Landmines and Lonrho

A South African and a British company have come together to develop a project for land mine clearance. The companies are Lonrho and Countermine and they have proposed a joint venture agreement to develop opportunities for land mine clearance. The environment will be sub-Saharan Africa in order to rehabilitate previously unusable land. Lonrho will provide the funding and its extensive African business network to build the African arm of Countermine’s land mine clearance business.

Anti-Personnel mines cause up to 20,000 casualties every year across the world. Large tracts of the world’s land are rendered unable by landmines. Even the suspicion of landmines is enough to keep humans away from land. The Lonrho/Countermine joint venture aims to reclaim this land. Lonrho will provide the finance and Countermine will provide the hardware. Countermine’s selling point is a product called ORACLE (Obstacle Removal and Clean Land Equipment). Developed in partnership with the American Caterpillar company, ORACLE works as a sort of giant armour-plated plough. It traverses fields tilling the ground to a depth of 50cm as it goes along. The machine uses a massive sharp-toothed rotor to shred mines before they go off. And even if they don’t go off, they are smothered.

Countermine has experience in the field. In 2000, it won a contract from the Croatian Government to clear landmines from Croatia after the war with Serbia. Countermine says ORACLE adheres to the International Mine Action Standard (IMAS). IMAS are an evolving set of standards in force for all UN mine action operations since 2001. This work is co-ordinated by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD).

Anti-Personnel mines are often deliberately designed to injure rather than kill. Medics will be required; the injured will have to be evacuated. That way, they increase the logistical support burden on the opposing force. The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (also known as the Ottawa Convention) compels 155 signatory countries not to manufacture, stockpile, transfer or use anti-personnel mines. However, as the cost of making a mine is US $2, while removing it costs US $1000 per mine, there are many notable omissions: the US, China, Russia, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, are all outside the treaty.

Under Clinton, the US refused to sign up unless it gained an exception to protect its troops in South Korea. However he did pledge to sign the Treaty by 2006. When Bush came to power, his administration initiated a review of U.S. landmine policy. That review concluded it was not in US interest to sign the treaty and the vague Clinton commitment was completely abandoned.

Landmines remain a staple of war on Earth. And their impact lasts long after hostilities have ceased. Almost 20 years after the Iran-Iran war, Iran still has 4 million hectares containing landmines. These mines are not only on the borders; some are planted inside Iranian cities. On average 2-3 people are injured or killed by landmines every day in Iran.

For now the joint venture is concentrating on Africa. Most African countries have signed up to the Ottawa Convention yet Africa is the most heavily land-mined continent in the world. There are at least 40 million mines and 140 million people live in countries where the risk of encountering mines is high or very high.

The most severely affected countries are ones that have all experienced post-colonial wars: Angola, Chad, Eritrea, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The desert countries Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have also minefields dating back to World War II. In total, landmines kill or injure over 12,000 people per year in Africa.

And at first glance Lonrho seems an unlikely partner for this venture. They were once described by Edward Heath as an “unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. Heath made the comment in parliament in 1973 when he was Prime Minister. Then under the remarkable tutelage of Roland “Tiny” Rowland Lonrho ran into trouble for violating sanctions against white Rhodesia. Lonrho were not the only sanction-busting British company, but only the company of the German Rowland (birth name: Roland Walter Fuhrhop) suffered the consequences.

But while Rowland was making enemies in London, he knew how to do business in Africa and he made many friends among Black African leaders including Nelson Mandela and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda. Rowland sold a controversial stake in Lonrho in 1992 to Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafy, while Libya was being accused of the Lockerbie bombing. In 1994, Rowland financed a film “The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie” which disputed Libyan involvement in the bombing.

That same year Rowland was forced out of the company he had managed for 32 years. Commodity prices had slumped and the company's debts threatened profitability. The company was split into two: Lonmin and Lonrho Africa, the latter retaining all the African businesses and mining assets. While Lonmin thrived and is now worth $US 8 billion, Lonrho Africa stalled. In 2005, David Lenigas was appointed as an ebullient CEO and co-chairman with a brief to restore Lonrho Africa as a first port of call for investment in Africa.

Lenigas is quickly rebuilding the business and diversifying into hotels and casinos. He was typically upbeat about the new deal with Countermine saying the partnership will add value to Lonrho’s growth strategy. He was also quick to point out that “by rehabilitating large areas of valuable land we will make a significant difference to African communities that have suffered terribly as a result of landmines”. Lenigas is hoping the ORACLE will provide a match between profits and philanthropy.

Yemen cracks down on Zahdi insurgency

Yemeni government sources are reporting the army has pushed rebel fighters out of several key strongholds in the mountainous north of the country. The army has re-captured the town of Qalaa from a Shia rebel movement known as the Believing Youth. 40 soldiers and 20 rebels were killed in the re-taking of the town after the rebels took control in April.

The Believing Youth (Arabic: al-Shabab al-Mum’en) is an Islamic extremist organisation of Zaydi tribesmen. Zaydi is an offshoot of Shia, founded a thousand years ago, and is unique to Yemen. Zaydism is practiced by a quarter of Yemen’s 20 million population while the are Shafa'i order of Sunni. The focus of the revolt is the town of Saada, close to the border with Saudi Arabia and 230km north of the capital Sana’a. The Shia rebels oppose Yemen's close alliance with the US and model themselves on Lebanese Hezbollah. The government accuses the rebels of wanting to reinstall the Islamic Imamate that was overthrown in 1962.

While the central government appears to have taken back Qalaa, intense fighting has also broken out south of Saada. Government forces launched air raids and mortar bombardments of rebel-held areas surrounding the city. Thousands of people have fled their homes in the latest bout of the conflict, which has been raging on and off since 2004.

The initial conflict began when Hussain Badr al-din al-Houthi founded the Believing Youth in 2004 and led them in armed uprising against the government. Their slogan was "Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on Jews and victory to Islam.” The government put a price of $US50,000 on his head after months of battles between rebels and Yemeni security forces. Yemeni warplanes and artillery pounded his hideouts in the Jabal Maraan mountains. Government troops finally killed Al-Houthi in September 2004. Skirmishes died out but resumed again early this year led by Al-Huthi’s brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. A third brother Yahya al-Houthi now says the group is willing to negotiate a peace settlement. Yahya is living in exile in Libya and Yemen has been demanding his extradition through Interpol.

Yemen has now recalled ambassadors from Libya and Iran in protest at their support of the rebels. Yemen alleges they provided financial aid and weapons to the Zaydis. President Ali Abdullah Saleh approved a summoning of the ambassadors from Tripoli and Tehran for consultation. Party officials have publicly accused Libya and Iran of providing the Shiite rebels with financial aid that helped them buy weapons. In response Libya said it was trying to mediate between the parties while Iran denounced the accusations as 'irresponsible allegations.'

Islam first came to Yemen during the lifetime of Mohammed. The Persian Governor of Yemen was converted around 630 AD (around the same time as the conquest of Mecca). The Egyptian Mamelukes ruled the kingdom until the Ottoman Empire took over in the mid fifteenth century. Britain took in an interest in the 19th century, particularly in the strategically vital seaport of Aden. It negotiated a series of treaties which declared the south Arabian Protectorate of Great Britain. The Turks finally withdrew from North Yemen with their defeat at the end of World War I. In 1918 Imam Yahya (a Zaydi Imam) established the Kingdom of Yemen. His eldest son Imam Ahmed succeeded him and stayed in power until his death in September 1962. Ahmed’s son was overthrown by the military who founded the Yemen Arab Republic.

In the British controlled south, an independence movement became more active in the 1960s. In 1967, Aden got its independence and was the capital of the newly formed People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. As the South imposed a Marxist order, it caused massive immigration to the north contributing to ill-will between the two Yemens. It didn’t help that the south was socialist and secular; the north a traditional and tribal Arab society. To the surprise of many, the two Yemens united in 1990 as the Republic of Yemen with the capital in the North’s Sana'a. Equally surprising was the promise of multi-party democracy which was unheard of among the Arabian peninsula states.

