This incident was introduced into the school curriculum and therefore into public history, but other violent incidents elsewhere in the country, such as the killing of a number of Solomon Islander police during a patrol to the interior of Guadalcanal in 1927, have been largely ignored due their failure to pique 'Western anthropological and historical curiosity' (Kabutaulaka 2001:12).

Whether or not representations of Malaitans would have evolved differently if significant other parts of the Solomons had not been pacified and missionised 20 to 30 years before Malaita was brought under colonial control is a matter of conjecture. What is known with certainty, however, is that in the first decades of the twentieth century, Malaitans developed, with some justification, a reputation for violence and paganism, one which has in many respects continued to the present day.

Leaving aside the issue of discourses of Malaitan violence and backwardness, we can consider other, less contentious, aspects of Malaitan expressions of resistance to colonial rule. Paramount amongst these was the widespread ambivalence toward 'government law' and its deliberate juxtaposition with 'kastom law' (see Akin 1999:47-50). Following the imposition of government control, many Malaitans wished to continue to resolve their own disputes and 'British law became widely resented as an alien imposition' (Akin 1999:47).

Malaitans were particularly angered by the perceived shortcomings of colonial law in punishing serious moral crimes, especially adultery, and also at its neglect of compensation. According to Keesing:

Since the 1920s Malaitans had seethed with resentment that rules of chastity (pre- and especially post-marital), which are viewed as the cornerstone of morality, could no longer be enforced by threat of execution. Protectorate laws that punished adulterers lightly and hanged those who legitimately killed them were bitterly resented. So too were laws that treated as criminal offences what under customary law were civil offences calling for compensation in shell valuable (1982:360, also see Bennett 1987:277-278 and Akin 1999:48).

With regard to compensation, Akin describes how government courts and government officers from Bell onwards did attempt to recognise and enforce compensation as a means of settling certain types of disputes which were categorised as falling under the jurisdiction of 'custom law' (1999:48-49). The difficulties, however, were significant. Foremost amongst them were the British officers' general lack of understanding of Malaitan culture and the erroneous assumption that there existed an authentic and immutable 'custom' that could be codified and enforced as a category of law. Perhaps most importantly, the Western legal tradition, which regards disputes as dyadic in nature, clashed with the Malaitan, and indeed the wider Melanesian, view of conflict as something that is embedded both in the every day relationships between groups and the history of social interactions. According to Akin:

 Lacking the social and cultural knowledge to distribute
 compensations to appropriate parties, district officers had little
 choice but to award them to individuals. For these and other
 reasons Kwaio and many other Malaitans found government courts, and
 particularly their approach to compensation, highly unsatisfactory,
 and they therefore settled disputes privately whenever they could
 (1999:49).

The opposition of kastom law to government law became a central, though not the only, organising principle for the Maasina Rule movement which emerged on Malaita immediately after the War. (10) Founded by two 'Are'are men, Nori and Non'ohimae, the overarching objective of the movement was to unify Malaitans in order to present a united front in their dealings with the colonial government. The key issues for negotiation related to the abolishment of the local councils introduced before the War, which had come to be regarded as a divisive creation of the government, and the establishment of a single all-Malaita council; the codification of kastom law and corollary establishment of local kastom law courts (with compensation to be the primary means of settling disputes); and improvements in the terms of plantation employment (Akin 1999:50; Bennett 1987:292-298; Keesing 1982:359; Laracy 1983:17-35). Historians have noted that the most remarkable thing about Maasina Rule, which at its height claimed an estimated 96 percent of Malaitans as members, was that it happened at all (Bennett 1987:309-310, Laracy 1983:6). It was able to generate 'an ideological consensus' that united all Malaitans, transforming them 'from an assortment of clans and tribes into a people' (Bennett 1987:309).

The 'ideological consensus' engendered by Maasina Rule was based on two main factors, kastom and class. Keesing (1982) argues that appeals to a broadly shared Malaitan kastom formed the central basis of Malaitan unity. For pagans such as the Kwaio, Keesing sees the fact that they were still living their ancestral ways as tantamount to living kastom. (11) For the Malaita Christians, such as those amongst the To'ambaita and the Kwara'ae, kastom was an important element in the indigenisation of the SSEM church. For them, Maasina Rule presented an opportunity to 'create and control a Malaita Christianity woven from customary and biblical strands' (Keesing 1982:361). This process was evidenced by the emergence of a Kwara'ae origin myth that traces the ancestors of Malaitans to the wandering tribes of Israelites described in the Old Testament (Burt 1982). Keesing argues that kastom also provided a symbolic means for Malaitan Christians to continue to identify with their ancestors and with their land. Thus, in spite of regional variations in its expression, Keesing sees kastom as the primary symbol of Malaitan unity in the anticolonial struggle: 'That all Malaita custom is essentially one is part of the ideology of Maasina Rule, and close enough to fact to be beyond serious challenge' (1982:371).

