Last week, we highlighted WW2 and the Cold War as key occurrences that had a direct bearing on the ready availability of arms in what became the international arms market and consequently on the arrival at Lautoka Wharf of 18 tons of weapons in a container that somehow slipped through heightened post-coup security and found its way to sympathetic farms in the western side of Viti Levu. We said the Cold War included the arms race, the space race, and various proxy wars around the world. Here, we take that further to establish Fiji’s positioning and importance within that framework.
The Cold War and Fiji
THE Cold War (1947-1991) was primarily a tug-of-war that was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union on political, economic, and ideological fronts, rather than through direct military engagement.
When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon and declared, “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” it looked like the Soviets had been left behind.
Far from it, that race continued unabated and with renewed intensity. However, for us it is the arms race and proxy wars that is of more importance.
Thus, a parallel race was intensely being contested in the manufacture of weapons. It was this that helped arm proxy wars in faraway countries. You see, communism as a political ideology had a particular appeal for people who felt oppressed and alienated from sharing in the wealth of their own countries. It promised equality, fairness, brotherhood and, most importantly, it promised a revolution – a toppling of existing exploitative and elitist power structures with one that involved “rule by the people”.
This was the popular appeal of communism/socialism.
This is what attracted African, Asian and Latin American leaders and their supporters to armed struggle in their quest for revolutionary change in governments. And it is here that both the Soviets and the Americans supplied arms to further their competition for ideological, and by extension, hegemonic superiority.
In Angola, the Americans supplied arms to Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA while the Soviets propped up Jose Santos’ government. In Nicaragua, the Soviets backed Daniel Ortega’s Sandinistas while the Americans supported the revolutionary Contras of Somoza.
These are just illustrative examples from Africa and Latin America. The same sorts of power struggles were waged all over the world. Some of the most prominent leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa were socialist adherents. The promise of liberty, fraternity and equality was a powerful concoction that few could resist.
There was also the reality of having to take up arms, galvanise and revolutionise popular support, and gain independence from reluctant colonial rulers who were lured and held by the wealth of these colonies. The socialist ideology and Soviet weapons helped greatly in this regard.
The Americans featured prominently in the same sort of conflicts in Asia. When Mao Zedong and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) finally got General Chiang Kai-shek to quit China and flee to Formosa (now Taiwan) in 1949, China became a major bastion of communism in Asia. The US had supported Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek all along. This is why Taiwan continues to be a point of contention between China and the US.
Thus, the ideological war in Asia featured China more prominently than the Soviets. All of South-East Asia (bar Singapore), a primarily agrarian region, grappled with communist movements backed by China and the Soviets.
The Malayan Emergency, in particular, was a Cold War, anti-colonial conflict that took place between 1948 and 1960 on the Malayan Peninsula. About 1600 Fijian soldiers participated in that guerrilla campaign largely under the command of officers from New Zealand between 1952 to 1956.
Those troops arrived back in Fiji aboard the HMS Devonshire on 18 June 1956 under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Ratu Penaia Ganilau. Sadly, 25 Fijian soldiers died in combat during this campaign.
The iconic song, Bula Maleya, captures our contribution to the Malayan Emergency for posterity. The late Manu Korovulavula, whom I fondly called uncle when he ran a bread shop in Nabua, wrote a book on the involvement of Fijian troops in the Malayan Emergency called Vala Mai Maleya or The Malayan Campaign.
In the introduction he writes: “The book tells the story of my life as a young soldier who volunteered and enlisted in the 1st Battalion Fiji Infantry Regiment in 1951 to go to Malaya and protect the citizens of that country from falling into the claws of the insurgents from 1952 to 1956.”
Russia in the Pacific
What is important for us here is that Fiji was intricately embroiled in the conflict between the communists and the West. Ratu Mara, in particular, was the bastion of the West in the South Pacific. Despite its considerable distance from the South Pacific the Soviets were not ready to let it go to the West by default. In 1985, Kiribati entered into a fisheries access arrangement with the Soviet Union.
Willis (2017, p.1) says that “coming at the height of renewed Cold War tensions between the USSR and the West, this unprecedented manoeuvre provoked a significant international uproar and briefly placed Kiribati at the forefront of international geopolitics”.
It was at this time that political campaigning in Fiji for the 1987 elections was heating up.
In a deft, desperate and highly unscrupulous move, Sir Len Usher, the doyen of the media industry at that time, penned a letter purported to be from NFP leader SM Koya to the Soviets pledging support. A subsequent Commission of Inquiry cleared Koya, and Sir Len later issued a public apology, but the damage had been done. NFP’s credibility had been dented and the party lost face in the public eye. This moved focus elsewhere.
The Fiji Labour Party (FLP) had just been formed by largely left-leaning union leaders and academics. Some of their members were placed on a watchlist for having links with the Soviets.
The Fiji Anti-Nuclear Movement (FANG) was a particularly pesky presence for the ruling Alliance government. Many FANG members were known supporters of the newly-formed FLP. I as a member of that movement made a trip to Japan for an international anti-nuclear conference in August 1986.
Later, an ex-Customs student told me that I also became a person of interest to the powers at the time.
Thus, the preoccupation with Russian designs in the Pacific became part of the 1987 elections. Ratu Mara was a close friend of both Australian PM Malcolm Fraser and Singapore Premier Lee Kuan Yew.
These three leaders were formidable in their own ways. All were very tall, well read, educated, steely haired and distinguished looking. All were pro-West and passionately anti-communist. In fact, part of the fuel for the formation of Singapore in 1965 stems back to the Malayan Emergency.
Singapore did not want anything to do with communism, they were all for capitalist free enterprise.
What is important for us here is that Ratu Mara was a key member of the pro-West alliance in the Pacific. His was a voice to be listened to and given serious consideration. His links to the US were cemented by his close involvement with a clandestine thinktank based at the East-West Centre in Hawaii. It is this centrality and importance of Ratu Mara in the pro-West camp that I have tried to establish with the last article (FT 3/05/25) and this one.
The fear of the Soviets was very real at least in the minds of the ideologues and the public at the time. The media zoomed onto it whenever anything regarding the Soviets popped up in the region. The lead-up to the 1987 elections and its aftermath when Ratu Mara’s Alliance Party fell is closely linked to this Cold War phenomenon. I will develop this further next week. And the Guns of Lautoka will reappear as we proceed with this series.
DR SUBHASH APPANNA is a senior USP academic who has been writing regularly on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed here are his alone and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers subhash.appana@usp.ac.fj