Despite this apparent harmony, mutual distrust continued between the north and south. Both sides kept their own armies which led to inevitable conflict. A southern secessionist movement emerged in 1994 but was subdued by the vastly more populated North. Sporadic violence remained a threat through the decade that followed. In 2000 a visiting US naval vessel, the USS Cole, was anchored in Aden harbour for a fuel stop when it was attacked by two suicide bombers in a small inflatable boat. The attack killed 17 US sailors and injured 39 others. In October 2002 extremists attacked the French oil supertanker Limburg off Yemen. Meanwhile tribal violence was escalating between the Sunni Government and the Zaydi northern tribes.

The latest battles with the Zaydi separatists began in January this year. The rebels evicted 45 Yemeni Jews from their houses in Saada province and attacked a Saudi company repairing roads near the Saudi border. Officials estimate there are less than 3,000 rebels but the 30,000 Yemeni strong army has not been able to contain them. While the Young Believers’ Anti-Zionism is well known, their ultimate motive remains unclear.

Somaliland requests international recognition

Somaliland has sent a formal request to the African Union asking to be recognised as an independent state. Somaliland is a former British colony with a population of 3.5 million which broke away from Somalia in 1991. No country yet formally recognises the de facto nation although several keep an unofficial diplomatic presence in Somaliland's capital Hargeisa.

Somaliland unilaterally declared independence four months after the overthrow of former Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Since then Somaliland has enjoyed relative security and prosperity compared to the anarchy that has descended on the rest of Somalia. There are no gunmen, roadblocks and bombed-out buildings on the streets of Hargeisa. The breakaway republic also has its own constitution and has held successful democratic elections. The state is mostly peaceful, though there were border clashes last month with troops from neighbouring Puntland, another semi-autonomous Somali region.

Earlier this month Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin ruled out reuniting with Somalia and also cast doubt over the interim government's claim of victory in Mogadishu. He also warned Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf against any belligerent moves against Somaliland. "Abdullahi Yusuf cannot come here. It is a day dream that Abdullahi Yusuf is coming and that he will govern Hargeisa." He said.

Kahin has been pressing other African leaders to recognise his country. Kahin is also encouraged by Sweden’s move in March to treat Somaliland as a self-governing area. The Swedish government stated that "Somaliland which takes politically a unique position shall be treated for the first time as a self-governing area”. While the statement stops short of formal recognition, it is a huge step forward with Sweden’s plan likely to have the backing of the EU.

Somaliland has a long and distinct history apart from Somalia. It was dominated by Egypt in the 19th century until British soldiers came across the Gulf from Aden to establish their rule. They founded the protectorate of British Somaliland in 1887. Britain showed little interest in its new African possession. They called its then-capital Berbera "Aden's butcher's shop". It supplied the meat to the strategic British garrison across the gulf.

Britain granted independence to the colony on 26 June 1960 and Somaliland was immediately recognised by 35 countries. Its independence lasted five days. At the same time, Italy granted independence to Italian Somaliland. Under the guidance of the exiting colonisers, the two governments in Hargeisa and Mogadishu agreed on a plan of unity on the basis that Somalis are the same people, speak the same language and have a common religion. They came together as the Republic of Somalia effective 1 July 1960 with a referendum in both parts to ratify the new Republic’s constitution within a year. But most people in the north boycotted the referendum. The seeds for an independent Somaliland were sown.

Mohammed Siad Barre swept to power in a 1969 coup. His rule rekindled discontent in Somaliland which formed a resistance movement against him. By 1988 the two sides of Somalia were locked in civil war which resulted in more than 20,000 killed and the eventually overthrow of Barre. The Somali National Movement (SNM) met to declare independence for Somaliland and named Abdirahman Ahmed Ali "Tur" as interim president for two years. Mohammed Ibrahim Egal was elected President of the Republic of Somaliland in 1993 a position he held until 2001. A referendum in that year saw 97 per cent vote in favour of full independence.

On 18 May 2007 Somaliland will mark 16 years since it proclaimed independence from Somalia. Although no country recognises its sovereignty, its long-term ability to function as a constitutional democracy distinguishes it from the majority of entities with secessionist claims, and a small but growing number of governments in Africa and the West have shown sympathy for its cause. It satisfies all the criteria for independence. But they remain stymied by an African domino theory. The African Union holds the principle: "respect of borders existing on achievement of independence." The AU is reluctant to recognise independence, no matter how justified, for fear that it would increase pressure by other groups in Africa to support changes in their inherited borders. Somaliland remains trapped in Africa's colonial history.

Southern Sudan, Dia, and George Forbes

On Mayday, six men were charged of murder in Southern Sudan. They were three Sudanese: Joseph Dut, Isaac Chol, and Matur Maher and three Kenyans: Bernard Alumasa Mheri, James Munyao Mbithi and George Forbes. The last man, Forbes, also has Australian nationality. The men work for a Kenyan construction company in the southern Sudan town of Rumbek. They were charged over the killing of Ukrainian Mykola Serebrenikov, who worked as a flight engineer for another firm.

The Ukrainian man was found hanged from a towel rack at the Kenyan construction company's property. Several locals had chased him to the site and he was allowed in. Two independent post-mortem reports (one done in Kenya) concluded that Serebrenikov’s death was suicide. But the judge believed otherwise and said it was murder. His judgement was based on the testimony of Awan Gol, the deputy state governor, who said he had seen the body of the Ukrainian and he was suspicious about the towel rack from which he was found hanging. "It was not a high place where he could hang himself, his knees were on the ground, and his hands on the ground," he said.

The judge remanded the six men to appear in court on 7 May in Rumbek. The city of Rumbek does not belong to Sudan itself but rather Southern Sudan, officially a “semi-autonomous southern region” but unofficially the second city of a new country. Then Kenya launched a protest about the detention of its citizens despite an autopsy report done in Nairobi showing it was suicide. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Major General Kuol Deim Kuol dismissed the Kenya autopsy and refuted their claims that SPLA soldiers are harassing Kenyan nationals working and doing business in Southern Sudan. He claimed that three Kenyans killed 15km inside Southern Sudan were in fact “Kenyans bandits”.

Meanwhile the Australian media jumped on the case of the third suspect George Forbes. Forbes was born in Kenya but migrated to Australia 20 years ago. He lived in Sydney and Brisbane before travelling to Sudan. On 26 April, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman who gave the facts of the case. “An Australian man has faced a Sudan court charged with murder and failing to prevent suicide.” Australia had no-one inside Southern Sudan and was relying on British contacts inside the country to see if they could make contact with Forbes.


The Fairfax press described Forbes as 45 and an employee of Trax International Construction. It mentioned five other arrests. Serebrenikov, the Ukrainian engineer, was found hanged in a bathroom at Trax's compound. If found guilty of murder, the six men could all be sentenced to death.

When the case came to trial on 7 May, the judge heard the evidence and said he would give his verdict on 18 May. There are three possible outcomes. They are: death by hanging, life imprisonment, or the payment of dia to the victim's family. Dia is bloody money that is institutionalised in the Sudanese law that Southern Sudan has inherited. One of Forbes’ relatives in Rumbek for the trial was directed by the judge to conduct talks with Serebrenikov's family about financial compensation. Under Sudanese customary law, dia is paid in the form of cattle, at the rate of 31 cows for one human life. The judge said they should find out what Serebrenikov’s family want. But that might not be easy to do. Rumbek is a long way from Kiev. The judge challenged the men to produce a member of the Ukrainian's man’s family in court which they were unable to do.

Meanwhile, the Australian ambassador to Egypt, Robert Bowker came to Rumbek to attend the trial. A former Associate Professor in the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, the Middle East and Central Asia at the Australian National University, Bowker is probably aware that the trial may not be foremost in Rumbek’s priorities.

The town was initially chosen to be the new country’s capital but was overtaken by Juba. With a population of less than 100,000, Rumbek's facilities remain poor. The city was destroyed by two decades of civil war with Khartoum’s central Government that left 1.5 million dead. Here, people live in traditional thatched huts and hardly anyone has electricity or running water. But there is a sense of optimism as the city tries to pick up the pieces of peacetime.

The trial of the six men rumbles on.

Refugees from decency

Sometime between the fourth of August and the eight of December 2007, Australia will go to the polls for the next federal election. Prime Minister John Howard will again most likely turn to his tough border policy to confirm his status in the community as strong on security. But the policy is becoming discredited. Security comes at too high a price.

