Imagine that Australia leans on PNG to take more genuine refugees than at first it had agreed.
By Gary Scarrabelotti*
First, it was the “East Timor solution”. Then it was the “Malaysia solution”. Now it is the “PNG solution”. At least the latest has the merit of being supported by the PNG government.
There is, however, a potential big problem with the new PNG solution as it has been outlined so far: and that is the possible internal security risk it could pose to the fragile PNG nation.
When, in July 2010, former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, came up with the ill-conceived “East Timor solution,” it died almost as suddenly as it was floated.
First of all, the Australian government, amazingly, announced the policy before securing agreement with the East Timorese government.
Secondly, the East Timorese Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject the proposal.
On the face of it, the East Timorese parliamentarians were furious because Australia had sprung the proposal on their government without consultation – and this at a time when Australia was refusing to support East Timor’s claim that Woodside Petroleum should establish downstream gas processing facilities in their country.
East Timor scenario
What no-one spoke about at the time, however, was that the proposal to establish a refugee camp (or camps) inside East Timor would be like planting a time-bomb inside that frail and insecure mini-state.
Consider: one or a number of camps populated, in the main, by discontented Muslims inside a country, East Timor, which Indonesian nationalists – as also Islamic radicals worldwide – passionately believe to have been torn unjustly by Australia from Indonesia’s side and from the Islamic Ummah.
One does not need much imagination to develop a scenario.
Indonesian nationalists and Islamic radicals seek to make contacts within the camps. These contacts are accepted by disillusioned and angry Muslim detainees. A potential Fifth Column begins to form. A camp breakout occurs. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Muslims flee into the bush. They acquire arms supplied by their Indonesian sympathizers. East Timor’s army (1,300 men) and its police force (3,100 men and women) would be overwhelmed. Australia would have to enter East Timor in force.
PNG scenario
Now consider the case of PNG.
PNG has agreed to allow illegal immigrants attempting to reach Australian shores to be interned and processed at the Manus Island camp — still under development, and perhaps at others camps yet to be established.
It also appears that PNG has agreed to provide resettlement for internees subsequently assessed to be genuine refugees.
How many such genuine “reffos” PNG is prepared to settle seems unclear. But, again, it does not require great foresight to see potential serious problems ahead.
Let’s imagine that Australia unconscionably leans on PNG to take more genuine refugees than at first it had agreed. Eventually a discontented Islamic community, whose members had planned on making it to Australia, forms around a Port Moresby mosque. The mosque is funded by Saudi Arabia. It has its own firebrand preacher.
In the devoutly Christian but rickety social and political entity that is PNG, a deeply alienated Moslem community, numbering only a few hundreds, could represent a real internal security threat.
In the devoutly Christian but rickety social and political entity that is PNG, a deeply alienated Moslem community, numbering only a few hundreds, could represent a real internal security threat.
It’s not hard to develop the scenario further. Already a positively loony idea has been floated of establishing a detainee camp next to the Port Moresby airport on “vacant” land currently occupied by squatters. Poor squatters! A minor detail; think of the location! Just fly in the “illegals” and bus them across the tarmac to the adjacent camp.
And then?
Well, can we imagine a break-out … perhaps egged on by the Port Moresby imam who’s also been appointed Islamic chaplain to the camp by its administration?
Hundreds of embittered detainees swarm back across the same tarmac and seize the airport; they close down its operations, take hostages, and link up with activists from the downtown Moresby mosque.
Now consider that PNG has a dysfunctional defence force of 2,100 men and a constabulary of 5000 scattered, in isolated patches, across remote and inaccessible countryside. Soldiers and police are undertrained, underequipped, logistically and administratively weak and chronically incapable of sustained co-operation.
PNG could not cope. Australia would need to fly in Federal Police and a SWAT team, maybe even the SAS or Commandos.
Now, the PNG Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, strikes me as a very canny chap. If I were he, I’d be demanding a great deal more from Australia.
Given that PNG is so willing to help in pulling our chestnuts from the fire, I’d be insisting on a strong Australian commitment to PNG to support its internal security measures, perhaps by basing ready reaction forces on PNG itself.
I’d also be making it clear that not one genuine “reffo” would be allowed to settle in PNG. Full stop. Period.