COMM: It’s been less than a century since foreigners stumbled upon this Pacific Island paradise.

SAM:
We’ve just entered a er, what they call a fighting zone. Basically a local war zone. The last two villages we’ve gone through had had fights last year. We’re now in an area where the fight is still carrying on
10:00:32 – 10:01:04

My name is Sam.

SAMSON: My name is Samson.

COMM: There’s still no functioning state in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Stone age ritual violence has become a nightmare fuelled by drugs and guns.

SAM:
Will you guard the car

COMM: Every village in Papua New Guinea has a band of warriors. This lot has attacked their neighbours the night before I turned up.

SAM: Is it okay? They’re happy to talk to us?

Have there been any casualties on each side?

Both sides?

This side – and that side?

Four on that side. Now this group here only have home made er, shot guns and things like that. They’re saying the other side have got M16’s and AK47’s. These men, as we can see have got axes, they’ve got machetes, they’ve got bows and arrows but that’s no match for people with er M16’s who then come in and er, they’re saying we don’t want to lose any more lives from our community.

SAM: Larson’s saying that the er government isn’t doing enough, in fact it’s not doing anything and that what it should do is set up an organisation that can sweep up all the guns and then stop it coming into the province.

COMM: Suddenly scouts reported there wasd a danger of a counter attack.

SAM: What are they saying?

SYNC: They might be attacked at any time and so just in case they are saying we should not stay.

Right, okay. So while we, so they’re saying we shouldn’t stay long.

SYNC: No we shouldn’t stay long now.
SAM: I’m quite anxious to get out of here now…
We didn’t know that we were driving straight up the middle of er, what is a front line in a tribal war it’s been going on for five months already claimed nine lives and numerous wounded.

COMM: The stone age tradition of fighting with bows and arrows had strict rules and low body counts. Modern weapons have brought massive destruction.

SAM: This used to be a er, petrol station, serving a community, along with the stores that were alongside it serving a community of hundreds and hundreds of people. Now for several miles in every direction the land is completely abandoned.

COMM: We’re not in the middle of the jungle but the outskirts of Wabag – the capital of Enga Province. The local clinic sees most of the casualties.

SAM: Er, it’s straight on isn’t it?

Ah Dr. I’m Sam Kiley.

Hello, hi Sam. Hello, Sam.

SK: Let’s go. Gunshot wound.

Hello.

SK: When was he brought in?

SK: About a week ago from fighting down the valley.

SK: Along the road that we came from Mount Haagen to here.

SK: And do you see a lot of victims of violence.

Doc: Oh yeah. As I said, it’s endemic.

SK: It’s endemic.

SK: How long has your tribe been fighting against the people that shot you.?

SK: Almost four years of fighting.

Kevin here was wounded in the abdomen. He was shot by one of his tribal enemies during a brief ceasefire. He was ambushed.

Erm, he’s here with his friend. Er, his friend is reluctant to admit that what will happen next according to everybody else, including other people in the ward is that erm, there will be revenge attacks.

COMM: This rich province has been ravaged by the cycle of killings and revenge.

I met with Bill Arlo, a tribal elder his brother had been murdered in fighting with his neighbours a rival clan.

SAM: So this is where you buried Leo?

BILL: Yes.

SAM: The last of the 54 people you lost in the fighting, is that right?

BILL: Yes.

SAM: Are you strong enough to take revenge your tribe?

BILL: Yeah, we’ve got enough arms and everything…
We are fully equipped.

COMM: There was no ceasefire here. The two sides were just taking a breather. But Bill agreed to introduce me to some of his warriors.

This is a high-powered automatic rifle.

SK: How long have you had it?

Five years.

Did you have to spend a lot of money on it, was it expensive?

Thirty thousand kina, six hundred pounds.

How much is a bullet?

OOV: 25 for one.

SAM: 25 for one.

That’s a fiver. That’s five pounds a shot. Might explain why they’ve only got two.

COMM: I wondered if their face paint was entirely traditional.

MAN: In the movie….