Under Howard’s watch, Australia is well on its way to a status of international pariah. In ten years, Howard has closed doors and smashed windows on the world stage in order to win elections at home. His stridency is a hollow echo of the Bush doctrine. He has projected a pre-emptive strike policy that has enraged neighbours. He has reneged on the international rule of the UN to take part in an illegal and ill-conceived war in Iraq. He almost single-handedly rejected a world process for climate change (Clinton’s US agreed to sign Kyoto). Above all, he threw away human decency and locked the door on the very people that most needed his help. John Howard, with the help of a vigilant and compliant Navy, freed Australian waters from the fleeced and powerless refugees of the war-torn countries of the world.

Australians, alarmed by talk of being “swamped” by another Yellow Peril, supported this action, in the main. Howard used the confluence of 9/11 and a boatload of Afghans to tap the fearful mood of the country to devise a new immigration policy on the fly. Refugees were not wanted, unless invited. And in the homeland itself, Australia frittered away hard-won freedoms in name of Anti-Terrorism and the need to protect itself from invisible enemies. But staying in a fearful mood is not healthy over a long period of time. The moral panic of terrorism will pass and Australia will have to live with the consequences.

The new immigration policy was a mallet used to crush a peanut. Bill Heffernan, a farmer and the Government’s hatchet man with a penchant for homely metaphors, described it as a “firebreak”. He told Jesuit priest and author, Frank Brennan, “You have to choose someone’s property as a firebreak. In destroying their property, you will save the neighbourhood”. His Government chose the Tampa as the firebreak. But his cute analogy doesn’t stand up. Refugees are not property, the boats are not a bushfire and the only thing destroyed in the neighbourhood and the world at large is goodwill towards Australia.

It is not entirely the fault of the current Government. Labor in power been equally unsympathetic to refugees. Mandatory detention was introduced in 1992 under the Keating Labor Government. While they have softened this stance lately, they have not entirely renounced it. Yet they and the Liberals know mandatory detention is unnecessary. It is ineffective as a deterrent and merely clogs up prisons creating prologued human agony. It remains in place merely to "send a message" that Australia is not a soft touch.

The “Pacific Solution” was one of Howard’s addition to the hard touch. It was done to keep the boats and their human cargo out of reach of interfering lawyers. Australia outsources its immigration problems to poor and compliant countries such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea at great cost and with total loss of due process. The Australian locations are remote from the big cities and the overseas locations are almost inaccessible. Yet it too is a totally unnecessary action. It not only increases the tension between the executive and judicial branches of government, it denies the refugees any appeal process. Much to the Government's annoyance, the Australian courts rule fairly on most immigration matters before them.

The third plank of the strategy was the 1999 introduction of Temporary Protection Visas. This was a Pauline Hanson idea adopted by the Government to offer a three year visa that would not apply to family. The law’s failure to protect family members caused an increase in women and children in the 2000-2001 wave of boat people and explains why there were only 65 men among the 353 who died when SIEV X sank in October 2001. It also meant that of 1,609 people held offshore since Tampa, 368 of them have been children.

While such positions seem unfair, inhuman and abhorrent (not to mention expensive and inefficient), the hard stance played to the Government strengths on security. It also played on an almost feudal fear of invasion by boats. It failed to take into account that most overstaying immigrants arrive in Australia by air. But the wider community is unconcerned by an airborne invasion. Meanwhile Labor ducked for cover while the Government came down hard.

Australia’s three year election cycle means that governments spend almost as much time campaigning as governing. Governments turn to slick public relations, making themselves look good at taxpayer expense. Advertisers paint a picture of a prosperous nation, the lucky country. The people held in Nauru, Manus Island, Christmas Island, Port Hedland, Woomera and Baxter wanted a small slice of that luck. They wanted a safe environment free from trauma; they wanted medical treatment, schools, adequate water, food, toilets and housing. But Howard’s Australia just wanted them to go home and looked the other way. Australia now needs to face up its responsibilities. Its time to start acting like a decent neighbour again.

Jose Ramos-Horta wins East Timor's first presidential election

Jose Ramos-Horta has claimed an overwhelming victory after Wednesday’s presidential run-off election in East Timor. Ramos-Horta ended up with 70 per cent of the vote to claim a clear mandate to rule. "I'm happy with the result," Ramos-Horta told Australia's ABC Radio in the capital Dili, "I will carry out my duties according to the constitution and listen to advice from everybody so I can take Timor Leste to a better future."

Ramos-Horta is the first directly elected president. He replaces Xanana Gusmao, the former resistance leader, who has led the country since independence in 2002. Ramos-Horta’s defeated opponent, the parliamentary speaker, Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres conceded defeat this afternoon. The Fretelin backed candidate is now turning his attentions to parliamentary elections next month. “What is important now is to prepare ourselves to face the upcoming election," he said. "We will also observe how they (Ramos-Horta’s administration) will manage the country."

The election result now needs to be rubber-stamped by the court of appeal. The mood in the capital Dili was calm with no sign of celebration parades or protests. The country’s security forces had been on high alert after trouble marred the first round of elections last month. The EU has 40 monitors in Timor to monitor the two presidential elections and the parliamentary election. EU head of mission Jose Pomes Ruiz said the run-off was more peaceful than last month's poll, but he also criticised both candidates for “unnecessary aggression”.

Jose Ramos-Horta is a former Nobel Peace Prize winner who spearheaded the overseas end of the campaign for East Timor's independence. Born in Dili in 1949 to a Timorese mother and Portuguese father, he was educated in a Catholic mission and became involved in the struggle for independence from Portugal. He was exiled for two years before returning to take a role in the short-lived East Timor republic of 1975. Aged 25, he was appointed foreign minister. He left the country to appeal to the UN three days before Indonesia invaded. It would the start of a long exile from his homeland.

As well as promoting the cause of a free East Timor, he had an illustrious academic record. He studied Public International Law at The Hague Academy of International Law, gained an MA from Antioch University in the US and did post-graduate at Columbia University, Strasbourg and Oxford. He is fluent in five languages: Tetun (native language), Portuguese (official), French, English, and Spanish.

In 1988, he left Fretelin, the dominant East Timor party he helped found. He would henceforth be an independent voice for freedom. In 1996, the Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured the East Timor struggle by awarding the Peace Prize jointly to Ramos-Horta and fellow countryman, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo. The committee consider Ramos-Horta the “leading international spokesman for East Timor's cause since 1975” . They cited the two men’s “sustained and self-sacrificing contributions for a small but oppressed people” and hoped the award would spur efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Timor conflict “based on the people's right to self-determination”.

When East Timor finally did regain its right to self-determination, Ramos-Horta was the obvious choice for the nascent country’s Foreign Minister. He resigned this role in 2006 after a military crisis that embroiled the country. Ramos-Horta relieved the aggrieved soldiers of duty who marched through Dili demanding to be re-instated. The protests that followed saw police shoot against soldiers, killing five and causing 20,000 people to flee the city in terror. Ramos-Horta assumed Defence Ministry responsibilities during the crisis. Weeks of anarchy followed with the rebels backed by Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. Ramos-Horta resigned from the government in protest. With pressure growing internationally, Alkatiri resigned and Ramos-Horta was installed as interim Prime Minister.

Ramos-Horta is widely viewed as more friendly to the West than the Fretelin Party he has defeated. He wants to see more foreign investment in what is Asia’s poorest country. The country still relies on foreign aid but its best economic prospects lie in tourism, fisheries, coffee and gas. Ramos-Horta told a 2006 interview he wants Australia to give it a “50/50 per cent share of the resources in the Greater Sunrise area. Greater Sunrise is one of the richest gas fields in the entire Asia Pacific region”. With Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer leading the plaudits for the new president, now might be a good time for Ramos-Horta to press home his country’s claims.

Iraqi violence catches up with Kurdistan

The war in Iraq took a new and dangerous twist yesterday. A bomb exploded in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming many casualties. A suicide truck bomb detonated in front of the offices of the Interior Ministry killing 19 and injuring 70 others. The bomb damaged the nearby Kurdish security services building and left a three-metre-deep crater in the road.

