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| Cover of the book "Enemies within" |
The story
behind the Sandline Story
A Case Study
by Henry Yamo
Mary Louise O’Callaghan is a seasoned Australian
female journalist who wrote the book titled; “Enemies Within, Australia,
Papua New Guinea and the Sandline Crisis: The Inside Story” based on the
nine years of crisis on Bougainville.
She has worked in Australia, China
(Including Tibet), Fiji, French Polynesia, Hong Kong, Kiribati, New Caledonia,
New Zealand, Papua New Guinea (including Bougainville), Samoa, Solomon Islands,
Tonga and Vanuatu. She is now the Public Affairs Manager for The Regional
Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) where she has been working since
2007.
In an interview with her from Auckland,
she outlined that she wrote the book because she felt there were so many
unanswered questions which she didn’t get to write about in enough detail or even
find out. So she wanted to give details and do justice to the people and show
what had happened, how it had been done and who was responsible. Mary Louise
said, although the Sandline story is the biggest, she is proud of another
investigative story she did that ran in July 1997. This story detailed how then
commander of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force (PNGDF), Jerry Singirok was
receiving $70 000 paid by J & S Franklin a rival arms dealer to Sandline
into a visa card account with Lloyds Bank in London. This payment was commenced
prior to contracting Sandline. She said it was a much tougher story to get but
she was able to dig around and get the story off using her maternity leave.
How
Mary got the story
In early February 1997, then Prime
Minister Sir Julias Chan made a statement announcing a new approach to the Bougainville peace process, which was widely interpreted
to indicate a softer government approach and a new peace initiative. He was thought to be referring to a Bougainville Peace Strategy being developed at the time by then
Provincial Affairs Minister Peter Barter and the Bougainville Transition Government
(BTG). It suited Chan's purposes for Barter to appear to be succeeding, while
in fact, the contrary ‘Project Oyster’ was going ahead. No
one knew until the story was broken by Solomon Island
based South Pacific correspondent for ‘The Australian’ Mary-Louise O'Callaghan
on 22 February 1997 in ‘The Weekend Australian’
The story had a devastating blow to Papua New Guinea’s
international profile and revealed a secret agenda that had been harboured by
the country’s top political leaders exposing ambitions different to those
espoused publicly by these men.
Mary Louise had been covering the nine
year old conflict while working for the Sydney
morning herald as the South Pacific correspondent, before moving to ‘The
Australian’ still as a correspondent. Over the years when writing about events
that unfolded during the conflict, she had established and retained useful
contacts both in Solomon
Islands and Papua New Guinea (PNG).
On this occasion, Mary had travelled to
PNG from Solomon Island to cover Australian Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer’s visit to PNG in early 1997. The Foreign Minister’s
visit to PNG was aimed at strengthening existing bilateral relations between
the two countries and hold discussions on how Australia
could further assist PNG resolve the prolonged Bougainville
crisis.
In Solomon Island,
Mary Louise had persuaded her organization ‘The Australian’ to allow her to cover
the Foreign Minister’s visit upon which she was given permission to do so. Two
days earlier in Solomon Island before her trip to PNG, a driver who was a Bougainvillean
and a senior member of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) intelligence
network in Solomon Island, when delivering furniture to her house had told
her that the BRA felt the PNG government was planning another major offensive
against it on Bougainville. He told her they (BRA)
had seen things that suggested another big hit was on the way. She realised
later in Port Moresby
that, what the BRA had seen in early February was Lieutenant Colonel Tim
Spicer, chief executive of Sandline International leading a reconnaissance tour
of the island by helicopter.
She said this was a good lead about the
story and decided that while in Port
Moresby she would look for further information. She said, “one time while traveling from
Fiji to Solomon Island in 1997, coincidentally I was on the same plane and row of
seats as then Prime Minister for PNG, Sir Julius Chan, who told me after I
asked about the Bougainville situation, that he was very determined to resolve
the issue during his term as Prime Minister”. Armed with this tips she went to PNG.
In Port Moresby,
one of her contacts, a certain individual who was very close to a cabinet
minister said the minister was getting very worried about the Bougainville
situation. She paid the minister a visit but he never revealed what was
happening. But Mary said, she could tell by his concern that something along
the lines of using force was going to happen. With this information she set out
to establish whether the PNG government just months, from a general election
was seriously contemplating another military assault on Bougainville.