BILL: We usually watch Rambo movies…

SAM: So you learn how to do the… They’ve learnt to do the camouflage from watching the Rambo movies and in fact the big fighter in each community is called Rambo, that’s become a title, hasn’t it? Who is your Rambo? Is that you? That’s Peter, so Peter is the village Rambo.
And that is er, not a nickname, that’s a title.

SAM: Peter has the erm the number of people getting killed and level of violence and the rules of fighting, have they changed since guns came?

Peter’s saying that in the old days when they fought, there would be a restricted area, a fighting zone if you like. And that erm, when there were house burnings and that kind of thing, they were very specific about whose house got burnt and they didn’t kill civilians and they kept the casualty levels low. Now that guns have come, when there are attacks, people go berserk, they’ve got high-powered guns and they just hose down whole villages torch every house they can get to and shoot women and children.
So the whole traditional structure of er, solving problems through small scale traditional fighting with traditional mostly non-lethal weapons has been turned on its head.

COMM: That evening I met with Bill’s mother. Her face paint was traditional – a sign of mourning.

COMM: His father’s pain was silent.

SAM: Just in case anybody thought that there was no grief attached to the killings that go on here, Patricia as a traditional expression of her grief cut off the top two joints of her left hand, her index finger and the one next to it and she carries them around with her in a little pot, just as a sign of the very deep pain that she feels for the loss of Leo.

I popped into the local cinema for a shoot‘em’up matinee

COMM: The fighting, killing and house burning has pushed right to the edge of Wabag city. I wondered what the authorities were doing to stop it.

SAM: Hello there.

MAN: You’re….

SAM: Sam, Sam Kiley.

I’m here with the Governor and the Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation.

Gentlemen, what has, what has caused this explosion in, in a tradition of fighting, I understand. But why has it all suddenly re-started?

MAN: What I, what I believe is the process, the process of er, a very strong traditional society er, in the process of changing to a modern society. All of a sudden we are leaping from a very strong traditional cultural background to a very new inexperienced way of life. And erm, obviously one would expect problems.

SAM: Some outside analysts and indeed some Papua New Guineans have warned that unless the law and order issues are addressed both in terms of tribal fighting and eye level corruption that Papua New Guinea is in danger of becoming a failed state.

MAN: The structure, the authority in the village er, has sort of broken down. Now, somehow, we as a government we have got to step in quickly and establish authority. Because, er, the er, so-called Rambo, Rambo’s at the moment think that they can do anything they want.

SAM: Why is it then that the police are not going out and stopping people getting killed, stopping houses being burnt, churches, schools, valuable resources, people have saved their whole lives to build a permanent dwelling and then, Boom in one night it’s gone.

MAN: I mean here – Enga it’s just pure slackness. We can’t defend see, our problems with government has done a lot for the police. We have maintained all their residences you know here in Wabag we have given them real hopes, we are supporting them on er you know, purchasing ammunition and all that. So they’ve got no, no reasonable, no excuse for not stopping the trouble fights. As far as we’re concerned it’s just pure slackness.

COMM: I was sure the police wouldn’t agree so I popped in to their local head quarters.

SAM:
Right, well I’ve just tried to talk to the cops, er the provincial police commissioner is under interrogation in the neighbouring provincial capital. And the local station commander was arrested by police from the Port Moresby, from the national capital over an incident in which a policeman shot dead a local who was allegedly holding up a, a goods vehicle heading er, through Wabag.

COMM: While the politicians passed the buck back and forth, Bill had contacted his enemies. Incredibly they agreed to meet us.

SAM: It’s very difficult to er, believe but we’re actually being now taken to the tribal enemies of Bill, the very people who killed his brother Leo.

SAM: Hi, Sam. My name is Sam. I think you’re the boss.
I can tell. So this is your er, AK. Right?

MAN: This is my AK

SAM: The refrain everywhere here is that fights start over a fight over land most importantly, but then it could be over pigs, a marital squabble any excuse really. But basically do you enjoy it?

