SYDNEY: The grass-skirted dancers who greet foreign dignitaries in the Solomon Islands present a choreographed version of war. The foreign troops they met on the tarmac of Henderson airport in the capital, Honiara, could be facing something nearer to the real thing.

The first contingent of the 2,225-strong foreign intervention force, including 450 combat troops, arrived in a country on the brink of civil breakdown. For more than a year the government has been at the mercy of armed paramilitaries, many of them drafted into the police in an attempt to end hostilities sparked by a coup in 2000.

The prime minister, Allan Kemakeza, fled Honiara on a police patrol boat on Tuesday night because of rumours of a kidnap attempt. Most ministers have moved into the capital’s hotels for security reasons.

Six months ago such a deployment would have been inconceivable. Alexander Downer, Australia’s foreign minister, called the idea “folly in the extreme” in a newspaper article in January.

Australia’s role as America’s regional deputy after the Iraq war has changed that. The new doctrine teaches that domestic chaos provides a breeding ground for terrorism: the collapse of states such as the Solomons is not just a humanitarian problem, but also a security issue.

Australia’s lead role in the intervention has been welcomed in the region. But Canberra has been keen to dispel notions that it is leading the intervention from the front.

The action was preceded by a formal invitation from the Solomons government and is, technically, a joint operation by the Pacific Islands Forum, a regional body comprising Australia, New Zealand and 14 other island countries.

About half of the combat troops will come from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Their arrival has been trailed with a public information campaign in pidgin. The name of the operation, Helpem Fren, (pidgin for helping friend) is deliberately non-aggressive.

The programme envisaged by an Australian government thinktank is for a 10-year intervention costing #356m, the bulk of which would be paid by Australia. It will make the Solomons the third biggest recipient of aid from Canberra after Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

Once the main body of troops and police have left, 75 bureaucrats will stay behind in control of significant parts of the economy and justice system.

Peter Kenilorea, the country’s first prime minister and the man largely responsible for inviting the intervention, said foreign police would need to stay 10 years before an indigenous force could take over.

Bartholomew Ulufa’alu, the prime minister who was deposed in a coup in 2000, said the greatest hurdle would be changing local attitudes. “Sustainability is the key to it,” he said.

“We talk about returning guns and stolen property, but it is human beings that have done those things, and if we don’t convince them then we don’t do anything.” Much of the country’s ethnic tension and corruption is blamed on wantok, the Melanesian code of conduct which places loyalty to the extended family or clan above loyalty to the state.

Ideas of national unity are still a novelty in a country whose borders were drawn by 19th-century colonial powers. The Solomons have nearly 1,000 islands and 70 languages among a population of 480,000. Islanders joke that they only think of themselves as a country when the national football team is playing away.

There are plans to rewrite the constitution to make the government less centralised, but they remain a long way off in a country where basics such as power, water and public order remain intermittent.

Some of those most closely involved with the planning of the intervention admit privately that it may finally prove impossible to adapt wantok to the European model.

“In the long term we’ve got to rely on accountability, but the record of that in the region is not very good,” said Ron May, an expert in Melanesia at the Australian National University.

“Local level politics still have an effect that tends to undermine western institutions. We’ve seen people do outrageous things and get re-elected.”

One of the most blatant examples is that of Mr Kemakeza who was elected in 2001 just months after he was forced to resign as deputy prime minister for embezzling #67,000 of aid money.

Whatever changes take place, they will have to come quickly. The Solomons are one of the most proudly independent parts of Melanesia and the euphoria greeting intervention may quickly evaporate without evidence of progress.

“People know there is corruption in the Solomons, so we will accept having public officers from other countries,” Mr Ulufa’alu said.

“But if the officers don’t produce results quickly they will be seen as condoning the corruption, and then the appreciation may turn into something else. Something worse.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.