A two-week military rebellion in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea ended uneasily on March 26, when soldiers handed back weapons they had seized from armories in the nation's capital of Port Moresby, 12 days before. The rebellion was sparked by the March 8 announcement by P.N.G. Prime Minister, and IMF puppet, Sir Mekere Morauta, of a military reform program. It would slash P.N.G.'s Defense Force numbers from 4,150 (already tiny for a nation of 5 million) to just 1,900; disband the engineering battalion; sell landing craft and the force's major barracks; and tender out (privatize) base support, repairs, and maintenance.

The "reforms" had been drawn up last December, by an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) deployed to P.N.G. by the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, former New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon. The EPG was dominated by two "Colonel Blimps," one from Australia and one from New Zealand, with one representative each from P.N.G. and Barbados thrown in for color. Top P.N.G. military brass were unaware of the slash-and-burn "reform," until they read about it in newspaper leaks on March 7.

Although some top brass were whipped into line behind the plan, their troops had a different idea. On March 15 they seized weapons from the Murray Barracks, and precipitated a stand-off. By March 19, the Morauta government scrapped the EPG reforms, and by March 26 declared an amnesty for all soldiers involved, and agreed to consider a list of demands, including the "expulsion of Australian and New Zealand military advisers." Announcing a revision of the reforms, Sir Mekere pledged, "The proposed consultations will be completely homegrown. There will be no outside influences whatsoever."

Underlying the dramatic events is a blatant attack on P.N.G. sovereignty, to grab control of its immense raw materials wealth, which was first exposed in an EIR report from Aug. 22, 1997, "Queen Elizabeth Runs a Coup: The Case of Papua New Guinea," which was widely circulated in P.N.G. Then, the target of the grab was P.N.G. Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, who was ousted amid a "corruption" scandal cooked up with the assistance of the Prince Philip-founded Transparency International (a de facto arm of the World Bank). Chan had kicked the World Bank out in late 1996, charging that it had "destroyed many countries." Chan's demise opened P.N.G. up to intensified looting by the Queen's raw materials cartel, led by Rio Tinto, the owner of several huge mines in P.N.G.

Four years later, there is widespread opposition to that raw materials grab, and to the related World Bank dictates, among P.N.G.'s political layers, and especially in its military. In fact, according to the March 19 Post-Courier, the rebel soldiers insisted that the issue driving their uprising wasn't that they personally were being made redundant, but "the government being influenced by the World Bank." An unnamed officer said the soldiers felt that the unions had failed to stop the influences of the World Bank. "The only group that can stop them is the Defense Force," he said. "If they reduce the number to 1,900, they can push any issue they want. The soldiers are concerned about this and they want this government to go at all costs.... The Defense Force was set up by the Constitution, not an Act of Parliament. Now, if they want to destroy the Defense Force, they might as well dump the Constitution in some rubbish bin. The government must have some hidden motive in these issues.... Why are they starting with the Defense Force?"

Rebel spokesman Capt. Michael Percy Marai, in the March 20 Post-Courier, charged that one "hidden motive," was a plot to grab P.N.G.'s raw materials assets: "The people's rights, it seems, have been denied.... The right and sovereignty of the independent state of P.N.G. has also been denied.... Let me warn the government that since our country is very rich in natural resources, there are outside forces who want to see how we progress. They are very interested in our affairs. In every avenue, they will try their best to push in to interfere in our internal problems as much as possible. Let's thank the good Lord that He has placed the resources in our country so that they could be used for the common good and not for selfish gains" (emphasis added).

The same day, March 20, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in London at the Commonwealth Ministerial Action group meeting which plotted actions against Zimbabwe's nationalist land reforms, threatened P.N.G. that "neither Australia nor the international community will tolerate action" against the IMF-World Bank agenda.

On March 25, P.N.G.'s Trade Union Congress endorsed the rebellion, urging the army to "lead us in the fight against privatization." "The soldiers' struggle here is part of the people's global fight against the wanwol gavman" the global government.