Talk:Sandline affair

message: When looking for sources, be aware that there's at least one published book that covers the incident at length and a decent-length BBC pitch of the book that aired this week on their world news program that gets picked up by Public Radio International. MrZaiustalk 08:23, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

message: I lived in PNG from 1996 to 2009 and at the time of the Sandline Affair I was living in East Sepik Province as an academic researcher.  Although the article currently doesn't mention it, many of the Sandline personnel ("mercenaries" is what nearly all Papua New Guineans called them) were training PNG Defence Force soldiers for the planned Bougainville operation at Moem Barracks which is located just outside of the East Sepik provincial capital, Wewak.  I didn't personally witness any of the events but I can verify that everyone in PNG and in the wider region constantly referred to the whole series of events as "The Sandline Affair".
I don't know who wrote the previous Talk post but I don't think much of what they wrote is worth paying attention to.  The writer does not say what "industry" or "field" he/she has been working in (maybe mineral extractions??) that would give us an idea about their background or source of authority.  They have a point that the article does need a lot of rewriting and additions but what is there now is at least a reasonable rough first draft and I see very little that is outright wrong or "is written with venom and political spin".
I don't expect anyone to take my word as a source of authority either, but anyone who has an interest in this should start with reading "The Sandline Affair", by Sean Dorney.  The author is the long-time Pacific correspondent for the Australia Broadcast Corp. and has been reporting on PNG since at least 1974.  Anyone who has lived in PNG and paid attention to regional journalism knows that there is no better source for accuracy than Sean Dorney.  The only shortcoming of that book is that it was published in Jan 1998 and so it didn't cover the longer term events that would still be an essential part of the whole Affair.
I can't spend the time to fix up the article and I don't consider myself an authority on these events.  And, unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of Sean Dorney's book to refer to.  However, I will make a few comments based on my memory (certainly not perfect) of talks with many Papua New Guineans and expat residents who did have more personal eperiences with the events.
1) The vast majority of Papua New Guineans that I've known view Jerry Singirok, Walter Enuma and the other soldiers who carried out Operation Rausim Kwik as national heroes, especially among the common folk.  However, I think it is fair to say that they also have their detractors, especially among the political, legal and business elites.  The established powers were probably very nervous about the dangerous precedent that was set by the military refusing to obey the civilian government.
2) At the time of the crisis in 1997, most of the Papua New Guineans who I knew (meaning NOT people in positions of power and few who had a university education) expressed support for the military to totally take over from the civilian government.  Having lived in Sub-Saharan Africa for a while previously, I expressed my opinion that they should very seriously reconsider that idea.  In the end, I think great credit must be given to Jerry Singirok, and maybe even more credit to Walter Enuma, for maintaining enough discipline of the troops to prevent mass violence in Port Moresby when the throngs of students, soldiers and just plain citizens surrounded Parliament and for restraining themselves from grabbing power, instead guiding the way for a peaceful & orderly transition to another civilian government.  (Although in hind sight I doubt that most Papua New Guineans are too proud of the next government that formed under Bill Skate.)
3) The main thing that really angered the mutineers and most Papua New Guineans was that the Chan government (& all the other governments that had to deal with the Bougainville civil war) were never willing to spend US$36 million on the PNG Defense Force to mount a serious Bougainville operation.  I remember reading that some of the soldiers who were in "Operation High Speed II", the recently failed invasion of Bougainville, didn't even have boots or enough food to support them in the fight.  One can argue that if they had spent that much money on the army to train, equip and carry out a campaign against the BRA, they might not have had any better success than the pitiful showing they made with a much tinier budget (who knows how that much money would have actually been spent or gone missing), BUT we'll never know that for sure.  My own opinion is that the PNG soldiers never had their heart into fighting the BRA rebels and many probably identified with their cause to win a greater share of the mineral wealth pie for local land owners.  
