Is there a geopolitical undercurrent stirring tensions in the Solomon Islands?

Late last month, the Commonwealth government accepted a formal request for assistance from the Solomon Islands government under the 2017 Bilateral Security Treaty, agreeing to provide urgent military assistance.

Royal Australian Air Force aircraft deployed from Canberra to provide airlift for members of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Approximately 40 personnel from Army’s 3rd Brigade, 6th Brigade and 17th Brigade also departed Townsville for Honiara, the island nation’s capital.

AFP and ADF elements were tasked with supporting the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force in defusing tensions and stabilising the region.

A Royal Australian Navy vessel was also deployed to the Solomon Islands to support the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force with maritime security operations.

This followed an outbreak of violent protests, reportedly sparked by the government’s decision to switch diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has defended the decision, claiming it puts the Solomon Islands on the “right side of history”.

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Opposition MPs in Honiara and Daniel Suidani, Premier of Malaita, continue to voice strong opposition to the move.

Suidani has continued to forge ties with counterparts in Taiwan, while also gathering increased support for an anti-China stance among the general public.  

His stance has garnered support from the US, which provided US$25 million in development assistance to Malaitan provincial authorities in 2020.

Suidani has explicitly linked the outbreak in violence to the recalibration of the diplomatic relationship between the Solomon Islands and China, as well as the government’s infrastructure policy.

Prime Minister Sogavare, however, has accused “foreign powers” of meddling in the country’s internal affairs.

According to Mihai Sora, project director, Australia-PNG Network at the Lowy Institute, this “volatile mix” of tensions again illustrates the impact of regional geopolitical competition on smaller nations like the Solomon Islands.

Sora points to China’s concerted effort to stamp out formal support for Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific.

“China’s interest in the Pacific stems from its ambition to establish itself as the regional hegemon and its long-time objective of eliminating diplomatic support for Taiwan in the region,” Sora writes in a piece originally published by The Guardian.

“With the switch of Solomon Islands and Kiribati in 2019, Taiwan has four diplomatic partners left in the Pacific – the Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru and Tuvalu – out of 15 worldwide. This would be greatly concerning to Taiwan and the US.”

However, these overarching tensions, he adds, have been infused into the historic rift between Malaita and the central government of the Solomon Islands.

“The broader context of uneven distribution of economic development across the country, and particularly Malaita’s relative lack of development compared to Guadalcanal where the capital is located, has been a sore point for decades and is widely regarded as having been at the root of Solomon Islands’ internal conflict from 1998 to 2003 known as ‘the tensions’,” Sora continues.

“This long-standing structural conflict was visible in how the protests started. Early reports on Wednesday indicated the protesters were primarily drawn from Malaita, and their demands were expressed along ethnopolitical lines.”

But Sora notes that as the violence escalated, a “cascade of other local frustrations” rose to the surface, with no singular identifiable grievance evident.

Other segments of Honiara’s community, he adds, began to participate in the unrest, including the Guales, who were looting alongside Malaitans.

“The protests rapidly morphed from a provincial-national feud to a violent release of pent-up angst over daily hardships exacerbated by the global health and economic impacts of COVID,” Sora writes.

“These hardships are felt acutely in vulnerable developing countries such as Solomon Islands, with the repeated imposition of states of emergency, perennial resentment at perceived corruption and brazen chicanery among MPs, and a predominantly young population frustrated with a lack of education and job opportunities.

“This mix of current frustrations exists independently of the Taiwan/China switch. So too does the Malaita-central government tension.”

But Sora points out that in a community already sensitised to foreign interference, perceptions of manipulation gained traction, “absorbed into existing grievances”.

The analyst notes that Canberra would have been aware of the optics associated with the deployment of Australian troops and federal police in the midst of violent protests in Honiara.

However, given the urgency of the security situation and the risk of deeper conflict, an intervention was warranted.

“The deployment has been carefully calibrated to minimise unsettling echoes of the past, and at the same time being substantial enough to restore order across the city,” he writes.

“The early intervention greatly reduces the lasting damage to stability and the long-term costs of the unrest.”

Sora concludes: “The roots of the conflict, however, can only be addressed when all parties in Solomon Islands begin to discuss a political settlement that acknowledges past grievances while setting out a path forward.”

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