The story behind the Sandline story

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.

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.

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.