Other scholars have highlighted class consciousness as an important source of collective identity and as an ideology of resistance during Maasina Rule (Frazer 1990). The industrial structure of the colonial plantation economy militated against the formation of a pan-Solomons, or pan-eastern Solomons, class conscience. (12) However, on Malaita the long history of hard labour on the plantations, both in Solomons and overseas, gave rise to a collective sense of economic disadvantage and exploitation visa vis Europeans and other Solomon Islanders. Following Frazer's analysis of Maasina Rule we can discern an 'industrial consciousness' both in the nature of the movement's challenges to the inequities of the plantation economy and in the ways those challenges were expressed, for example, through the use of boycotts and collective negotiation.

For the colonial masters, it was Maasina Rule's challenge to the administration's monopoly over legal authority that was of most concern. According to the government's legal adviser, writing in July 1947: 'The illegal courts are inherently instruments of oppression and extortion and their existence is a challenge to the Government and the Court which cannot be overlooked' (cited in Laracy 1983:28). Government repression of the movement ensued in August 1947, with the arrest and imprisonment of 27 people charged with sedition (Laracy 1983:28). By the middle of 1949, 2000 people had been arrested and jailed. By 1953 the government had regained control, though the movement had by this time achieved its objective of 'running Malaita in the form established by the Malaita council', thereby obviating the need for further resistance (Bennett 1987:106).

It is important to note that other micronationalist movements that emerged after the War also invoked kastom, to varying extents, as a challenge to colonial law and hegemony. Matthew Belamataga's 'Society for the Development of Native Races' which was active on northwest Guadalcanal from 1947 sought, amongst other things, the codification of kastom law and the establishment of kastom courts (Bennett 1987:299-301). A much more enduring and influential movement on Guadalcanal was the Moro Movement that emerged on the Weather Coast on Guadalcanal in the late 1950s.

Named after its founder Pelise Moro of Makaruka, the origins of the Moro Movement were closely linked to the influence of Maasina Rule and the associated politics surrounding the formation of the Guadalcanal Council in 1953 (Bennett 1987:316-317; Davenport and Coker 1967; Kabutaulaka 2002:60-61). The movement emerged in the context of local disaffection with both the Marau-Habua Council, which had broken away from the Guadalcanal Council in 1956 and was perceived as being dominated by the 'Are'are-speakers of the Marau Sound area, and the central government. In the early days of the movement, it was met with strong opposition from local men who were associated with both the Catholic church and the colonial administration (see Kabutaulaka 2002:60). Small pockets of resistance to the Moro Movement were established, but attempts to eradicate it were unsuccessful and, by 1964, the movement 'was exerting a strong influence' over half the area of Guadalcanal (Davenport and Coker 1967:110).

Moro's ideology had much in common with Maasina Rule in its invocation of kastom law as a challenge to both the legitimacy of colonial law and the exploitation of resources, including land, by Europeans. Challenges to colonial law were made in Moro's speech to the Acting High Commissioner for the Western High Pacific who visited Makaruka in 1964 and are also a consistent theme running through the three written versions of the 'Moro Doctrine' (see Davenport and Coker 1967:142-127). The third version of the doctrine established Moro as the 'paramount chief' and specifically invokes kastom law as a challenge to colonial regulations.

The Moro Movement also finds similarities with Maasina Rule in its attempts to syncretise Christian teachings and kastom beliefs. However, the symbolic appeals to kastom as a source of common identity were not as successful as they were in the case of Maasina Rule. Moro was not able to unite all of the people of his island under the banner of a single, shared kastom. Moreover, although Moro famously attempted to purchase from the District Commissioner 'freedom from the law', the movement was never as explicitly concerned with resistance and anticolonialism as Maasina Rule was.

Interestingly, appeals to kastom did not play a prominent role in the Western Breakaway Movement that emerged in the lead up to Independence in the context of anxieties about the West becoming part of an independent country dominated by the 'Malaita Mafia' (Bennett 1987:327-330, Dureau 1998, Premdas et al. 1984). Rather than invoking a putatively common Western kastom, its leaders drew upon longstanding imagery of Malaitan aggression, violence and heathenism, counter-posed against the Christianity and peacefulness of those from the West, to appeal to a distinctive Western identity. Like the neighbouring Bougainvilleans, Westerners also contrasted their blackness with the 'red skin' of the Malaitans who came to labour on the plantations of the West. Inspired by the example of Bougainville, some of its leaders threatened secession if Western statehood was not granted before Independence.