Kurdish officials blamed al-Qaeda linked insurgents Ansar al-Sunnah and Ansar al-Islam for the incident. It was the first major attack on the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region for two years. Kurdistan is the northern-most of Iraq’s provinces and the one least affected by the sectarian violence that has crippled the rest of the country since the US-led invasion in 2003. The last attack of this scale occurred in 2005 when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Arbil recruitment bureau killing 60 people.

Arbil has a population of about one million and is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world. The city is also called Erbil or Irbil in Arabic but it is known in Kurdish language as Hewlêr - the place where the sun is worshipped. The city was founded around 2300 BC as “Urbillium”. Most of the city rests on a 30 metre tall mound consisting of ruins from Arbil's long history. Alexander the Great won an important battle near the city that led to his conquest of Persia. The Greek historian Xenophon called the city Carduchoi.

The Roman general Pompey took the province 200 years later. The Romans renamed the province Corduene. The name survives today in the name of the people that inhabit the area – the Kurds. Arbil became an important town during the Ottoman Empire as a trading post between two provincial capitals: Baghdad and Mosul. After the First World War ended, Kurds lobbied Britain to create an independent Kurdistan. Instead they were subsumed into the new British Iraqi mandate and launched several revolts which the British put down.

When Iraq became formally independent in 1930, the Kurds launched another bid for independence but Britain quashed the rebellion again. Mustafa Barzani rose to become the new power. Kurdistan’s remote location, astute politicking, support from Tehran and occasional warfare with Baghdad allowed Barzani to come to arrangement with whichever central government was in power.

In the early 1970s Barzani fell out with the new de facto ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Barzani lost the support of Iran and was forced to flee to the US. In 1975, Arbil became chief city Saddam’s new creation, the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. But real power was now with Baghdad. Arbil’s power returned after the 1991 Gulf War, when with the support of the allies’ no-fly zone it became the capital of semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan. The city descended into civil war between two Kurdish factions. Mustafa Barzani was now long dead, but his son Massoud Barzani returned to Arbil in 1995 to claim victory with the support of Saddam.

Arbil celebrated the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. Since then, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit Arbil. The new Iraqi constitution of 2005 explicitly recognizes the Kurdistan Regional Government. Security in the region is controlled by militias loyal to the Kurdish party. The Kurdistan flag flies everywhere while the Iraqi flag is rarely seen. The relative safety has seen many foreign firms invest in the area in recent years. Arbil has a construction boom and is building a new international airport costing $300 million due to open next year.

Kurdistan is also looking to develop its own oil wells, something always hindered during the Saddam era. Several British companies have approached Kurdistan's government-run Oil & Gas Petrochemical Establishment to discuss deals. Kurdish officials estimate their unexplored oil reserves at about 45 billion barrels, though that figure is questioned by outsiders. Nonetheless Kurdistan’s short distance to Turkey’s pipelines is a major advantage. The other major advantage is safety. The theme among foreign businessmen here is they can work safely by basing their Iraq operations in Kurdistan rather than 320 km south in Baghdad. Yesterday’s bomb attack may force some to re-examine this theory.

Northern Ireland's Long Good Friday

Northern Ireland power sharing began yesterday. Arch-loyalist and Democratic Union Party leader Ian Paisley was sworn in as Northern Ireland’s first minister yesterday with Sinn Fein’s deputy Martin McGuinness appointed as Paisley deputy (The deputy role did not suit the gravitas of Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams). Paisley and McGuinness now serve together in a compulsory coalition of local government that devolves some powers from London to Belfast. Tuesday’s ceremony at Belfast’s imposing Stormont Castle was witnessed by the British and Irish prime ministers, both of whom have their own agendas and needs from the occasion. But the day belongs to the North and was a crucial landmark along the long road to peace in Northern Ireland. "It's a sad day for the innocent victims of the trouble we have had, yet it is a special day because we are making a new beginning," said Paisley. "And I believe we are starting on a road that will bring us back to peace."

While Paisley was mapping out the road to peace, the Belfast Telegraph described the ceremony as the “last major set piece of the peace process”. The hard work of governing the province begins now. Both Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein are keen to hit the ground running and manage what is rapidly becoming a booming economy. The optimism in the economy is shared by the construction industry. UK house prices rose in March after recent falls and the recovery was led by Northern Ireland. There the big rise in prices was attributed to three factors: a rise in foreign workers; investors still keen on property ahead of pensions and shortage of housing stock leading to panic purchasers.

The set-up of the assembly is likely to be one of the last hurrahs of Tony Blair who has signalled he will quit 10 Downing St sometime in the next month. Blair’s reputation was badly sullied by the Iraq debacle but the official ending of Northern Ireland's 30 year war is likely to be seen as his greatest success. Blair himself has admitted he has staked much on the settlement. When asked whether it was Northern Ireland was his swansong, he told an interviewer “I think if I look at the ratio of time spent, I mean, this must have taken as much intensive amounts of my time as anything I have dealt with," he said during an interview.

The Northern Ireland Assembly was one of Blair’s earliest initiatives in office. He was in the job for less than a year when the assembly was established under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The agreement signed on 10 April 1998 was overwhelmingly endorsed by the people of Ireland, North and South, in referenda held simultaneously six weeks later on 22 May.

The agreement was also an early success for Blair’s Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern. Ahearn is also approaching his ten year anniversary in the job. He needs a boost from this process as he faces re-election amid low popularity ratings and political scandals later this month. Like Blair, he has committed a lot of personal energy to the issue. Unlike previous Irish leaders he remains welcome in Belfast. When then Taoiseach Sean Lemass drove to Stormont in the Winter of 1965, Ian Paisley threw snowballs at the car.

But despite Blair and Ahern’s best efforts it has been a bumpy ten year ride to get to yesterday’s swearing in. In the first post Good Friday election to the power-sharing assembly, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, was elected First Minister-designate. The assembly met in so-called “shadow” mode in July 1998. The Omagh bombing slowed momentum but the assembly eventually met for real in December 1999.

But it was suspended two months later as Ian Paisley threw more snowballs. This time the Unionists were protesting the IRA was not disarming. After another three months, the IRA agreed to put their weapons “out of commission” and an uneasy power was restored. A second election occurred in July 2001. The surprise here was a change of power on the Nationalist side. Sinn Fein was the clear winner deposing the more moderate Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP). Meanwhile the row over IRA weapons rumbled on and Assembly leader David Trimble resigned in protest.

In October 2002, police acting on a tip-off raided Sinn Fein’s Stormont offices to investigate an alleged IRA spy ring. Sinn Fein rejected the accusations but Britain immediately suspended the assembly. Another election took place in November 2003 and again there was a ground shift, this time on the Loyalist side. Trimble suffered a humiliating defeat and Paisley’s extremist DUP were established as the largest party in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein maintained their hold on the Nationalist side.

With hardliners winning the vote on both sides of the divide, talks stalled all through 2004. In April 2005, Catholic man Robert McCartney was killed after a barroom brawl. His family accused the IRA of the killing, thus breaking a longstanding code of omerta on the Nationalist side. The political fallout was massive, with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams publicly repudiating IRA hardliners. Within three months the IRA announced they would pursue their goals through purely peaceful means. The ceasefire watchdog, the Independent Monitoring Commission confirmed the IRA had finally decommissioned their weapons and the parties were ready to compromise again.

And it is a very unusual compromise. The 108 seat Assembly is a strange parliament because it forms a mandatory coalition that involves 90% of the parties. Ministerial seats were allocated using the D’Hondt Method stipulated by the Good Friday Agreement. Named for a Belgian mathematician, it is a highest averages method for allocating seats according to proportional representation and is aimed at ensuring cross-community representation. The method’s downside is that it favours larger parties.

The government positions were filled based on how many seats each party holds. The Protestant DUP (with 30% of the vote) took up five posts while the Catholic Sinn Fein (26%) took up four. The Protestant Ulster Unionists (15%) took two positions and the Catholic SDLP (also 15%) took one.

The Northern Ireland Act 1998 gave the new assembly some powers, kept others for Westminster and reserved a third set of powers for transfer at a later date. The assembly's initial powers include education, health and education. Powers that will stay in Westminster’s hands include matters of national importance including defence, taxation and foreign policy. The third “reserved” set include the thorny matters of police and criminal law which could be transferred to Belfast at a later date.

