International
Solomons Resentment Builds
By Brendan Nicholson, Age 28/4/08
Apr 30, 2008 - 11:15:16 AM

A report by the private organisation, AID/Watch, to be released this week, says the $1.3 billion operation has triggered rapid inflation and inflicted "aid trauma" on the islanders. It says many of the aid workers, soldiers, police and contacted companies involved have a strong interest in keeping the operation going.

  Australia has spent $1.3 billion heading the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands peacekeeping operation, launched after a chronic breakdown in law and order there in 2003.

  Some 95% of RAMSI personnel are Australian.

  AID/Watch says that while the local people appreciate the improvement in security provided by the Australian and other regional military personnel and police, that support is being undermined by a growing feeling that they are economically deprived compared with enclaves of long-term and relatively wealthy aid workers.

  It says the mission should be wound down gradually, and widening the scope of the mission would risk increasing tension and resistance to it.

  Dr Tim Anderson, a senior lecturer in political economy at Sydney University, prepared the AID/Watch report and said tensions were building, fed by resentment at inequality generated by the RAMSI mission.

  "Further, Solomon Islanders do not see RAMSI as the 'state building' exercise suggested by many Australian analysts," he said.

  AID/Watch co-director Flint Duxfield said last night that injecting more than a billion dollars in aid money through a project with no clear long-term purpose and no exit strategy was bound to create problems.