Regardless of how anyone would make that judgement, I hope it is easy for anyone to understand what a galling insult to the army's pride (especially to the top commander who was not consulted in the desision process, he was just ordered to carry out the final decision) and to the nation's pride as a whole.  The government was willing to spend a whole lot more money to hire foreign mercenaries than to invest in their own army or to spend that much money in pursuing a peaceful negotiated settlement to the Bougainville conflict!  Additionally, the PNG constitution was definitely being violated by the the Prime Minister & his National Security Council entering into a contract with Sandline without Parliament voting on it (or even being informed), although I doubt many Papua New Guineans bothered themselves over that little detail at the time.
4) A very important part of the whole affair played out at Moem Barracks in East Sepik Province at the same time as the more famous events were happening in and around Port Moresby.  In my opinion, Operation Rausim Kwik may have been the most impressively successful military operation ever carried out by the PNG Defence Force.  At least 2 or 3 large groups of soldiers had to plan very specific actions in Wewak and at least 2 places in Port Moresby at the exact same time because the various groups of Sandline personnel were probably always in close contact.  And there could be absolutely no leaks or even behaviour indicating resistance to the Sandline plan in advance.  Remember, the Sandline personnel were supposed to be very experienced warriors who knew how to operate in devious, back-stabbing environments like Sub-Saharan African dictatorships.  I may be wrong on this detail, but I think there were absolutely zero casualties when the PNG soldiers arrested and disarmed all 40-something of the Sandline guys.  In fact, Sean Dorney reported that Tim Spicer and his deputies were efficiently whisked away to a barge off the coast near Port Moresby while all the other Sandline guys were under arrest in Murray Barracks & Moem Barracks.  Nobody except Jerry Singirok, Walter Enuma and the soldiers holding Tim Spicer knew where he was being held, which precluded Sandline or PNG government agents from mounting an armed counter attack to reverse the arrests.  I don't know if the special forces of any country could have done it any better (but I acknowledge that I don't know much about anyone's military.)
5) Jerry Singirok was later found out to have used an official government credit card to buy personal goodies while on overseas trips and I think he was also guilty of accepting gifts from some arms manufacturers while attending some military shows.  I don't think it was more than a few thousand US$ worth of stuff.  This of course tarnished his reputation among the power elites, but most regular Papua New Guineans thought that if that was as much as they could nail him for after a very big investigation, then he must be one of the least corrupt officials in PNG. ;-)  He went on to chair a national committee tasked with finding ways to deal with the proliferation of fire arms in the mid-2000's.  He also stood for election in his home district in Madang province in 2007 but lost. (I think he was a pretty close second, though, in a field of at least 20 candidates.)  I have no idea what happened to him after 2007 or to Walter Enuma and the other mutineers from 1998.  Julius Chan seems to be back into power politics again, winning election as governor of New Ireland Province in 2007.
6) There was lots of talk about the Chan government and Sandline scheming together to make a big project by buying up the Panguna Copper Mine (what started the whole Bougainville crisis) at a very cheap price just before their military operation to hunt down and kill the BRA rebels and recapture the Panguna mine.  Then they'd own quite a valuable asset that was near worthless at the time.  I don't know whether any real evidence of that scheme was ever unearthed but most PNG watchers I knew thought that would be about par for the course.  If true, some people might view that as another instance of defrauding the PNG public of vast mineral wealth, but given the difficulties with reopening the mine even if one was certain there would be no more armed rebellion, that charge may be rather fuzzy.
I just did a quick Google search and I see that Tim Spicer wrote his own side of the story in 2000 (and also covers his other controversial adventures in Sierra Leone), entitled "An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair".  There is also "Enemies Within. Papua New Guinea, Australia and the Sandline Crisis: the Inside Story" by Mary-Louise O'Callaghan (1999).  "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry" by P.W. Singer (2003) seems to include something on the PNG Sandline Affair.
This seems like the perfect article for a bunch of UPNG or Divine Word Univ students to write up in a proper and detailed way (maybe with some guidance from a professor of history).  So, if you are one of those students, why not get going on it???  
Malken42 (talk) 06:16, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
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