The challenges ahead are many not least the matter of sworn enemies agreeing to compromises. Sinn Fein’s sworn commitment to a 32 country united Ireland will be sorely tested. Paisley’s long standing bitter enmity to Sinn Fein as the mouthpiece of the IRA will also put pressure on the relationship. But Northern Ireland may well have set the template for defusing wars: take the extremists in from the cold, give them electoral clout and then tell them to make it work.

Northern Territory approves McArthur River Mine expansion

Northern Territory Chief Minister Claire Martin has seriously upset her three indigenous caucus members after passing controversial retrospective legislation Thursday to allow expansion of a McArthur River zinc mine. The expansion had been stalled by a Supreme Court decision earlier last week. The indigenous Labor members were particularly angered by the insensitivity of the Government’s timing because the law was changed two days before the funeral of an Aboriginal elder who was a key leader in the campaign to save the McArthur River.

The elder, who for cultural reasons can only be identified as Mr Timothy, was buried at Borroloola on Saturday. He was a leader of the long fight by the Yanyuwa people against the expansion of the nearby McArthur River Mine. He died suddenly in Katherine, aged 43, two weeks before the Supreme Court handed down its judgement that declared the Territory’s approval of the mine expansion illegal. The man is believed to be the brother of Barbara McCarthy, one of the three Indigenous members who crossed the floor to vote against the Government.

The McArthur River Mine is 80km south of Borroloola. It is one of the largest zinc mines in the world. It was opened by MIM Holdings in 1995 and operated as an underground operation. It has a workforce of 350 people and contributes $350 million each year to the NT economy according to its own website. In its early years it yielded 320,000 tonnes of lead and zinc annually in bulk concentrate form.
Swiss based global mining giant Xstrata bought out MIM in 2003 and inherited the mine.

The underground operation is now aging and running out of rich ore. Last year the mine’s output shrunk to 135,000 tonnes of zinc. After lobbying from Xstrata, the NT Mines Minister Chris Natt authorised a $66 million mine expansion which would change the operation to open-cut in order extend the mine’s life by another 25 years. The change required a 5.5km diversion to the McArthur River.

The Yanyuwa, Mara, Garrawa and Gurdanji people are the traditional owners of the land. They came together with the Northern Land Council (NLC) to take the Government to court, concerned by the environmental impacts of the river diversion. They argued that approval of the mine expansion failed to follow proper procedures under the Mines Management Act. Last Monday the Supreme Court handed down its judgement and found in favour of the traditional owners. Justice David Angel found that the authorisation went beyond what McArthur River Mining had applied for. The authorisation did not specify an open cut mine and was, therefore, illegal. The Government complained the judgment was merely a narrow technicality but decided not to mount a challenge.

However the decision forced Xstrata to immediately stop work on the mine. Three days later, Martin rushed through a government bill to overrule the court decision and retrospectively validate the proposed redevelopment. The bill passed 17 votes to 5 late on Thursday night. The Opposition Country Liberal Party supported the bill. The five who voted against the bill were two independents and three indigenous Labor members, Alison Anderson, Karl Hampton and the local member Barbara McCarthy. McCarthy condemned the timing of the bill in parliament saying the local indigenous people were mourning the death of a prominent leader (her brother), and “to pass the Bill in the middle of sorry business is the worst sign of disrespect to them”.

Martin claimed it was necessary to push the bill through quickly to prevent hundreds of mine workers from being stood down. She was also concerned by government liability. Xstrata moved immediately on Friday to resume mining. According to Martin, the benefits will be substantial in the next few years of the mine operation. “We needed to get it back and running as quickly as possible,” she said.

The original expansion approval provoked national protest from environmentalists. The McArthur is a major tropical river. It begins at Anthony Lagoon then skirting the Barkly Tableland, through jungle and swampland for 250 km before emerging at Port McArthur to empty into the Gulf of Carpentaria. The river is a haven for dugongs and turtles. In 2001, an NGO called Environment Centre exposed the mine’s practice of dumping contaminated water into the river and communities have noticed sickness in dugongs and turtles downstream of the mining operation soon after the mine began operating.

The mine has proved to be an ongoing political disaster for the Territory’s Chief Minister. Her case was not helped by a leaked Treasury document which showed the mine has operated consistently as a loss and therefore never returned any mineral royalties to the Government. Instead the company gets a $5 million subsidy to cover electricity costs. The mining company has also consistently failed to negotiate an agreement with or pay royalties to the traditional owners who possess the land title.

The local Indigenous community are now examining their options. They have returned to the courts and issued a challenge in the Darwin Federal Court against the federal Environment Minister decision to approve the mine. Then minister, Ian Campbell signed off on the proposal after the NT Government approved it in October. NLC lawyer Neil Williams said Senator Campbell failed to consider public submissions as well as ignoring the effect the radical river diversion would have on the environment. Williams told the Federal Court “There was an obligation to comply with the assessment procedures under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and that was not done”.

Opponents have cited concerns such as acid mine drainage, sedimentation, heavy metal contamination, and the impacts of disturbance and pollution on 43 species of fish including the endangered freshwater sawfish. Environment Centre Northern Territory (ECNT) spokesperson Emma King says the flaws, information gaps and environmental risks submitted to the Environmental Protection Authority showed the mine could not be responsibly approved. “It appears that the brinkmanship of the mining company – effectively saying that if this plan is rejected it will close its operation - is winning out over scientific, environmental, economic and cultural concerns,” she said. The fight goes on.

Ian Stewart: Ambushed

In January 1999, three Associated Press (AP) journalists were been driven slowly in a military convoy down one of the most dangerous streets in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. They were in Freetown, capital of war-racked Sierra Leone. They were reporting the battle between rebel forces and an international military coalition. The rebels had overrun the ravaged city a few days earlier. The journalists were heading towards downtown Freetown when they were hit by an ambush. The convoy had stopped to question men armed with AK-47s. Suddenly gunfire erupted. The journalist’s car was hit. One was killed immediately, the second was unhurt and the third miraculously survived a bullet in the brain. This is his story.

His name was Ian Stewart. He was AP’s West Africa bureau chief and his job was to co-ordinate news coverage from 23 countries. Stewart was from Toronto and studied journalism at Columbia University in New York. He was an experienced foreign correspondent who experienced wars first hand in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Cambodia before being posted to Africa.

In 1997, Associated Press's West Africa correspondent resigned to join Newsday. Stewart was then in Vietnam, missing the adrenalin rush of war zones. Intrigued by a coup that had just occurred in Sierra Leone; he applied for the Africa job. Just before Christmas, he found out he got the job and with it a promotion to bureau chief. AP’s offices were in Abidjan, the commercial capital of the Ivory Coast. Stewart flew in to his new role in February 1998. The day he flew in, he read how a Nigerian led coalition was staging a massive offensive to overthrow the new Sierra Leone ruling junta backed by the infamous rebels, the Revolutionary Army Front. Nigerian fighter jets were bombing Freetown in advance of the ground assault.

The Sierra Leone war to come would be Stewart’s first major African assignment. But first he needed to get himself sorted in Abidjan. He had three staff, an American named Tim Sullivan, a fellow Canadian Glenn McKenzie and a Ghanaian woman Amba Dadson. Although Abidjan was a wealthy city by African standards, its poverty, dirt and desperation were still an eye-opener for Stewart.

In March, Stewart was ready to travel to Sierra Leone. By now the Nigerian led troops had driven the rebel president out of Freetown and were preparing to re-install President Kabbah to power. Stewart travelled to the inauguration with David Guttenfelder, an American who was the AP’s West African photographer. The pair hitched a lift from a Lebanese crew to Sierra Leone’s international airport. Named Lion Mountain by the Portuguese, Sierra Leone ia now officially the worst place on Earth according to the UN Development Program Survey. Life expectancy is 38 years while 164 babies in every thousand die in infancy. Only three adults in every hundred can read and write.

The country had seen decades of almost continuous upheaval since the end of colonisation. In the late 1980s, a low ranking officer named Foday Sankoh founded the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under the influence of Libya’s Gaddafy. The RUF launched a savage civil war. Women and girls were raped and children were kidnapped and forced to serve in the RUF. Their rise to power was assisted in 1997 by a disgruntled army officer named Johnny Paul Koroma. He held a military post in the country’s diamond producing Kono region. Koroma struck a deal with the RUF to give the rebels access to the mines in return for a share of the profits.