The pre-Independence government, headed by a Malaitan, Peter Kenilorea, was able to placate the Breakaway Movement by offering a number of concessions, including revisions to the revenue-sharing formula and land title transfers (Bennett 1987:328-329). However, just a month before Independence, the situation intensified again with the publication, in a government-owned newspaper, of the poem commonly known as 'Ode to the West wind'. Written by a Malaitan public servant, the poem was overt in its vilification of Westerners. The central government paid SI$9000 in compensation to the Western Council, setting, as Herlihy noted a few years later, 'dangerous precedents' for future compensation claims against the government (Herlihy 1982:15).

LODGING A CLAIM AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT: THE RIOTS OF 1989 AND 1996

It has been seen that British rule was resisted in different ways and to different extents in different parts of the islands. The micronationalist movements that emerged after the War, with the notable exception of the Western Breakaway Movement, invoked, to varying degrees, kastom and kastom law as symbols of resistance and identity. This was particularly so on Malaita where appeals to a broadly shared Malaitan kastom formed the central basis of Malaitan unity during Maasina Rule, one of the key objectives of which was to codify kastom law and to replace government courts with kastom courts. The opposition of kastom law to government law has subsequently remained 'a leading theme of ongoing Malaitan political resistance ideologies' (Akin 1999:50).

While the work of anthropologist David Akin has focused on the relationship between the Kwaio and the central government, he notes that many aspects of this relationship have been replicated across Malaita as a whole. This is particularly the case with the widespread under-utilisation of government local courts, and the corollary use of 'chiefs' courts applying kastom law, that has been taking place in all parts of Malaita since the 1980s (Akin 1999:52). In 1986, for example, government courts on Malaita heard only 104 cases in contrast to Western Province, which has a significantly smaller population, where 901 cases were heard in government courts (Naitoro cited in Akin 1999:52). According to Akin:

 Most Malaitans continue to perceive local courts much as they were
 described in 1985 by 'Are'are parliamentarian and lawyer (and son
 of Maasina Rule's founder) Andrew Nori, as "foreign creatures
 dressed in local costumes" (1999:52).

Another ongoing theme in Malaitan identity and resistance discourses has been compensation. It has been noted that the Bell massacre formed the basis for a number of compensation claims lodged by the Kwaio in the 1980s. Compensation also played a key role in the episodes of rioting and looting that occurred in Honiara in 1989 and again in 1996. In each case, the rioters were Malaitans seeking compensation from the central government for acts of swearing committed by Bellonese and Reef Islanders, respectively, and in both cases the compensation demands were met by the government. Akin argues that while many factors were involved in these riots, including increasing urban unemployment and a growing 'rascal' sub-culture, all were underscored by 'enduring Malaitan discontent with government behaviour' (1999:58). Drawing upon Akin's work, Jolene Stritecky argues that the 'upshot' of the 1989 and 1996 riots in Honiara 'was that committing violence against persons not associated with the government, especially Chinese store owners, became par for the course in the Malaitan strategy for lodging a claim against the government' (2001:230).

SAVING THE SOLOMONS: THE MALAITA EAGLE FORCE

A detailed discussion of the complex ways in which kastom was invoked and mobilised by both 'sides' during the Tension period is presented elsewhere (Allen 2007). Here I briefly examine discourses of kastom employed by former members of the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) during our discussions of the genesis and objectives of the MEF. These men's perceptions of their collective role in the Tension are important to understanding their subsequent grievances against the government and the related issue of the involvement of disgruntled ex-MEF in the riots of April 2006.

The Malaitan ex-militants with whom I spoke overwhelmingly presented their motives for joining the MEF in terms of the need to 'secure', 'defend' and 'protect' Honiara which had become a Malaitan enclave following the land evictions of 1998-99 and was facing the spectre of destruction at the hands of the Guale militants. They believe that their actions were necessary because the Ulufa'alu government and the Royal Solomon Islands Police (RSIP) had failed to do enough to quell the Guale rebellion and 'help Malaita'. It was therefore incumbent upon Malaitans to seize control of the punitive arm of the state in order to secure and protect Honiara and, in fact, to save the nation: 'We saved not only Malaita, but the whole Solomon Islands. Due to what we did, we saved all Solomon Islands' people' (interview with T). In a similar vein, another former MEF 'foot soldier' states:

During the hard times, big rains, thunderstorms, it was only the Malaita Eagle Force that secured the town. If it wasn't for the Malaita Eagle Force, Solomon Islands would not be a nation and Honiara would have been burned down (C, interview with C, L and others).

