Strengthen security law

PAPUA New Guinea has been used by foreign criminal syndicates for transnational crime for targets in Australia, New Zealand and the rest of Pacific. This could well be the case for terrorist activities too.
PNG is different from the rest of the Pacific because of the land border it shares with the largest Muslim country, Indonesia, where illegal cross-border activities have flourished unnoticed for a long time due to a poorly manned (on both sides) border.
Advanced developments in telecommunications such as internet and mobile phones with advanced applications, has made the world more accessible in terms of networking, planning and coordination, especially on the part of the perpetrators.
The recent discovery of 750kg of cocaine in a location west of Port Moresby reveals a criminal operation that has been well-planned and coordinated with a trusted network of operatives in PNG with links overseas.
Imagine if the drugs were moved from Southeast Asia to Australia via PNG.
And imagine the networking, coordination and the planning involved to pull off such an operation.
It would have been smooth sailing if it wasn’t for the pilot who overloaded the aircraft with drugs which eventually led to the bust.
The writing has been there on the wall – the trend is real and dreadful.
The Government of PNG must act strategically and swiftly to counter transnational criminal activities, including terrorism.
PNG has to tenfold its national security operations in the country.
It is a wakeup call for PNG to upgrade the level of effectiveness of national security resources in terms of manpower, logistics, infrastructure and funding, to effectively contain the prevalence of transnational criminal activities.
Australia must also rise to this occasion.
It has to take a positive approach in building PNG’s capacity, not only in terms of textbook training, but to supplement the training programmes with logistics, infrastructure and hardware support.
This will enable PNG’s security agencies to raise the level of performance in order to be able to provide counter operations, including enhanced counter intelligence sharing.

Sekinolo Sawala,
National Security Adviser,
Department of Bush Material