Sankoh then struck a deal with neighbouring Liberian leader Charles Taylor to smuggle guns and money into Sierra Leone while smuggling diamonds out. Koroma deposed President Kabbah and invited the RUF to help form a government. The West African Economic Community was appalled and used a military intervention force called Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) initially set up to impose a peace on Liberia to cross the border into Sierra Leone. Though they had now regained Freetown, much of the rural part of the country remained in rebel hands. Stewart and Guttenfelder travelled to Makeni to observe the ongoing fighting.

There they found a Jesuit run pastoral centre where they tried to heal the wounds of children who suffered in the war. Most of the children had lost arms. The RUF had chopped off their arms with machetes. Others had legs amputated or eyes poked out. Stewart saw this was a war against children. On 9 March they returned to Freetown for Kabbah’s return. The journalists drove through the anarchic city to the ceremony in a football stadium. Kabbah was back in power but the RUF were not yet defeated.

Stewart went back to Abidjan where he prepared for his next assignment: the Pope’s visit to Nigeria. The visit promised to be highly newsworthy. While John Paul II was international respected as a man of peace, his host-to-be Sani Abacha was a butcher whose human rights record was second only to Idi Amin, in the annals of African infamy. Stewart flew to Enugu in Eastern Nigeria where the pope was due to arrive. There, the Pope spoke out about the dignity of human rights. The following day he requested the release of 60 political prisoners and journalists. Abacha made no reference to the request in a ceremony to mark the Pope’s departure. And life went on regardless. Despite Nigeria’s $4.5 billion oil industry, 80 percent of its people lived in abject poverty. Stewart stayed on to interview survivors of the Biafran War and also met workers in the oil rich Niger Delta region. There he also met Myles Tierney, an American television journalist before returning back to Ivory Coast

Barely a few months later news came through that Sani Abacha had died unexpectedly. But at the same time, news was also coming from Guinea-Bissau where officers in Portugal’s former colony had staged a failed coup. Stewart set off to investigate. With help from a Guinean reporter he secretly crossed the border from Senegal into Guinea-Bissau. Portugal had bitterly resisted the end of colonisation and left their old possessions like Angola and Mozambique in a mess. Guinea-Bissau was no different. Stewart drove through the countryside ravaged by war and now full of refugees. 300,000 people were on the move. When Stewart stopped to interview an old man left in an empty town by himself, they were forced to seek shelter from mortar fire.

Stewart’s next overseas assignment was to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to cover another failed coup. In 1997 Laurent Kabila had replaced long-time strongman Mobutu and everyone had high hopes he might lead the DRC in the path of democracy. But instead Kabila went the way of all despots. He abolished all opposition parties, gagged the media and threw out the UN war crimes investigators. Stewart interviewed Kabila in Kinshasa and asked him if he planned to introduce democracy. Kabila replied the problem wasn’t democracy; it was stability. Stewart was able to travel around the capital which was a rat-infested disease-ridden slum. He took the ferry across the Congo River to Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Congo Republic.

The Congo Republic was also racked by a political war. Long time dictator Denis Sassou-Nguesso had regained power after an electoral defeat at the cost of ten of thousands of dead. The capital was emptied out of people. Here again many children had been recruited as child soldiers. Stewart went back to the DRC to follow up on the Rwandan-backed coup against Kabila. He could see fires from his hotel room but no sound of fighting. Later driving through the city, his car was set upon and he narrowly escaped an angry mob. Troops gathered from Angola and Zimbabwe to support Kabila’s army. Stewart saw army troops capture rebels before tying tyres around them. The soldiers set fire to the tyres and the rebels were incinerated.

Stewart escaped to Abidjan, emotionally drained by all he had seen in the Congo. He took some peaceful stories in South Africa, Mali and Burkina Faso to try and get war out of his head. But in January 1999, he was hearing of renewed violence in Sierra Leone. Stewart made arrangements to travel to Freetown with Guttenfelder and the TV journalist Tierney. They flew into an airport terminal swarming with Nigerian soldiers, refugees trying to escape and a few journalists trying to get in. That day, the RUF stormed Freetown overrunning Nigerian positions and destroying everything in their path.

After a couple of days stuck at the airport, the journalists hitched a lift to the capital on a Mi-8 military helicopter. In Freetown they hooked up with an ECOMOG commander whom they bribed to be allowed to stay. The crew spent two days in the relative safety of the ECOMOG zone interviewing survivors. But Tierney was pushing for pictures of combat. On the fourth morning, bombs dropped close to their hotel. The war was coming to them. Despite a curfew, the three men piled into a car to investigate. They hooked up with a military convoy and followed them.

They were forced to stop and duck behind the car when snipers started firing at the convoy. Then they met men armed with AK-47s. A Nigerian bodyguard spoke to the men. Suddenly the rebel turned around and started shooting at the car. Tierney with his camera at the window, died instantly. Guttenfelder on the far side was unhurt. Stewart was seated in the middle and he took a bullet square in the centre of his forehead. Amazingly the bullet missed all vital organs and did not break up on impact. These two impossibilities saved his life. The Nigerians returned fire and killed the shooter and another rebel.

The convoy sped away to a medical clinic at the army barracks. Initially they thought his wound was superficial. Stewart was still conscious and asking Guttenfelder a barrage of questions. News travelled quickly about the attack. The government arranged for a helicopter to remove the dead and wounded journalists. They took them to Conakry, the capital of Guinea where they met a flight to Abidjan. There was little the doctors could do for Stewart in Abidjan. He was running the risk of severe brain damage due to the swelling in his skull. AP arranged for a Swiss air ambulance which took him to London.

Stewart was taken to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in central London’s Queens Square. He was given little chance of survival by the surgeon. He had several craniotomies the first of which carefully removed dead brain cells and foreign matter using a micro-thin suction tube. A second hole was drilled in his brain measure cranial pressure. The second operation removed the bullet itself. The surgeon drilled a hole in the back of Stewart’s brain and the swelling inside provided enough pressure to push out the bullet through the hole by itself.

Stewart’s recovery was long, slow and painful. He had to relearn how to talk, how to walk and how to do simple daily tasks. His left side remains totally paralysed and he has learnt to do all things one-handed. He returned to his parent’s house in Canada where they looked after him. After a year of recuperation, he was ready to go back to work. He wrote a 3,000 word piece for AP describing his Freetown experience. His article “What Price, the News” appeared in hundreds of papers worldwide and won a range of awards. It was eventually turned in a book “Ambushed”. Stewart now lives with his wife in California and speaks publicly about his experiences. In 2002, he spoke to a panel about the death of fellow journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

He said no situation could justify the loss of one journalist in exchange for a story. "No story at all is ever worth dying for,” he said. “If you're killed doing a story, you're never going to tell another story." But he also justified the reason he was in Africa in the first place. "So many people are left without a voice. So what drew me, and I suspect what drew Danny Pearl, was to try to defend and give back a voice to these people.”

Bendigo days

Woolly Days is just back home after a whirlwind trip to Bendigo, Victoria for a wedding. Situated 150km north of Melbourne, Bendigo was founded on its most prize asset: gold. Bendigo lies within the Bendigo-Ballarat zone of the Palaeozoic Lachlan Fold Belt of eastern Australia. It means the city’s bedrock dates from the Ordovician Period, almost 500 million years ago. The goldfield lies in a 9 km wide block of Lower Ordovician turbidites (sedimentary deposits formed by turbidity currents) tending North North West. Turbidite sequences are classic hosts for lode gold deposits. The productive portion of the goldfield lies in a zone 15 km long by 5 km.

Bendigo’s first native humans were the Dja Dja Wrung people. The Dja Dja Wrung catchment area took in the Loddon, Campaspe and Avoca Rivers in the Riverine region of central/western Victoria, centred on an area around what is now Bendigo. The Dja Dja Wrung people survived white invasion thanks predominantly to their women, who learned through their domestic-based jobs how to integrate with the mainstream community and survive.

