RAMSI Intervention in the Solomon Islands
An Australian-led force landed in the Solomon Islands in July 2003 at the invitation of a government that had lost control of its own capital. The country had been in what its people call the tensions since 1998. Migration from the densely populated island of Malaita to Guadalcanal, where the capital Honiara sits, had produced disputes over land and jobs; a Guadalcanal militia drove out something over 20,000 Malaitans; a Malaitan militia formed in response, took over the police armoury, and seized the prime minister in June 2000. The state stopped functioning. Public servants went unpaid, the treasury was looted by compensation claims extracted at gunpoint, and businesses closed. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was an unusual thing: some 2,200 police and troops from fifteen Pacific countries, invited under a regional framework rather than a UN mandate, deployed to restore order and then to rebuild the institutions. The security part went quickly. The main militia leader Harold Keke surrendered in August 2003, some 3,700 weapons were handed in under an amnesty, and violent crime fell sharply. The state-building part took a decade and was contentious — foreign officials in line positions in the finance ministry and the police, which critics called a form of trusteeship and supporters called what was asked for. Riots in 2006 required reinforcement. The mission left in 2017 after fourteen years and around $2.6 billion. It is the most successful intervention of its kind in the period and is studied for that reason.
- Year: 2003 CE
- Category: Military