MAN: It’s a game

SAM: It’s a game. It’s like rugby. It’s like rugby, just like rugby. Even though people get killed.

So they, they’re saying that yeah, tribal fighting is like rugby. It’s a game, it’s a sport, they enjoy it. They feel sorry when people get killed but they er, bury them and move on and carry on fighting.

COMM: It can takes years before one clan, tribe or village settles its disputes with another. But when the death toll is very heavy the negotiating process is close to impossible – compensation payments are crippling.

SAM: We’ve just arrived for reconciliation. In fact a ritual paying of compensation. I hope tomorrow there’ll be a ritual exchanging of pigs, slaughtering of pigs and feasting to allow hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve been refugees for half a decade to return to their homes.

COMM: The negotiations over compensation broke down and there was no reconciliation. These people trudged home to face another round of fighting.

COMM: Several hundred had died in five years. And the heavy death toll brought by firearms had made the price of peace too high.

COMM: How did the fighters pay for their gun?

The answer was growing in the hills.

SAM: We’re high up in the mountains er, right on the Bismarck range in fact. That’s the Bismarck range just here. We’ve seen our first little er, pot plant. They’re planted they tell me very high up in the mountains, deep in the rainforest. One way up one way down. Because that way they can ambush the police if they come and try and chop their pot plants down.

SAM: Good?

Garden fresh organic weed.

SK: This is Doh, this is his garden. Although he is growing 35 kgs of marijuana here, he used to actually plant the whole hillside with it he’s only just harvested quite a lot of it. Takes about 50 he tells me to buy an AK47.

COMM: Doh’s children help in the harvest.

SAM: Getting expensive…

SK: Patrick is saying that erm, school fees have gone up in cost and er, this is an extremely useful cash crop because unlike coffee, which has only one harvest a year, this grows all year round so you can get multiple harvests.

So as the centre of the New Guinean state weakens through an inability to deliver basic services so the farmers are growing drugs in order to buy their way out of poverty and educate their kids, and indeed arm themselves in what’s becoming erm a kind of rural arms race between tribes.

COMM: When the marijuana is brought down from the hills it begins its journey in the globalized trade in drugs and guns.

It is carried by porters across Papua New Guinea often down routes following gas and oil pipelines carved through the jungle – to the coast and sold to Australia.

SAM: This is Daru which is the port where the marijuana that is grown up in the highlands is put into small craft and then smuggled into Australian waters and exchanged for hard cash and firearms.

SAM: He’s expecting to meet us, he knew we were coming?

SK: We’ve just landed in the village of Mabbudawan (?) which is er, directly opposite Australian territory. This is the route that the er, drugs and the guns take back and forth.

COMM: I’m hoping to meet with a smuggling contact.
SAM: How long’ve you been doing drugs smuggling?

MAN: Since I was a kid I’ve been engaged in drug smuggling.

SAM: Is it profitable?

MAN: Yes, very profitable

SAM: Do you also exchange this marijuana for guns?

MAN: Yeah of course I do.

SAM: You do? But is, are there a lot of guns that come in?

MAN: Yeah.

SAM: Where do they get sold? Why do you bring in guns? Where is the market for that?

MAN: The markets are up in the highlands for the tribal fights

SAM: So for an AK47 for example how many kilos do you get?

MAN: Well, that’s a high powered… you’re looking at 60 to 50 kilograms.

SAM: But on the PNG side is there much difficulty for you?

MAN: Well in PNG it’s not that difficult because our system is very weak in monitoring of such activities, illegal activities.

SAM: Does it worry you that these guns are used in tribal fighting and destabilising the country making it more dangerous to live here?

MAN: Well the person, who needs the gun in the end, is not me.

COMM: So the smuggler shares the morals of the international arms industry

COMM: Papua New Guinea’s population emerged from the stone age only decades ago.

But contact with the outside world has not managed to dampen the local passion for tribal fighting.

It has fuelled a demand for imported modern weapons. And they’re paid for by the West’s growing passion for drugs.