Above all other factors, it was transgressions of Malaitan kastom by the Guale militants that provoked the need both for defensive retaliation and, it will be seen below, direct retribution. Former members of the MEF explain their motives primarily in terms of the need to assuage serious breaches of Malaitan kastom law: swearing, murder and, particularly, rape. (13) All of the ex-militants whom I interviewed emphasised acts of sexual violence, particularly the rape of women whilst their husbands, fathers and brothers were forced to watch or participate, as especially serious crimes against kastom. I frequently heard statements such as: 'These things break the Malaitan kastom ... Guadalcanal started it ... The main thing which broke the kastom of Malaita was the raping of women in front of their husbands at gunpoint' (interview with HG). Many former militants point to these provocations as the reason why it became necessary to 'defend' Malaitans from further harm. According to one ex-militant:

... they would go into family homes and have sex with women and girls. They would force the man to watch at gun point whilst his wife and daughters were gang raped. That is what they were doing and it made us very angry because it was breaking our culture ... these things made us very cross and we retaliated in order to defend our people [my emphasis] (interview with T).

While most former members of the MEF and the MEF/RSIP 'Joint Operation' are keen to describe their motives in terms of defensive retaliation, retribution was also clearly an important motive as evidenced implicitly, and occasionally explicitly, in many of their testimonies. Again the need for retribution is expressed in direct relation to the breaking of Malaitan kastom by the Guale militants. The strongest explicit expression of the desire to exact vengeance on the Guale people comes from L, a former MEF field commander. In the following excerpt he refers to events that occurred at Alligator Creek in early July 2000.

So we took the 50 calibre [machine gun] from the patrol boat and mounted it on a bulldozer and went down to Alligator Creek. That's when the Guadalcanal people had a hard time and some of them died. That caused them to be, we in the MEF have a word for it, we say 'heartsore', and at that time we made the Guadalcanal people heartsore. There was a 50 calibre firing from the sea and the 50 calibre firing from the bulldozer on the land when we fought them at Alligator Creek. We found that it wasn't an easy time. We didn't feel that it was a good thing, because the Guadalcanal people are our brothers, we are all Melanesian, but as I have said, when they chased us out and they swore at us, we retaliated (L, interview with C, L and others)

This statement encourages us to ponder the circumstances in which the ethnopsychological pendulum of restitution swings from compensation to direct retribution. These are often interpreted as alternative options in the Malaitan conceptualisation of restitution: if compensation is not forthcoming, then direct retribution is sought (see Akin 1999:46, 54). Indeed, Malaitan chiefs were eventually paid SIS 5 million in compensation for the widely publicised insult, apparently made by Guale militant leader George Gray, that Malaitans were born of dogs' sperm (Fraenkel 2004:61, 95, 221). (14) However, this payment was awarded at a reconciliation ceremony in July 2000, after the MEF had removed the Ulufa'alu government and 'installed' Sogavare as the caretaker Prime Minister. (15) It also occurred after the 'heartsore' offensive described above. Many of the former MEF militants with whom I spoke regard the Guadalcanal cause as legitimate in the sense that Guales were quite entitled to ask Malaitans to leave. However, they argue that the Guale militants went 'too far', such that it became necessary not only to protect Malaitans but to also seek direct retribution (also see Moore 2004:125).

'IT'S THE GOVERNMENT STUPID'

Both Guale and Malaitan ex-militants lay the blame for the Tension squarely at the feet of the government. Guales hold the government responsible for not controlling the migration of people from other provinces to Honiara and north Guadalcanal, as well as for a range of other grievances, most notably the perceived inequity of revenue-sharing arrangements. Similarly, Malaitans believe that the deliberate neglect of Malaita by colonial and postcolonial governments means that they have always been forced to go elsewhere to find work and, since the War, most of the employment and business opportunities have been in Honiara and on north Guadalcanal. In this manner, Guales do not blame Malaitans for being there in the first place, and Malaitans do not blame Guales for wanting to evict them. Each side places the moral culpability upon the government (see Stritecky 2001:107-108).

In the 'post-conflict' context, both Guales and Malaitans are continuing to lodge claims against the government either through requests for compensation or, in the case of the riots in April 2006, direct action. In the case of Malaitans, former ex-militants believe that they should have been adequately compensated by the Sogavare and Kemakeza governments for their role in 'securing' Honiara, 'protecting' the government and 'saving' the nation. According to one former member of the MEF:

If we hadn't protected the town from Harold Keke's group, I think that Solomon Islands would have fallen to pieces. Due to what we did we restored the Solomon Islands. That's why we regret the government does not recognise what we did (interview with T).

