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...Australian National University, Canberra: Pandanus RSPAS 2004. Pp: 262. By Jon Fraenkel. Price: $34.95
The armed fighting, lawlessness and disorder which gripped the Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003 drew sparse attention overseas, leading some observers to describe it as 'a forgotten conflict' (Amnesty International 2000). For Solomon Islanders the period in question is usually described as the 'ethnic tension', or simply the 'tension'. (Though for some people 'the tension' refers to the period from 1998 to the signing of the Townsville Peace Agreement in late 2000). The events are also commonly referred to as the 'social unrest', the 'troubles' or the 'crisis'. For the sake of simplicity, and in recognition of the widespread human suffering caused by the events of 1998 to 2003, I refer here to the period in question as the 'conflict'. Indeed, although the conflict was not characterised by large numbers of battle-related fatalities--with deaths in the hundreds rather than thousands--almost ten percent of the country's population was dislocated as a result of the violence, the provision of basic services ground to a halt and the primary commodity-dependent economy almost entirely collapsed. In this manner the conflict, though largely confined to the capital Honiara and other parts of the island of Guadalcanal, had a deleterious effect throughout the country and forever changed the lives of many Solomon Islanders.
This paper reviews two books about the conflict in Solomon Islands published in 2004, Happy Isles in Crisis by Clive Moore and The Manipulation of Custom by Jon Fraenkel. The fact that these books were published so soon after the restoration of law and order following the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in July 2003 is a source of both their strengths and their weaknesses. The considerable benefit of making history available so soon after the event comes at the obvious cost of inadequate time for in-depth reflection, analysis and the collection of original primary source material, particularly the perspectives and experiences of those who were directly involved as either combatants or as victims of the violence. Whilst both books are constrained by their authors' eagerness to get to the printers, they nevertheless provide useful contemporary histories of the conflict which summarise a large amount of secondary source material, particularly local and overseas media reports. Both authors also make good use of websites and email discussion groups which are ephemeral in nature and are no longer readily available to scholars of the conflict in Solomon Islands.
The authors employ quite similar approaches in terms of structure, with both adopting an essentially chronological, rather than thematic, narrative. Fraenkel makes more effort to theorise and explain the conflict in addition to providing descriptive narrative--whilst Moore's narrative, though informative and engaging, does not propose any particular theoretical basis for the conflict. Fraenkel dedicates more space to the post-Townsville Peace Agreement period, which provides the bulk of the evidence for his thesis that custom...
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