The first whites arrived in the area in the late 1830s. In 1839 Charles Sherratt squatted on an immense tract of land lying about Mount Alexander, taking 200,000 acres. A small town grew up near the property. The initial name for the town was Sandhurst. Sandhurst got its name on the map in 1851 when Mrs John Kennedy and Mrs Patrick Farrell, wives of workmen on the Ravenswood run, found gold at ‘The Rocks’. It didn’t take long for word to get out and miner’s claims soon dotted the area, especially along the Bendigo Creek (the creek which eventually gave its name to the town was named for a sheep farmer who was handy with his fists and nicknamed for Nottingham prize-fighter William ‘Bendigo’ Thompson) From 1857 to 1954 there were 829 mines in Bendigo. The rapid growth increased demands for the services of a township. The telegraph arrived in 1857. By the end of the decade, Sandhurst had a police force, a court, hospitals parklands and a reliable coach line to Melbourne. The one day journey was dramatically reduced by the arrival of the train line in 1862.

Initially the miners begrudgingly paid a licence of thirty shillings a month for the right to dig. They came from all over the world. They were English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish along with Germans, Italians, Swiss, French, Americans and Chinese. Bendigo’s golden dragon museum celebrates the Chinese contribution to the mines. By 1856 some 40,000 Chinese had arrived to the great gold rush. They were seen as a threat to European miners and suffered great discrimination. In 1856 the colonial government of Victoria imposed a ten pound poll tax on Chinese disembarking at the Port of Melbourne bound for the goldfields of central Victoria. To avoid paying this poll tax ship captains bypassed Melbourne and sailed onto South Australia landing the Chinese at Adelaide, Kingston and Robe. In six years, 16,000 Chinese walked the 500km distance from Robe to the goldfields.

The Bendigo Bank was established in 1858 to serve the goldfields. Initially called the Bendigo Permanent Land and Building Society, it began to finance miners’ cottages to replace the thousands of makeshift tents and humpies that dotted the area. The new city’s fathers laid down an ambitious town plan in 1854. Within 30 years, Bendigo’s gold had financed a building program of grand public buildings to establish itself as one of the most gracious Victorian era cities in the world.

Pall Mall, Hargreaves, Bridge, McCrae and View Streets became the centre of business activity. An array of imposing buildings were built on Pall Mall. The first of three Shamrock Hotel was built in 1854 and destroyed by fire three years later. The current hotel is the third one in on the site and was built in 1896. It is a classic example of 18th century baroque architecture with its distinctive wide encircling verandas.

In 1891 the name of the city was changed from Sandhurst to Bendigo after a poll by ratepayers. One year earlier, the first trams commenced operation. For the first few months they were battery operated. But Bendigo’s hilly terrain meant the batteries often went flat. The trams switched to steam after a few months. In 1903, they went electric which they remain to this day. In 1972, the Victorian Government granted The Bendigo Trust permission to operate a Vintage Talking Tram tourist service between the Central Deborah gold mine and the Chinese Joss House at North Bendigo.

In 1954, the last winch on the city’s last gold mine raised its last bucket of ore. The depth of the mines and the presence of water in deeper mines saw the fields abandoned after 103 years. But there remains a large amount of gold in the Bendigo goldfields at deeper level, estimated to be at least as much again as what has been removed. With modern technology, Bendigo Mining NL has resumed mining over one kilometre deep and will likely be a large producer within 10 years. In 2005, Goldfields Mineral Services estimated that the total gold supply was 4,036 t. As gold is almost 20 times heavier than water, this amount of gold would fill a box 6 m wide by 6 m high by 6 m long. With the price of gold still trending upwards ($US686.90 per ounce at time of writing), Bendigo’s future remains optimistically tied to precious metal.

Soldier of Malian Democracy wins again

The President of Mali has been re-elected for a second five year term after results announced yesterday. Amadou Toumani Toure won with 68.3% of the valid votes, avoiding the need for a run-off election. He comfortably beat his closest rival Ibrahim Boubacar Keita who could only manage to win 18.6%.

Foreign observers say the Mali vote was free and fair although opposition candidates have alleged fraud. They accused Toure’s supporters of using state assets to finance his campaign said voters' lists favoured the incumbent. Toure is now enjoying his second stint as leader having previously come to power in a military coup in 1991 before handing over power to a civilian government a year later

As expected, voter turnout was low, about 36%. In fact the turnout is an improvement on previous elections which has hovered around 20%. According to Mali’s Interior Ministry, political apathy is more prevalent in the capital Bamako than in the countryside. A German adviser to the government attributes Bamako's apathy to the fact many people are not interested in politics. Wilfried Wesch said “the political parties and the government did not do anything to promote democracy; they did not do anything to educate their people."

This malaise may be understandable as Mali is one of the world's poorest nations. Located on the southern edge of the Sahara, the landlocked Mali is the seventh largest country in Africa and twice the size of Texas. Its geography is dominated by a great river, the Niger. Mali sits at the northern apex of the curve of the 2,500 km river. The Niger is of crucial importance to the country providing irrigation for agriculture and serving as a major transportation artery.

Mali has known urban life for two thousand years. The influence of the Niger River made it a trade hub and the site of several caravan routes. Islam arrived in the 7th century spreading quickly after Mohammed’s death. It took hold in what was then the Ghana Empire (named for the emperor) which eventually gave way to the Malinke Empire. The Malinke Empire ruled for 400 years until 1645.

Inevitably the European powers took an interest in Mali. The French invaded in the 1880s and appointed a civilian governor in 1893. The locals resisted strongly but were eventually defeated after five years. Mali was subsumed into French West Africa. Like many other French colonies, it won the right to self-government with the passing of France's Fundamental Law (Loi Cadre) in 1956. It briefly formed a federation with Senegal before goings its own way with independence in 1960.

Its first leader Modibo Keita was lasted eight years before being overthrown in a bloodless military coup. A 14-member Military Committee for National Liberation (CMLN) ruled for the next six years. Moussa Traore emerged from the CMLN to take full control. He consolidated power and brutally put down challenges to his power from the military and from students unhappy with the lack of democracy. In 1991, another student rebellion gained important support from government workers. The military led by General Amadou Toumani Toure arrested Traore and established an interim government and a draft constitution.


During this phase, Toure got his nickname of the “Soldier of Malian Democracy”. A former parachute commando, he was instrumental in the push to seize power from Traore. Surprisingly he kept to his promise to organise elections. He handed over to a civilian president Alpha Oumar Konare the following year to international acclaim. He retired from the army but kept his eye on domestic politics. In 2002 Konare retired and Traore returned to power through the ballot box. His critics accuse him of lacking big political ideas, dismissing him for his focus on local development projects at the expense of grand visions. But abroad, people speak better of him "Mali has a good reputation in the international community and part of that is to his credit," said Global Insight’s Kissy Agyeman. "He is known for his simplicity. He is not one of those flamboyant African leaders," she said.

4ZZZ: a retrospective

4ZZZ is a community radio station that occupies a unique niche in Brisbane’s media scene. Founded in 1975, it has now survived almost 32 years of broadcasting despite not having any government funding or commercial advertising. It was the first station on the Stereo-FM dial in Queensland and it was the product of a unique social environment where the federal government was socially progressive and the state government was socially repressive.

4ZZZ grew out of the idealism of the radical student movement of the 1960s. It was founded by students at the University of Queensland interested in new media. These students were already using printing presses to get their messages out. Their publications raged against the Vietnam war, gerrymander in the Queensland electoral system and civil libertarian concerns with freedom of speech.

Queensland had been ruled since 1959 by a Country Party led coalition which censored books and movies, banned political demonstrations and controlled written publications. They protected their power by using State Special Branch to keep watch over “subversives” and taking vigorous police action. Student publications had a short life span due to the law that made it illegal to circulate printed material without a permit, unless the material contained advertising or religious matters.

The attraction of radio was that it was under federal not state control. In 1972 the Labor party swept to power federally and introduced a wave of reformist legislation. Jim Beatson was a UQ student activist who became aware of a move to promote community radio in Sydney. Beatson had lived in the UK in the 1960s and saw how FM was transforming radio. Australia was slow to move to FM and the government thought it was a passing fad. Activists such as Beatson worked with the hifi industry to show the government they were wrong.