T's regret that the government does not 'recognise' the MEF's role in saving Solomon Islands, resonates strongly with a micronationalist narrative of Malaitans as the unrecognised, and often reviled, builders of the nation (see Allen 1997:180-183). Having built the nation, it was incumbent upon Malaitans to protect it and ultimately to save it from the Guale militants, an incompetent national government and an ineffectual police force. Just as Malaitans have been the unrecognised and reviled builders of the nation, ex-militants contend that the MEF has never been recognised for its role in saving the nation. The argument that the rank and file of the MEF were exploited and betrayed by 'the government' echoes the wider portrayal of Malaitans as an historically exploited working class. (16)

Many Malaitan ex-militants are also angry about never having received the 'rehabilitation' provided for them under the provisions of the TPA and later promised to them by the Kemakeza government. (17) According to one ex-militant: 'It's like their bodies are scarred. That's how we look at it in Melanesian culture, it is a scar' (C, interview with C, L and others). Moreover, several ex-militants directly link this state of affairs with the fact that a handful of former MEF soldiers are still holding out in the bush with their guns. 'They will not come out until the government of Solomon Islands fulfils the promise to rehabilitate us' (L, interview with C, L and others).

Some former MEF militants claim that the two days of rioting that occurred in Honiara in April 2006 following the national election, and the formation of a government two weeks later, were 'caused' by Kemakeza's failure to pay 'rehabilitation to all the boys' as he had promised (N, interview with P and N). While there were many factors at play with the riots, which saw the looting and burning down of the Chinatown district of Honiara, seen in the historical context of Malaitan claims against the government, the involvement of disgruntled ex-MEF is highly plausible, particularly as the election effectively restored Kemakeza's coalition to power, with Kemakeza's former deputy and heir apparent, Snyder Rini, as Prime Minister.

RESISTING RAMSI

The latest 'alien' to attract the symbolic opposition of Malaitan kastom is RAMSI. In my discussions with people on Malaita, including ex-militants, kastom was frequently evoked as a challenge to the mission, particularly its policing activities. They point to incidents such as trespassing on tribal lands, breaking into houses without permission and general cultural insensitivity in the way in which RAMSI police, especially Australian police, have conducted their operations on Malaita. Many people with whom I spoke on Malaita regard the use of large numbers of armed soldiers and police in a number of failed attempts to capture fugitive Edmond Sae as excessive and tantamount to an invasion of Malaita.

These and other incidents are also highlighted by the Malaita Ma'asina Forum in its denunciation of RAMSI. Invoking obvious connotations with Maasina Rule, the Ma'asina Forum is a non-government organisation that formed in September 2003 'as a voice to raise concerns and issues affecting Malaita and the people of Malaita' (Malaita Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:3). The Ma'asina Forum shares more in common with Maasina Rule than just its name. Its constitution lists its objectives as follows: to promote brotherhood on Malaita; to promote 'social order as a necessary condition for economic and political development on Malaita'; to be a voice for Malaitans; to promote Malaitan cultural heritage; and to promote and facilitate development projects on Malaita (Maliata Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:17). With a management council representing the 33 wards on Malaita, the Forum is also involved with the 'Family Tree' project that is endeavouring, apparently with some success, to use genealogies to clarify the relationships between neighbouring clans and tribes and to demarcate tribal land boundaries with the ultimate objective of appointing trustees for agreed-upon tribal lands and zoning and registering these lands under the Land and Titles Act 1969 (interview with T, Maeliau 2003:56-59).

With regard to RAMSI, the Forum Executive argues that Malaitans perceive the intervention as an exercise in 'recolonisation' and 'Australian occupation' in the context of broader 'Australian hegemony in the Pacific' (Malaita Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:2129). (18) It is further argued that as well as perceptions, there have been some 'real issues'--the types of incidents referred to above--that have given rise to growing Malaitan opposition towards RAMSI. These issues are ultimately grouped under the rubric of 'culture': 'There are many cultural issues that for simplicity purposes could be labelled as insensitive to the culture of the people because of dissatisfaction with the Australian led intervention' (Malaita Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:21-29).

Malaitans are also specifically invoking kastom law in their discourses of resistance to RAMSI. In my discussions with ex-militants about RAMSI, the longstanding issue of alien interference with Malaitan kastom laws relating to adultery was raised as a prime grievance. For example:

The real problem which is happening to us since RAMSI has come in is the balance of power in the family because of the rights for women which RAMSI has introduced. Our culture in Solomon Islands is that women must listen to their husbands. But now you can see women going to nightclubs and even drinking beer. And when we tell them off and maybe slap them a bit, you end up getting three years in Rove prison. But in our culture, women never go to nightclubs and they cannot go and stay with other men, young men, to have sexual intercourse with them. But now, since RAMSI has come in, if my wife goes and has sex with another man and I ask for compensation, I get arrested by RAMSI ... It has really changed the balance of power in the family and men no longer have the same rights which we have always had from when I was a small boy up until 2003 (L, interview with C, L and others).

