Book Review - Doves Over the Pacific: In Pursuit of Peace and Stability on Bougainville
Doves Over the Pacific: In Pursuit of Peace and Stability on Bougainville
Written by: Reuben RE Bowd,
Australian Army History Unit and Australian Military History Publications, Canberra, 2007,
ISBN: 9780980320480, 259 pp.
Reviewed by: Colonel Bob Breen
With this book Reuben Bowd continues a fine tradition of serving army officers finding the time to write about contemporary Australian military history in order to educate, commemorate and inspire. A veteran of a peace support operation in Bougainville, with this book he has told the story of two regional peace support operations—Operation BIG TALK and Operation LAGOON—both conducted in the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) (now called the Autonomous Region of Bougainville). BIG TALK was conducted on New Zealand naval vessels in the waters off Bougainville Island in early August 1990. LAGOON was an Australian-led multinational operation that was conducted in support of a peace conference held in Arawa, an abandoned mining town located on the central Bougainvillean coast, in October 1994.
Bowd begins his story with an introductory chapter that covers the geography, demographics, prehistory and history of discovery of the Pacific islands in general, and Solomon Islands in particular. He briefly describes the colonial history of the territories of Papua and New Guinea, concluding that the colonial era resulted in ‘an artificial political and geographical division of the Solomons archipelago into two new nations—PNG and the Solomon Islands’. The next chapter also covers quite a lot of history in a few pages to explain the origins of the Bougainville crisis. It sets the scene for the two main peacekeeping stories that follow in the remaining four chapters. Bowds observation that the Panguna mine was not the root cause of the Bougainville crisis and that the Bougainvillean people should take much of the blame is sure to be debated among scholars who specialise in PNG political and economic history.
The author is an impressive historian as well as a lucid writer. His use of primary sources and inclusion of the complete text of several key documents are features of this book. For Operation BIG TALK, he managed to obtain a record of interviews with the senior New Zealand naval commander and the Reports of Proceedings from participant New Zealand naval vessels. Sometimes these sources draw him into detail like the depth of water, cruising speeds and each vessel’s maritime housekeeping and routine tasks, but they form a solid factual foundation for his story. For Operation LAGOON, he accessed the Combined Force Commander s diary, a unit history, post-operation reports and Department of Defence files, including some confidential material. Once again these primary sources constitute a solid platform for a detailed account. He concludes the book with a brief postscript of key milestones of Operation BEL ISI, an unarmed regional peace support operation in Bougainville that began in 1997 and concluded successfully in 2003 after six years of patient negotiation and Bougainvillean reconciliation.
The author is to be commended for assembling the elements of a fine historical publication. The narrative is a factual and detailed record. Each photograph speaks a thousand words. Each map clarifies geography helpfully. The eleven appendices are replete with useful information. The publisher, Australian Military History Publications, in a joint venture with the Australian Army History Unit, has done a magnificent job in presenting Reuben Bowd’s work. Those who participated in Operation BIG TALK, Operation LAGOON and Operation BEL ISI will greatly appreciate the author s inclusion of nominal rolls at the end of the book.