Beatson got involved in a working party on public broadcasting while UQ students lobbied the new government for an FM licence. They fought successfully against an industry proposal to locate FM in the UHF band instead of the internationally accepted VHF band as UHF receivers would have been prohibitively expensive for the new station’s intended audience. The Minister finally announced he would license 12 additional stations which would be campus-based educational licences. 4ZZ (the extra Z was later forced on them by government legislation) based at UQ, was among them. They quickly built a makeshift studio in the Student Union building.

But the government was slow in handing out the promised licence. The first fully licensed public radio station 2MBS-FM went to air in Sydney in 1974. 11 more would follow suit in the next 18 months. But the situation became more of a concern through 1975 as the Labor government was in crisis and likely to collapse at any time. 4ZZ knew a new government would not look on a radical youth station as favourably. On 11 November 1975, the Labor government was sacked. The new acting Postmaster General, Peter Nixon reviewed the licences and decided in this case that Labor’s policies would be upheld. Effectively he gave 4ZZ the right to broadcast, albeit on micropower.

4ZZ first took to the airwaves at midday, 8 December 1975 on 105.7 MHz with DJ John Woods at the microphone. Woods was a former Channel 9 journalist and sports reporter and his three minute introduction of the station argued it was an important act of free speech. He then played the station's first music - The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Pete Townsend’s song about revolution was an apt metaphor for the new station.

As well as music, 4ZZ had a strong newsroom with paid journalists. They became involved in many of the issues of the day such as East Timor and more local matters including the fire-bombing of the Brisbane Whiskey-a-Go-Go nightclub and the ongoing endemic police corruption. They broke what became an international story when Queensland police and a naval vessel raided a remote hippie community in Cedar Bay, incognito and without warrants. They destroyed possessions, set fire to buildings and arrested many in the commune. Police handouts painted it as a routine drug raid to compliant Brisbane media. 4ZZ told the real story after talking to witnesses in Cairns.

After three years in probation the station was granted a full licence in 1978. They also earned the right to broadcast on full power. They placed a new transmitter hut and mast on Mount Coot-tha (Brisbane’s highest point), changed their call sign to 4ZZZ and their frequency to 102.1. They were now a very visible presence in Brisbane’s media landscape.

4ZZZ’s penchant for trouble-making meant they were a constant thorn in the side of authorities. On air language and taste raised hackles that saw their licence needing to be renewed at regular intervals. It was against the law to say the word “fuck” on air and the station ignored this by playing the Dead Kennedy’s Too Drunk to Fuck and Marianne Faithful’s Why D’Ya Do It. A fringe organisation called the Society to Outlaw Pornography monitored the station and complained to the Australian Broadcasting Authority about 4ZZZ’s “obscenities” in 1981. 4ZZZ got the case dismissed and made it legal to swear on Australian TV and radio.

In 1983, the station broke the story of the Boggo Road Prison riots. Conditions in the jail were deplorable. Prisoners went on hunger strike to protest government inaction after a food poisoning outbreak hospitalised 30 inmates. Because a journalist at 4ZZZ, John Baird, was part of a Prisoner’s Action Group, the hunger strikers refused to speak to any media except the station. They smuggled a tape out which was played on air. The tape revealed the true conditions in the prison. The coverage led to better conditions and eventually the closure of the jail after the Kennedy Royal Commission of 1987 found conditions there to be unhealthy and inhuman.

4ZZZ saw off its arch-enemy Joh Bjelke Peterson who resigned in 1987 after 19 years as state premier. His deputy Bill Gunn launched the Fitzgerald Inquiry to investigate the serious allegations that were emerging about Queensland’s Moonlight State. Its report blew the lid on the sleaze that was at the heart of Joh’s government and its corrupt police force.

4ZZZ had problems of its own to deal with when the UQ Student Union was taken over by a hostile right-wing group. In December 1988, new UQ Student President Victoria Brazil evicted the station from its premises. Her group also shut down the radical newspaper and defunded most “progressive” activities. After a sit-in at the studios, 4ZZZ eventually regained the airwaves but accepted the inevitable and moved to temporary accommodation in Toowong six months later.

After three years in cramped surroundings, 4ZZZ moved to their current HQ in the Valley in 1992. The station was forced to re-invent itself in the 1990s after the Nationals finally lost their hold on long-term power. The station became a world music promoter, bringing rare acts to play live in Brisbane. But it remains forever financially strapped. 4ZZZ relies entirely on three income streams: subscribers, promotions and events. All staff and volunteers must be subscribers.

Many of its early staffers have moved on to bigger things. Jim Beatson went on to work at the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. Marion Wilkinson and Amanda Collinge are respected national journalists. Stephen Stockwell is a lecturer in media at Griffith University. Andrew Bartlett is now a parliamentary senator. Now fully grown into adulthood, 4ZZZ enjoys a good reputation in the industry. But it still proclaims itself as an activist organisation with its longstanding motto of AGITATE, EDUCATE, ORGANISE. 4ZZZ continue to challenge the status quo, 32 years on.

Gulf Stream out of circulation?

Paleoclimatologists at Oregon State University released a survey last month which added weight to the theory that the Gulf Stream may slow or stop entirely. Publishing a paper in the respected Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the Oregon scientists provide data that indicate why current patterns changed in the distant past in extraordinarily short timeframes. The trigger for current change is a surge of fresh water which reduces the ocean’s salinity. The study is of interest today due to concerns that global warming could perversely re-create the conditions for a new ice age.

The research relies heavily on the activity of a process called thermohaline circulation (THC). THC governs the global deepwater currents and plays an important role in supplying heat to the polar regions, and in regulating sea ice. THC causes a huge conveyor belt of warm, less-salty surface water from the tropical Atlantic Ocean to the far North Atlantic, where it finally becomes so cold and salty that it sinks, moves south, and continues the circulation pattern. Large influxes of fresh water could slow or even stop the current. The loss of the Greenland ice sheet could provide the trigger for such an event.

The northbound belt of the THC is the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is one of world’s most intensely studied currents. Visible from space, the 100-200km wide current begins in the Caribbean and moves north east keeping the seas of high latitude Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia ice free. Any disruption to the current would be disastrous for these countries. But it has happened before.

Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall produced a 2003 paper for the Pentagon called An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security. The subtitle of the document was called “Imagining the Unthinkable”. It envisages a scenario where temperatures drop over Asia, North America and northern Europe, while rising over the southern hemisphere. It will cause droughts, severe storms and rising sea levels. Europe will become like Siberia, China will be hit by famine and Bangladesh will be drowned. While fortunate nations batten down the hatches, the report says “less fortunate nations, especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbours, may initiate struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy”.

The report states that about 12,700 years ago there was substantial cooling in a period that is now known as the Younger Dryas. The period is associated with an apparent collapse of the thermohaline circulation. There was a cooling of at least 15° Celsius in Greenland, and substantial change throughout the North Atlantic region which lasted 1,300 years. During the Younger Dryas the temperature dropped by about 3° C every decade before flattening out for an extended cold period of about a thousand years. Most of Europe was icebound and icebergs would have been found off the coast of Portugal.

The most recent cooling period began in the 14th century and the North Atlantic region experienced a cooling that lasted until the mid-19th century. Known as the Little Ice Age, it brought severe winters, sudden climatic shifts, and profound agricultural, economic, and political impacts to Europe. It was the probable cause of the demise of the Norwegian settlement in Greenland and the severe climatic conditions caused the Great Famine of Northern Europe in 1315-1322.

Schwartz and Randall posit a vision of the future which considers abrupt climate change. Though they don’t predict how exactly it might happen, the scenario involves all the floating ice disappearing from the northern polar seas. The THC grinds to a halt after 2010 disrupting the temperate climate of Europe. After another ten years Europe’s climate resembles Siberia while the South deals with increased warmth, precipitation, and storms. Millions will be on the move, escaping from the cold of the north and a waterless Africa. Crop yields will fall leading to food shortages. Access to minerals will be disrupted by ice and storms. As the Earth exceeds its carrying capacity, wars will become more frequent over diminishing resources.

One of the authors, Peter Schwartz told a symposium at the World Resources Institute, his worst-case scenario report was buried in the Pentagon bureaucracy. Many planners blasted it as being too unrealistic because it wasn’t based on more gradual climate change scenarios. But as scientists such as the Oregon State University paleoclimatologists have shown, these scenarios don’t necessarily get to grips with the extreme events that characterise the climate history of Earth.