It seemed crazy, but she thought, so had their previous effort seven months
earlier when, abandoning their efforts at forging a negotiated settlement with
the rebels, the government had ordered the army to wipe them out instead,
launching operation High Speed II in
July 1996. As she worked through her contacts in PNG she began to hear snippets
of a scenario so extreme and so foolish she thought at first there must be an
alternative credible explanation. But too many people were saying the same
thing and most of the people were sources she had come to trust over years of
covering PNG. And it wasn’t long before other bits of the jigsaw began to fall
into place when Sandline parked the world’s largest cargo plane, the AN-124,
smack in the middle of the international tarmac at Port Moresby’s Jackson’s
airport. She spent a full week getting to the point where she could write this
story. Although she had some information from a PNG source who outlined in
detail about a national Security Council decision in January to use mercenaries
on Bougainville, she did not have that on paper and also she was yet to pin
down the name of the contracted mercenary organisation.
By the time the foreign minister arrived
on the Wednesday afternoon of the same week she had flown to PNG, she was
starting to get closer, but still didn’t have enough hard facts to write a
story. So while waiting for the Australian Foreign Minister’s press conference
in Port Moresby she decided to see if a casual inquiry to one of the middle
ranking Australian officials would get her somewhere. She asked the official if
the mercenary thing had been broached by the Minister during his talks with the
PNG Prime Minister. “Off the record Yes, but we’re still working on it, so the
minister doesn’t want to say anything just yet.” came the reply. But she had
got her answer already from his response, something was certainly brewing.
While she was looking for confirmation
if something was about to happen, it was the PNG Prime Minister who eventually
led her to the story after a press conference he called. The same day she
photographed the Air Sofia plane parked at the Jackson’s International airport
in Port Moresby which was on hire to mercenaries she also attended the press
conference given by the Prime Minister Sir Julias Chan at Parliament House. After
the press conference she made an appointment to interview the Prime Minister
one on one and while going into this interview she heard the Prime Minister
tell his staff to find a time to fit Howard into his schedule. It seemed the
Australian Prime Minister was interested to talk to his PNG counterpart.
When she enquired if this Howard was the
Australian Prime Minister, the answer was yes. But Chan told her that maybe he
was calling to express his pleasure of how well the foreign minister’s visit to
the country had gone. But she said, she knew Australian Prime Minister’s didn’t
just call up their counterparts when they already had their foreign minister in
the country. Knowing what she knew, Howard’s call was obvious, clearly he had
not been satisfied with Chan’s response to Downer about the mercenaries. Now
she only needed the confirmation of what had been discussed during that phone
call and she could write the story. There would be enough proof, if the Prime
Minister of Australia believed PNG had hired mercenaries. She then moved into
the interview with the Prime Minister with two of her rival colleagues and they
started the interview with Downer’s visit. During the interview she steered the
questioning around and asked if Australia was doing enough to support the Papua
New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) on Bougainville and then led on to ask, if the
required support was not coming from Australia, would PNG turn to other
countries for support? To this Chan told her that there was no country that PNG
shared such close defence relationship so he would not turn to any other
country.
She then asked if he had considered
outsourcing the required support. The Prime Minister responded, “oh no, that
would be far too expensive. We couldn’t afford that unless we could pay it off
over several years” and dismissed the idea immediately, but not quickly enough for
Mary to catch him stop blinking and involuntarily giving away. Mary Louise knew
the Prime Minister’s answer was an outright lie.
The
next morning (Friday) Mary Louise called her contacts at the Australian Federal
Government and got the confirmation that John Howard had rung Chan the previous
day expressing his concern over the plan to use mercenaries on Bougainville.
She then called the foreign desk at ‘The Australian’ and told them she had a
story that would be sent to them later. And this happened to be ‘PNG hires mercenaries
to blast rebels’ which appeared on the front page of ‘The Weekend Australian’
on Saturday, 22 February 1997.