Interestingly, Malaitans have also sought to engage the state laws of Solomon Islands to challenge the legality and constitutionality of RAMSI. The Ma'asina Forum, for example, has expressed opposition to the immunity clauses of the Facilitation of International Assistance Act 2003, the legal instrument under which RAMSI operates, which grants RAMSI personnel immunity from prosecution under the laws of Solomon Islands (Malaita Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:21-29). The Forum Executive has called for the clauses to be removed 'to ensure that RAMSI personnel abide by the laws of Solomon Islands in the discharge of their duties' (2005:28). Several Malaitan Members of Parliament, including the Member for East Honiara, Charles Dausabea, have also voiced dissatisfaction with the immunity clauses (Radio New Zealand, 25 April 2006). Furthermore, in late 2005, former MEF 'spokesman' Andrew Nori launched a High Court challenge to the legality of RAMSI, arguing that the Facilitation Act was unconstitutional. The case was struck down by the Chief Justice in a lengthy judgement (Nori v. Attorney General [2006] HCSI-CC 172).

It is informative that a man who once described government local courts as 'foreign creatures dressed in local costumes', and whose father was a founding leader of Maasina Rule, is more than willing to engage that very same foreign law, Solomon Islands state law, as a challenge to RAMSI. We are encouraged to think in terms of Anthony Smith's concentric circles of identity (Smith 1986, 1991), or, perhaps more accurately in this case, concentric circles of resistance: Malaitan kastom law is employed to challenge Solomon Islands state law, and both forms of law are mobilised to challenge the legality of the new 'foreign' intervention.

Just as the riots of April 2006 could be seen partly in terms of the Malaitan tradition of 'lodging a claim' with the government, they can also be seen in the context of Malaitan resistance to alien authority. I see the growing discontent with RAMSI described above as a probable factor in the riots, during which torched police vehicles and Chinese-owned businesses were graffitied with the words 'fuck ramsi' (Photos 1 and 2). It is informative to reflect upon statements made by the Ma'asina Forum Executive in 2005, which now appear some what prophetic.

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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Forum Executive warned that the 'long term physical presence' of RAMSI in Solomon Islands will 'create an environment for resentment and subsequent resistance [my emphasis]' (Malaita Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:27). It further states that it is predominantly 'foreigners' who are in favour of a long term 'occupation' and that '[t]his too will create resistance in due course and it is advisable that good intentions should not lead to violence [my emphasis]' (Malaita Ma'asina Forum Executive 2005:27). One wonders whether the long term presence of RAMSI in Solomon Islands will also elicit from Malaitan quarters an explicit, perhaps largely symbolic, claim for compensation against RAMSI. The history of interaction between Malaitans and foreign forces would indicate that the likelihood of such a claim is reasonably strong.

CONCLUSION

As RAMSI nears the end of its sixth year, Solomon Islanders are increasingly questioning the place and purpose of the mission. The Australian Government, through its annual People's Surveys, has been keen to laud the on-going high levels of popular support for the mission. However, the headline figure in 2008 of 86 percent support for RAMSI (down from 90 percent in the 2007 survey) belies the existence of a minority, but nevertheless very important, dissenting perspective. If the People's Survey methodology was to include qualitative information derived from focus group-type discussions with public servants, police, church and NGO representatives, national and provincial level politicians, and ex-militants, in addition to questionnaire data elicited from randomly selected individuals predominantly from rural areas, one imagines the results would be quite different. (19)

In this author's experience, most Solomon Islanders, the vast majority of whom reside in rural villages, see RAMSI primarily as a policing operation and have little awareness of its professed 'state-building' and 'nation-building' objectives. Given RAMSI's early and rapid success in arresting former militants and restoring law and order, it comes as no surprise that the 'average' Solomon Islander supports its on-going presence in the country. However, if one were to discuss issues pertaining to RAMSI with Malaitan politicians, chiefs, Ma'asina Forum representatives or ex-militants, or for that matter Honiara-based public servants or policemen from any province, the picture would start to look considerably less rosy.

In this paper and elsewhere (see Allen 2006, 2008) I have demonstrated that there are significant pockets of dissent and that these are to be found mostly in Malaitan quarters. How, then, are we to interpret these dissenting voices? Neither RAMSI nor the Australian Government has proffered an official position in relation to this question. However, given that Australian strategic and foreign policy analysts originally interpreted the crisis in Solomon Islands through a prism of legal and economic rationality (see Hameiri 2007 for a discussion of this), it is reasonable to assume that contemporary expressions of opposition to RAMSI would be seen through roughly the same lens. Under such a perspective, expressions of dissent are reduced to the rational responses of men, predominantly former members and associates of the MEF, who have been pursued and prosecuted for crimes committed during and after the Tension, or who have stood to lose in a material sense from the presence of RAMSI.

