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Abstract
This paper is a review piece examining the main factors responsible for the civil war, lasting from 1988 to 1998, on Bougainville island, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. History, economy, and social aspects of the island – especially traditional society features, mining activities, the effects of colonization and industrialization – are highlighted. The aim of the article is to identify which factors best explain the outbreak of the conflict. The main assumption is that no single factor can explain the civil war, as these elements require a comprehensive analysis. The ‘resource curse’ theory, i.e. the presence of natural resources leading to economic failure, and the existence of ethnic cleavages, are proposed as explanations, although further factors must also taken into account. Finally, the analysis helps to contextualize the unfolding events in Bougainville and its path to democratization.
Notes
1. See Wesley-Smith, “Rethinking Pacific Islands Studies,” 115–37; Baldacchino, “Islands, Island Studies,” 3–18; and Sahlins, “Poor Man, Rich Man,” 285.
2. See Kaldor, New and Old Wars.
3. Sofri, “Il massacro di Bougainville,” 50.
4. Clerc, “De la découverte,” 20.
5. Pons, “La Papuasie-Nouvelle-Guinée,” 416.
6. Clerc, “Introuvable Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée,” 20.
7. Wesley-Smith and Ogan, “Copper, Class and Crisis,” 246.
8. Regan, “Causes and Course,” 271.
9. Filer, “The Bougainville Rebellion,” 9.
10. Filer, “The Escalation of Disintegration,” 20.
11. Although Bougainville is similar to the Melanesian and Papuan case, the effects of modernization on this island led to more peculiar results. Despite the absence of social classes and well-defined gender complementarities in terms of the division of labour, Bougainville was characterized by social stratification. Moreover, although extremely diversified from an ethnic and linguistic point of view, the island had rarely come into contact with colonialism, which had limited relations with only coastal populations. Being mainly mountainous and with no easy access to the sea, Bougainville failed in its attempts to export coffee and rice, and traditional coconut cultivation was never able to revolutionize the time-honoured production structures and social balances (Wesley-Smith and Ogan, “Copper, Class and Crisis,” 247–54).
12. Regan, “Causes and Course,” 274–6.
13. Wesley-Smith and Ogan, “Copper, Class and Crisis,” 256–7.
14. Ibid., 256.
15. Dorney, The Sandline Affair, 41.
16. Regan, “Causes and Course,” 276.
17. Cfr. The Coconut Revolution, a documentary film by Dom Rotheroe, 2001.
18. Dorney, The Sandline Affair, 40; Pons, “La Papuasie-Nouvelle-Guinée,” 425.
19. Regan, “Causes and Course,” 278–80.
20. O’Callaghan, “The Origins of Conflict,” 5.
21. See Amnesty International, Bougainville, 1997; Sofri, “Il massacro di Bougainville,” 51; Suter, “Mercenaries, Mines and Mistakes,” 278.
22. See Ebbeck, “Mercenaries”; Musah and Kayode Fayemi, Mercenaries, 1999; and Adams, “Private Military Companies.”
23. Vines, “Mercenaries, Human Rights,” 179.
24. Young, “Bougainville Enters its Ninth,” 286; Arnold, Mercenaries, 79–80.
25. McCormack, “The ‘Sandline Affair’”, 297–8.
26. Tacon, “Papua New Guinea,” 147–8.
27. See Regan, “Bougainville Confirms Independence Referendum.”
28. See Carl and Garasu, Weaving Consensus; Jennings and Claxton, A stitch in Time; Saovana-Springgs, “Bougainville Women’s Role.”
29. Cornish, “The Bougainville Conflict,” 1.
30. Connell, “Nauru,” 47–63.
31. Streeten, “The Special Problems,” 197.
32. Mikesell, “Explaining the Resource Curse,” 198.
33. Atkinson and Hamilton, “Savings, Growth,” 1793.
34. Papyrakis and Gerlagh, “The Resource Curse Hypothesis,” 190.
35. Suter, “Mercenaries, Mines and Mistakes,” 278.
36. Pons, “La Papuasie-Nouvelle-Guinée,” 418.
37. Nash and Ogan, “The Red and the Black,” 1–8.
38. Ibid., 13.
39. See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1991.
40. Reilly, “State Functioning,” 488.
41. Filer, “The Bougainville Rebellion,” 5–8.
42. Reilly, “State Functioning,” 479.
43. Reilly, “Democracy, Ethnic Fragmentation,” 162–185. In the absence of a strong national identity in post-colonial creations like PNG or the Solomon Islands, most people’s primary loyalty is to their clan, tribe, and wantok (‘one talk’, that is people speaking the same language) groups.
44. Reilly, “State Functioning,” 487–91.
45. O’Callaghan, “The Origins of Conflict,” 3.
46. See note 29 above.
47. Young, “Bougainville Enters its Ninth,” 283; Arnold, Mercenaries, 76.
48. Chesneaux, “Le Pacific Sud,” 26–7.
49. Cornish, “The Bougainville Conflict,” 1; Pons, “La Papuasie-Nouvelle-Guinée,” 425–6; Saffu, “Papua New Guinea,” 223; and Kerr, “Papua New Guinea,” 55–63.
50. Separation from PNG is unlikely to coincide with the end of problems for Bougainville. In fact, in addition microstate and island related difficulties (diseconomies of scale, distance from markets, dependence on one or more foreign companies, etc.), an independent Bougainville would suffer, but on a smaller scale, from the same ethnic tensions existing within the Papuan community as a whole. Thus, the unequal access to resources for some groups could again tragically reveal the fallacy and myth of “Bougainvillean nationalism” (Lawson, 1993).
51. Note that independence was not pursued until the blockade began in 1990; Bougainville itself is far from being ethnically cohesive.
52. See note 29 above.