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| A band of fully armed fighting men during the crisis |
Analysis
of the story
If this story was given adequate
prominence and dug into fairly early not only but Mary Louise but also by the
PNG media, it would have saved the
country (PNG) millions of kina that had been signed away by government
officials with no real benefit to the people. But even then the reality is,
information about the real purpose for Sandline’s presence in the country was a
highly guarded secret known only to a very few high ranking politicians in the
government. Nevertheless the story’s publicity was significant because it averted
the political, economical and bilateral implications that would have impacted
on the country. In my view, without the story the PNG government would not heed
Australia’s threatening opposition to ‘project oyster’. Chan’s government would
continue to cover up until Sandline’s eventual deployment on Bougainville
would reveal the truth. Never the less
the revelation of the covert plan assisted with the beginning of a new peace
process. With the concealed military solution blown and the Papua New Guinea
Defence Force’s (PNGDF) inability to quell the nine year old conflict, the
story paved way for all parties to return to the negotiating table and start a
new process again. It created an opportunity for rebel leaders on the ground to
call for peace talks and work hard to support that peace process which was a
much better process for a better outcome.
The revelation and the mercenaries’ fiasco provided the breakthrough to
the present peace settlement, although it is not part of Mary Louise’s story.
If the secret deal was not revealed and operation
oyster had been launched it would have been a completely different story
about the situation on Bougainville. If the government had succeeded in deploying
the mercenaries to capture and reopen the Panguna mine, that would have been
far from the end but, simply a return to the beginning of the crisis. This time
the militants would be even more aggressive and determined to close it down
again by any means including an all-out war. They had done it and would not
hesitate to do it again because the real issue over which the conflict started would
not be solved by the government retaking the mine.
Deploying the mercenaries would also
have negative impacts on the bilateral relations with Australia. Firstly
the Australian government would be embarrassingly defeated if the PNG
government decided to proceed with its initial plan. Thus it would consider the
actions of the PNG government as a deliberate undermining of the long established
bilateral relationship and would probably take some form of disciplinary
measure through bilateral relations. Secondly much of the aid assistance that
was coming from Australia
towards the peace efforts on Bougainville and
other areas could have been withdrawn.
The story showed that certain government
officials and political heads including the Prime Minister made hasty and
unguided decisions in desperation to quell the Bougainville
crisis. To accommodate for the expenses of the secret contract there was
drastic cut back on funds earmarked to provide basic goods and services to the
people. This move alone out rightly denied the people of Papua New Guinea the rightful goods
and survives they deserved.
The story has shown that the willingness
of a South Pacific government to use its country’s scarce resources to employ
mercenaries against its own has set a terrible and dangerous precedent not only
for the country but the region as a whole. The story delivers a message that
governments should think twice before taking such decisions that deal with
peoples’ lives and use of resources that are meant to be put to good use for
mutual benefit.
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| The plane that blew the story |
In Bougainville the revelations seriously
undermined the fragile trust that had been carefully crafted by then minister
responsible for Bougainville affairs, Mr Peter
Barter. Mr Barter’s ability to pursue a vigorous program of restoration of
resources, even if fully and publicly backed by the Prime Minister, Sir Julius
Chan was severely compromised when the story was broken.
Morally it was outrageous what the
government was doing behind the peoples back to actually bring in armed forces
to deploy against its own people so the story did justice for the people to
know what was happening. It is my view that there were people in PNG who may
have gained through this contract at the expense of the people so it was good
for the people to see and know through the story what was happening. Another
aspect is, the story further heightened the suspicion ordinary Papua New
Guineans held about their national leaders. Much of the population had already
been tired of the drain that Bougainville had
placed on government funds for eight long years. The use of a large amount of
money for such a purpose was resented by many in a country where the majority
of the population reside in very basic conditions. One of the strongest
reactions from the story had been likely to come from the PNG Defence Force
(PNGDF) which had slogged it out on Bougainville
for eight long years without the logistical, financial and political support. The
story revealed to the PNGDF that the government had hired mercenaries using
money which could have been used to support PNGDF operations. It also illustrated
that the government had lost faith in the capability of the defence force while
much of its failure to quell the conflict was due to lack of appropriate
government support. Of course this reaction by the defence force followed when
operation “Rausim Kwik” was executed
to eject Sandline from the country.