This interpretation does offer some explanatory force. A large number of material crimes, such as theft, larceny, robbery and extortion were committed during the period of unrest, and many former militants and their associates were also profiting handsomely from the manipulation of the compensation and demobilisation process. However, it is not only ex-militants and their business and political associates who have been voicing opposition to RAMSI. Moreover, the history of Malaitan resistance discourses challenges the interpretation of Malaitan dissenting voices from an exclusively legal-rational perspective. Of equal, if not greater, importance is an understanding and appreciation of the historical character of Malaitan resistance and its role in creating, asserting and reconstituting culture and identity. Malaitans have invoked kastom, kastom law in particular, as a symbol of resistance to RAMSI, just as they have done with colonial and postcolonial governments. For many Malaitans, therefore, resisting RAMSI serves important cultural and identity functions. To draw upon Benedict Anderson's classical formulation (Anderson 1983), RAMSI has become an important contemporary Other in the oppositional construction of Malaitan identity.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to David Lawrence, Jon Fraenkel, Michael Morgan and especially Markus Pangerl for their comments on an earlier draft. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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Matthew G Allen

The Australian National University

NOTES

(1.) Solomon Islanders refer to this period as the 'Ethnic Tension' or simply the 'Tension', though for some people the 'Tension' refers only to the period from late 1998 to the signing of the Townsville Peace Agreement in October 2000. In this paper I refer both to the 'Tension' (late 1998 to October 2000) and also to the broader period of the 'conflict' (late 1998 to July 2003).

(2.) According to the Australian Government funded 'People's Survey', RAMSI enjoys the least support in Malaita Province (of the five provinces included in the survey). In the 2008 survey, 75.7 percent of respondents on Malaita said they support the presence of RAMSI in Solomon Islands, compared with 92.9 percent on Guadalcanal, 98.6 percent on Makira, 100 percent in Renbel Province, 87 percent in Western Province and an overall average of 86.1 percent (down from 90.4 in the 2007 survey) (ANU Enterprise 2008).

(3.) As Akin (2004) observes, there has been a tendency in Melanesian kastom studies to overemphasise the mutability of the cultural elements of kastom in order that its rhetorical political functions are given pre-eminence. The dangers of reifying kastom as a purely rhetorical device devoid of cultural contents resonate in broader debates concerning ethnicity and nationalism. Anthony Smith, for example, warns against overplaying the mutability of the cultural contents of ethnies as this would render us unable to account for the 'recurrence of ethnic ties and communities ... and their demonstrable durability over and above boundary and cultural change in particular instances' (1991:24). While acknowledging that kastom can and is used rhetorically and, in the process, its cultural and historical elements are, to greater or lesser degrees, 'invented', with Akin I do not see kastom as being entirely divorced from culture: '... indeed it is sometimes problematic to starkly differentiate kastom from culture except as analytical constructs' (Akin 2004:302; also see Kwa'ioloa and Butt 2007:112).

(4.) 'The West' in this context refers to the western Solomons.

(5.) The term micronationalism was first employed by May (1982) in the context of Papua New Guinea to describe a 'varied collection of movements which displayed a common tendency, at least at an ideological or psychological level, to disengage from the wider economic and political systems imposed by colonial rule, seeking in a sense a common identity and purpose, and through some combination of traditional and modern values and organisational forms, an acceptable formula for their own development' (May 1982:2).

(6.) According to Akin, the 'entire island' of Malaita was under British control by 1928 (1999:47).

(7.) Perceptions of Malaitan violence amongst people in the Western Solomons, and probably also in other parts of the Solomons, were also informed by the Binskin affair of 1909. Binskin was a trader whose wife and children were killed by the Vella Levella warrior Sito in retaliation for an earlier attempt by the local district office to capture Sito that had resulted in the death of Sito's wife and children. The administration reacted to the killing of Binskin's family by sending a retaliatory force of 'government officers, revenge-crazed traders and undisciplined Malaita militia who swept over Vella Lavella in a random wave of killing and destruction' (Bennett 1987:108). According to Dureau, the Binskin incident stimulated 'New Georgian animosity to the East, always represented by Malaita' (1998:211).

(8.) This is not to deny that ships and white men were attacked and killed in other parts of the Solomons, as indeed they were. However, the labour trade was very much focused on Malaita and therefore the frequency of these attacks was much greater there than in other parts of the Solomons. Moreover, the opportunity for material, and hence political, gain in the form of blood bounties of pigs and shell money, and also trade goods, created a political economy of ship raiding which did not exist in other areas.

