Indonesia has, in the past few months, mobilized an estimated 14,000 troops on the Papua New Guinea border. This has resulted in growing tensions in the whole New Guines region.
The WPNGNC has received credible reports that there have been incursions by Indonesiam troops across the border into PNG.
The Indonesians have also moved Armoured Personnel Carriers and other heavy equipment to the boeder region.
I recent months the PNG Military have cleaned out illegal Indonesian loggers out of the North Western PNG border areas. The Indonesian Military have been running illegal logging businesses in both West Papua and Papua New Guinea. Some of the money from these illegal enterprises has been used to fund Laskar Jihad, Jemaah Islamiah and the Phillipine based Abu Sayyaf Group. All of these are extreme fundamentalist Islamic groups.
The corrupt Michael Somare, PNG Government, has had to play a delicate balancing act in its dealings with the Indonesians. There is widespread support for the plight of the West Papuans from most of the Papua New Guinea population.
The Somare government is facing the polls in a few months and is heading for a major defeat.
There have been a number of incidents of Indonesian Military incursions into PNG in the last couple of years.
Hercules C-130.
An “unidentified” C130 Hercules flying low over Vanimo at 2 am on October 27th (2005). It was reported in both “The National” and the “Post-Courier” for
several days and was accepted as “just one of those things that are so commonplace we don't even notice”. This C130 was reported by many eyewitness to fly at less than two hundred metres above the town, and then headed out to Aitape.LOST!?
A senior ADF figure told the author anecdotally of the time several years ago when he was in the Blackwater border refugee camp on a medical relief operation. A KOPASSUS platoon
landed one afternoon in their helicopter. They were shocked to see ADF personnel there as they were walking through the camp intimidating people, and walked up to the ADF, putting their weapons away. The Australians stood their with their hands on their hips, when the Indonesians sheepishly and quietly said “Um, we are lost!”. The Australians replied “Sure you are. Get back in your helicopter and turn around and get lost again. You know
exactly where you are, so you better find your way back, and quickly” They did.
THE ILLEGAL BORDER AIRFIELD
A green skinned flying source in a coincidental meeting on the back of a Hercules at an unidentified airfield, told the author how they had been flying along the border area, trying to make
sense of their outdated maps, when they noticed a brand new 1600 metre grass runway not far from Green River on the border. (They gave me the coordinates, at 141o 11.248' E, 03o 58.12' S). “This is probably the best airstrip that we have ever seen in PNG, there wasn't a bump on it... and we noticed it because it wasn't up here the last time we looked”. Not that they were there looking, because the Prime Minister's office (Not the defence ministry, which is telling in itself) has specifically prohibited that sort of activity. Nowhere around the airfield were there any tracks to or from it, and certainly none large enough to accommodate a bulldozer. They believed that a heavy-lift helicopter, possibly a Chinook, had brought in two D-9 dozers to build the strip, which had been done as a raised strip with proper drainage. From the observation of the Hercules crew, who were flying just above tree level, they could see that it had a
new and very even covering of young (smalll bladed) grass of less than a foot. When questioned further they also did not notice any erosion or dieback of the surrounding jungle, other than where the initial trees were cut, of which many still had green leaves. There had been a lot of rain in the two weeks before our encounter, so grass usually grows very fast in these conditions. This would indicate that the strip had only just been built maybe two to three weeks before, a month at the outside. The pilot also observed that there was only one or two sets of wheel ruts (or depressions)so it had only been used sparsely. Upon further investigation, it was found that the only Chinooks (officially) in PNG at the time were all in Madang, and flying in the general area, initially having provided security at the PIF. Whilst in Madang the author chatted to several of the crews, who maintained that they were forbidden from the border area as it was an “Area of Exclusion”, and they had been doing operations around the Madang area only. The author has been unable to verify whether or not the HeviLift Russian Mil helicopters based in Port Moresby were involved, but this is unlikely. They were busy at Porgera replacing liberated power pylons, and at Lihir and other gold mines (as far as we know they were not at Ok Tedi), and two were being serviced. Our networks are in the process of accessing records to verify their locations at the time. So this leaves only on source for these helicopters, and once again it is our “friends” with the red berets. Given that the TNI are currently building a new base just across the border at Batom, we could hazard a guess as to where the bulldozers came from too (see “Batom Economic Opportunities Base” in the Security Disturbances and Implications section). The author received many reports of border overflights into the Green River district for the last two years of unidentified Cessnas or other small 5 or 7 seaters. They have been flying in very low, often lower in altitude than the mountainside vantage point of witnesses (who are now in Port Moresby), and always flying close to the terrain, closer than even the craziest of mission pilots. Speaking with several MAF pilots (old-timers in the area), who remarked that anyone flying like this would need a high degree of training to successfully negotiate mountain air currents and wind shears so close to the terrain. They added that civilian pilots steered relatively clear of terrain for precisely that reason, and the only reason for doing so would be to come in under radar. And of course, all local pilots know that there is no radar, so the only people that could possibly think that are those that are trained to avoid radar, in other words the Indonesian military. Additionally, local PNG aviation services are prohibited from flying cross border from that area, and two witnesses with binoculars reported that the Cessnas always had a little black stencil on the tail that said “TNI-AD”.So why the concern about a mystery airfield? Given its proximity to the Sepik, and specifically the Hauser River (a major tributary), there should be concern. The Sepik has always been a route for east bound smuggling and this was evidenced in 2002 with a major weapons seizure near Maprik. An ADF team intercepted an Indonesian made weapons smuggling operation then with RPNGC involvement. These weapons, mainly high powered automatic weapons, and including some SS1s, were brought in to East Sepik by motorboat down the Sepik River, and were bound for Wewak, where they were to be traded for marijuana and the taken up to the Highlands via Madang and Lae (the coastal freighter route). (The author has been unable to personally verify exactly what happened to those weapons, but has been assured by ADF personnel that they were taken back to Australia, and not left in the hands of RPNGC (which would have been the quickest way to lose them)). They are usually smuggled inside betel nut bags, but the police wised up to this and the practice has changed. During the gun amnesty in 2004, several Indonesian weapons were handed in as far as Goroka, and they even turned up in the Solomon Islands during the RAMSI mission amnesty. Strangley enough there happens to be a large RH operation there too, not that anything is being implied.
See "Terror Razing the Forest".
Contact Information
e-mail: wpngnc@optusnet.com.au