Fighting at Komo

by Michael Main

Research on the introduction of factory-made weapons into Hela points to a political origin for much of the weaponry that circulates in the Province. ¹ Indeed, members of the police mobile squad that was stationed at Komo complained to me that they were facing guns held by the locals that were brought in by the same political leaders that were now expecting the police to protect the com-munity from armed ² violence. Prior to the PNG LNG project there were no police stationed at Komo. At the time of writing and during the time of my fieldwork members of the police mobile squad were stationed for the clear purpose of protecting the assets of ExxonMobil and the PNG LNG project. While these police also ostensibly had the purpose of providing general law and order services to the local population, their time was occupied by patrolling infrastructure associated with the PNG LNG project including, inter alia, the Komo airfield and terminal, the Hides Gas Conditioning Plant (HGCP), the gas well heads along Hides Ridge, and ExxonMobil’s camp at Angore. The locals invariably refer to these police as the LNG police.

The LNG police are paid their normal salary but earn a levy that is paid to them by ExxonMobil. This reportedly amounts to a doubling of their regular wage with the ExxonMobil component being tax-free. ExxonMobil does not pay this wage directly to the police officers but directs this funding to the police department in Port Moresby, which is then supposed to be distributed to the LNG police. While this method of funding provides pecuniary distance between ExxonMobil and the police officers it does tend to result in the misuse of these funds in Port Moresby. )) Belying their fearsome reputation, ³ the mobile squad members I encountered at Komo expressed fear and apprehension when describing their deployment. Armed with military style rifles and with more than enough ammunition the police were aware that they were outgunned and outnumbered among a population that displayed no sign of disquietude at their presence. Although police barracks had been constructed at Komo, these barracks were one of the more blatant examples of the corruption and ineptitude that characterises widely-held beliefs about the Papua New Guinean state. Built near the centre of Komo township without security fencing, office or lockup, the barracks remain unusable and the police were accommodated in locally-owned guesthouses. ⁴

The fear that was expressed by the police has lethal precedent. In December 2015 two soldiers stationed at the Komo airfield were killed when they tried to intervene in an inter-clan dispute. ⁵ The soldiers were part of a contingent that was sent to Komo in 2014 for the protection of ExxonMobil’s airfield and associated assets. I interviewed several people about this incident, including some witnesses, and visited the location where it occurred. The locals reported that there were three soldiers involved, all of whom were drunk. The soldiers were responding to an earlier incident where someone had been shot dead as part of an ongoing inter-clan dispute. Clan members of the dead man were holding a haus krai when the three soldiers attempted to raid their gathering. The motive of the soldiers is unclear but it seems that their intentions were related to a desire to intervene in the dispute and prevent further troubles. The incident occurred at night when the soldiers attempted to crash their vehicle through a gate and enter the area of the haus krai. This area was bounded by the characteristic Huli gana drain that commonly marks property boundaries. In the darkness the soldiers failed to see the deep trench and drove their vehicle straight into it, injuring them and reportedly knocking them out cold. The people attending the haus krai then rushed to the vehicle and took possession of the soldier’s rifles, which they then turned on the soldiers, killing two and injuring a third. Although the details of this incident are impossible to verify what is more important is the attitude and interpretation of the locals towards the reasoning of the event itself. The most common response that was that the soldiers were taking sides in the dispute. Because the soldiers chose to intervene against a particular clan this meant that they were acting as friends of that clan’s enemies. The other commonly held view was that if the soldiers wanted to intervene then the time to do so was before anyone had been killed. What was the point of intervening after the killing had already taken place?

The only acceptable form of intervention would have been one that had the effect of maintaining peace and preventing the killing in the first place. The fighting was between the Tobe and Tambaruma clans over a disputed piece of land that is now part of ExxonMobil’s Komo airfield. ⁶ As part of the agreement that was reached with landowners over use of land for the PNG LNG project, Exxon-Mobil agreed to pay 700 kina per hectare per year (indexed to inflation) for land that is occupied by the project. The Komo airfield is situated within a fenced area of approximately 500 hectares. The runway itself is 3.2km in length and was constructed over a hilly and undulating land-scape that included swamps, gardens, scattered houses and forested areas. ⁷ There are sixteen clans that claim ownership over parts of the Komo airfield, each with a different-sized portion of the total area. Conflict between these two clans has a long history and the construction of the airfield has raised the stakes over the conflict. The Tambaruma group is based at the southern end of the airfield and the Tobe group claims land on the airstrip itself. Active armed conflict between these two groups during my fieldwork prevented my being able to gain detailed knowledge of the historical and genealogical roots of the conflict. Both clans are descended from various groups in the Papuan Plateau and settled in the Komo area after migrating from the west . Although I did not have access to the detailed land dispute claims related to the conflict, it was clear that the type of verbal dispute resolution that is known to be a distinctive feature of Huli society was not taking place. The conflict was instead characterised by occasional and unpredictable murder, shootings, bush-knife attacks and pitched gun battles. Furthermore, the people actively involved in the conflict were invariably poorly-educated young men whose knowledge of their dindi malu was an abridged and truncated version of the knowledge that used to be held by their grandfathers, most of whom were no longer alive.

(An extract from Talk Never Dies: An Analysis of Disputes Among the Huli. A thesis submitted by Laurence R. Goldman for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University College, London. February, 1982., p.219-226)

1. The LNG police are paid their normal salary but earn a levy that is paid to them by ExxonMobil. This reportedly amounts to a doubling of their regular wage with the ExxonMobil component being tax-free. ExxonMobil does not pay this wage directly to the police officers but directs this funding to the police department in Port Moresby, which is then supposed to be distributed to the LNG police. While this method of funding provides pecuniary distance between ExxonMobil and the police officers it does tend to result in the misuse of these funds in Port Moresby. [↩]
2. Sadaf Lakhani and Alys Willman, “Trends in crime and violence in Papua New Guinea,” in Briefing Note No. 1 (Washington: Social Cohesion and Violence Prevention Team, Social Development Department, The World Bank Group, 2012), 15. [↩]
3. See for example http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/australia-funds-lethal-brute-squad-20130803-2r6g1.html [↩]
4. The LNG police are paid their normal salary but earn a levy that is paid to them by ExxonMobil. This reportedly amounts to a doubling of their regular wage with the ExxonMobil comp-onent being tax-free. ExxonMobil does not pay this wage directly to the police officers but directs this funding to the police department in Port Moresby, which is then supposed to be distributed to the LNG police. While this method of funding provides pecuniary distance between ExxonMobil and the police officers it does tend to result in the misuse of these funds in Port Moresby. [↩]
5. Andrew Alphonse, “PNG: Two Defense Force Soldiers Killed By Tribesman,” Pacific Islands Report (2015), http://www.pireport.org/articles/2015/12/28/png-two-defense-force-soldiers-killedtribesman [↩]
6. More specifically the conflict is and was between two sub-clans of Tobe and Tambaruma: Tobe Tano and Tambaruma Hayama. [↩]
7. In 2009 I walked the length of the then proposed site of the airfield. [↩]