The guns have been silenced. And most of the thugs and corrupt officials are behind bars awaiting trial. So where to from here for Operation Helpen Fren on the Solomon Islands?
‘Before I used to be scared that the police would stop me, steal my car and leave me’, said Linus, a taxi driver in Honiara. ‘Now life is better. People are walking the streets and going to the market, but there is a long way to go. People need jobs so they can make money and use my taxi.’
As a barometer of the current situation, Linus is on the money. His claim that improvements are good but have a long way to go echoes like a mantra across the islands. As if on cue, Linus points out the Rove Prison, a new jail built as part of the Australian aid program. ‘There are many policemen in that prison’, he says, referring to inmates not guards. ‘With them out of the way we can get on with our lives.’
Two of the 216 prisoners in Rove are former deputy police commissioners of the Solomon Islands. ‘We treat them just the same as everybody else’, says Gary Walsh, the Australian commander of Rove Prison. At lunchtime, low security prisoners prepare and cart the food to those behind the high security razor wire. From one corner of the jail come yells of abuse and protest. This is soon drowned out by some harmonious gospel singing from another corner. ‘We encourage the singing’, explains Walsh. ‘Soon after they start, the whole prison settles down.’
Walsh is one of nearly 100 Australian civilians employed through AusAID, the Australian government aid agency. Mostly they work alongside Solomon Islanders in all sectors of society including health, finance, justice, government, police, education, forestry and disaster management. ‘We’re in the nation building phase now’, says Nick Warner, Special Coordinator of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI). ‘We’ve scaled back the role of the military and we’re emphasising economic reform. This country needs investment if it is to have a future but to make that happen we need to strengthen capacity in all sectors’.
Complex laws governing land ownership are a significant obstacle to investment. Eighty per cent of the land is custom land, meaning it belongs to various tribal communities.
‘Much of the ethnic tension began with land disputes. If you can’t agree on who owns what land, the