(9.) Note that Keesing and Corris (1980) also describe the devastating punitive response to the killing of Bell and his party. Two weeks after the killing, a large expeditionary force consisting of Australian soldiers, white civilians, and Malaitan police and volunteers mostly from north Malaita arrived in Kwaio. Whilst the white men struggled in the difficult terrain, the Malaitans engaged in an orgy of violence and destruction including the gang-raping of women and girls, and the killing of children and prisoners. According to Keesing and Corris: "The order of the day was people hunting ... Whatever the orders they received from above, their mission was to avenge Bell and, most of all their own slain relatives' (1980:166). The actions of the punitive expedition formed the basis of a number of compensation claims submitted to both the Solomon Islands and British governments in the early 1980s (see Akin 1999, Fifi'i 1989 and Keesing 1992). Some of these claims were massively over-inflated, with the most extreme and widely publicised example being the claim for over SI$300 billion in 1984 (Akin 1999:41-43, Keesing 1992:161).

(10.) Maasina is the 'Are'are word for brotherhood. Maasina Rule is thus interpreted as 'rule of the brotherhood' (Laracy 1983:19-20).

(11.) Approximately half of the population of Malaita was still pagan in 1942 (Laracy 1983:10, Bennett 1987:185).

(12.) Labourers were housed with men from the same island and tended not to interact much with other island groups (Bennett 1987:191). This inhibited the development of a class conscience that transcended island and regional boundaries, as did the high turnover of labourers and the difficulties of establishing and maintaining communications between plantations. Moreover, in the division of labour on the plantations, pagans from the Malaita bush did most of the hardest and least enjoyable work, and though highly regarded as good workers by the European planters, they held the lowest status amongst their peers. This division of labour contributed to a shared sense of socio-economic injustice and even exploitation amongst Malaitans.

(13.) These three types of 'offences' are amongst the 'six named types of compensation' recognised by the Kwaio: 'for sexual trespass, theft, desecrating someone's ancestors, insults or infringements of personal or groups rights, causing injury and causing death' (Akin 1999:44).

(14.) It appears that this money ended up in the hands of the MEF and became a source of contention, particularly between the rank-and-file on one hand and the so-called Supreme Command and some field commanders on the other (see Allen 2007:168-169).

(15.) According to a former MEF field commander: 'When we thought to remove Ulufa'alu we had already told Sogavare that he would be prime minister of Solomon Islands ... we said to Sogavare, "this man can't solve the problems of the country ... you are now the prime minister ..." So we put Sogavare in the chair now' (L, interview with C, L and others). Evidence has also recently emerged during the debate of the no-confidence motion that removed the second Sogavare government in December 2007 that a balaclava-clad Sogavare was present when the national armoury was raided by the MEF/RSIP Joint Operation on the morning of 5 June 2000 (Clive Moore, seminar presented at The Australian National University, 17 April 2008). Later that day, prime minister Ulufa'alu was placed under house arrest and a few weeks later, in a climate of fear and intimidation, Sogavare was 'elected' caretaker prime minister in a parliamentary ballot.

(16.) This micronationalist narrative obviously obscures the fact that Malaitans have supplied a long line of politicians, public servants, businessmen and so forth. Importantly, however, the narrative is expressed by Malaitan 'elites', such as former national parliamentarian Michael Maeliau (see Maeliau 2003:50-51) or the late Dr John Naitoro (an author of the Malaita Ma'asina Forum manifesto referred to in the main text below), as well as by 'grassroots' Malaitans.

(17.) The section of TPA titled 'Rehabilitation of Militants' states that former members of the IFM and MEF will be repatriated to their home villages at the expense of the national government, and that the government will 'launch public works programs' to employ ex-militants and also provide counselling services for them (Solomon Islands Government 2000: Part Two, Section 5). There are obviously raised expectations amongst former members of the MEF in relation to these rehabilitation provisions.

(18.) One former MEF man I spoke to on Malaita talked about RAMSI as the second coming of the Australians, returned to take them away again as they had done during the blackbirding era (interview with KA). Another man, a former policeman, quipped that RAMSI should be referred to as AMSI, the Australian Mission Solomon Islands (E interview with N and P). P also told me that the Ma'asina Forum was formed in response to RAMSI 'invading' Malaita and not respecting the 'custom and culture' of the Malaitan people.

(19.) The 2008 People's Survey includes some qualitative analysis of focus group discussions. However, the composition of the focus groups in unclear. It would appear that participants were selected on the basis of accessibility, though some attempt was also made to 'give a good cross section of views and experiences' (ANU Enterprise 2008:133).