Paradisiac Pacific islands have long been the stuff of dreams — at least for sentimentalists who do not have to live on them. Last Saturday such dreams were shattered when the worst cyclone ever recorded smashed into the Solomon Island of Tikopia, three days’ sailing from the main island of Guadalcanal. Winds reaching the barely credible speed of 220 mph tore the place apart, shredding vegetation, snapping trees and hurling down all but the most ruggedly built buildings in an island whose traditional dwellings are made of wood and palm fronds.
How many people have perished in this appalling natural disaster is not yet known, for the simple fact that so far is Tikopia from assistance, that it will take another 48 hours before the first rescue ship can arrive. Scant details of what has happened have come only from Australian and New Zealand reconnaissance planes, which have managed to overfly the island and take pictures. It will only be when the first rescue ship arrives that the full extent of the destruction and loss of life will be known. If estimates are correct, a large part of the population of 3,500 may have perished.
That it is taking so long to bring succor to these unfortunates is not merely a result of the great distance from the capital Honiara on Guadalcanal. The government did not send a ship immediately because it could not pay for fuel or a crew. In the end, two ships were dispatched, but only when the Australian High Commission said that it would pay. One would have thought that common humanity would have meant that both bunkerage suppliers and crew would have deferred the question of cash in favor moving swiftly to bring assistance to their fellow islanders. But, that is not the way the Solomons do things. Riven by ethnic strife, these largely volcanic islands with less than half-a-million inhabitants have become a sink of corruption and violence between armed gangs. The government is bankrupt. Despite a lofty peace plan brokered by Australia in 2000, lawlessness continues. Last year the prime minister was forced to use Australian aid to pay off policemen who laid siege to his office, rather than settle the outstanding wages of civil servants.
This former British colony is no stranger to violence. Occupied by the Japanese in World War II, the fighting when the US forces landed to retake Guadalcanal was some of the most vicious of the entire Pacific War. The conflict and the harshness of the Japanese occupation that preceded it brutalized the islanders and have left a legacy of violence and intolerance. Since the islands achieved full independence in 1978, they have been unable to achieve stability, partly because the dominant Melanesian population has discriminated against the Malaitan minority. Thus the Solomon Islands have been unable to cash in on the boom in long-distance tourism and remain pitifully poor.
Helping Tikopia’s survivors will, however, be a relatively simple matter compared with persuading the Solomon Islanders as a whole to abandon their ethnic hatreds and work together for the good of their fragile homeland.
