Intelligence

Chapter 3 - Recent Intelligence Lessons

Solomon Islands

Background to intervention
ONA Assessment
DIO Assessment
Analysis of Assessments

ONA Assessment

The Inquiry reviewed assessments from January 2000 until July 2003. Throughout this period, ONA's assessments of the situation in the Solomon Islands painted a consistently bleak picture. They also highlighted the potential, across the South Pacific, for the Australian Defence Force to be called upon to provide peacemaking, peacekeeping or evacuation forces, possibly in simultaneous contingencies. From April through to late May 2000, ONA noted a rise in tensions in the Solomon Islands. But although analysts captured well the decline in governance and society, there was no clear assessment that an MEF-led coup was likely.

Throughout the second half of 2000 and until mid-2001, ONA assessment was characterised by a focus on the June 2000 coup and its aftermath, particularly the conduct of the Townsville Peace Meeting and the ability of the Sogavare Government to implement its outcome, the Townsville Peace Accord. While ONA continued to assess the long-term prospects for the Solomon Islands, the events taking place gave reporting a more short-term focus, particularly in late 2000.

From the second half of 2001, there was a noticeable shift in the nature of ONA assessment with the language and tone becoming more negative. Throughout 2002, assessments placed an increasing emphasis on the likelihood of calls for ADF intervention. This was stated most clearly in the National Assessment produced in July 2002.

Reporting from this point also became more focused on the transnational criminal and terrorist threat posed by a collapse of the Solomon Islands Government and the impact for Australia. Once again, there was a correspondingly increased focus on the prospect of calls for armed intervention.

Throughout the period of assessment that the Inquiry has reviewed, ONA retained an appropriately broad perspective on events in the Solomon Islands. Its assessments were balanced and dispassionate.

DIO Assessment

DIO assessment covered similar ground to ONA's. Throughout the period reviewed, DIO saw little prospect of the Solomon Islands reversing its downward spiral. Its reporting covered specific incidents in detail and related them to the threat to Australians. However, in the period leading up to the June 2000 coup, despite a consistently negative assessment of the Solomon Islands, DIO did not portray the scene in a way that clearly highlighted the likelihood of an ADF-led evacuation. From an operational planning perspective, this was an important gap in assessment. Most notably, in product from late May 2000, the prospect of a coup was dismissed as unlikely.

The key issue is not that an incorrect judgment was made in regard to a single event. The broader range of assessments from January 2000 demonstrated that DIO was actively and accurately reporting a deteriorating situation. But these events highlight the fact that if DIO is effectively to serve its prime customer, the ADF, then it needs to ensure that its reporting maintains an appropriate degree of operational relevance. DIO reporting in the first half of 2000 was not optimal in providing timely warning to operational planners.

From July 2000, as with ONA, DIO was consistent and balanced in its assessments. DIO's assessments maintained the theme that there would be no reversal of the downward trend in the Solomon Islands, with the collapse of basic services continuing and law and order remaining virtually non-existent. Importantly, throughout this period DIO reporting continued to focus its assessment on the likelihood of calls for ADF intervention because of sudden changes in the security situation. While DIO at times assessed an increased likelihood of circumstances arising that would require an ADF evacuation, it consistently assessed that any breakdown would be well signposted, and that a short-notice evacuation would be unlikely. These changing assessments reflected a clear effort to track the shifting security circumstances over an extended period.

DIO's longer term assessments were supported by more focused reports that frequently cast specific events in terms of whether or not activities represented any heightened threat to Australians or other expatriates. This was particularly the case following the deployment of the International Peace Monitoring Team in November 2000. DIO reporting frequently provided more detailed coverage than ONA and ensured that specific events were placed in a broader context. This reporting covered specific threats or incidents directed at the IPMT and any impact on the extant threat assessment, or the impact of demonstrations or other incidents of unrest on the wider expatriate community, particularly on Guadalcanal, or simply provided forewarning of expected periods of unrest.

While both ONA and DIO were consistent in their assessment of the situation after June 2000, there was a noticeable and appropriate difference in the nature of assessment from DIO. Whereas ONA was focused on the broader political and social implications of the events, DIO reporting consistently provided a more detailed focus on the threat to Australians, the likelihood of events triggering the employment of the ADF, and the provision of intelligence products to support the planning and eventual conduct of any ADF operations. This operational focus was maintained while broader strategic assessments that ensured an understanding of the wider context of any operations in the Solomon Islands were retained.

Analysis of Assessments

The review of assessments from the two agencies since January 2000 highlighted a number of features. In general, the product was more robust in the post-June 2000 period than in the lead-up to the June 2000 coup. Pre-June 2000 reporting was not inaccurate, but generally failed to provide assessments that did much more than monitor events. Neither organisation predicted the coup, although both had recognised the potential for such an action and either dismissed its immediate likelihood or simply highlighted the threat. In the case of DIO, setting aside the specific question of whether the coup should have been predicted, the reporting did not engage operational planners in the practical way that DIO product ideally should.

It must also be highlighted that reporting in the period preceding the coup was influenced by competing demands that limited the available effort for the Solomon Islands. This was due not only to the on going focus on East Timor but, for the South Pacific effort specifically, on the coup in Fiji in May 2000.

From June 2000 until mid-2003, ONA and DIO reporting of the collapse of authority in the Solomon Islands was reliable and accurate. Reporting included both current and long-term assessments and, from the early stages, assessed that outside intervention was a likely outcome. These assessments were made against the backdrop of a government policy position that Australia could not presume to fix the problems of the South Pacific countries. It is notable that the agencies continued to paint a grim picture of the situation in the Solomon Islands against this policy background.

ONA reporting was characterised by a consistent assessment of the looming collapse of the Solomon Islands, and its increasing vulnerability to transnational crime and socioeconomic breakdown. While DIO was similar in its long-term view of the probability of the Solomon Islands becoming a dysfunctional state, it correctly focused on possible eventual calls for ADF intervention.

A key observation in reviewing Solomon Islands product from the two assessment agencies was the appearance of what seemed to be a valuable balance in the respective focus and level of reporting of the two organisations, particularly post-June 2000. In this regard the Solomon Islands case study serves as an example where the absence of definitive reporting boundaries did not appear to create undue duplication of effort.

Overall, reporting from ONA and DIO on the breakdown of law and order and the demise of effective government in the Solomon Islands stands in a positive light. Particularly in the reporting from mid-2001, assessments clearly showed the ability of the assessment agencies to make robust, independent assessments on issues in Australia's near region.