Tribal fight a serious issue

TRIBAL fighting is one of the most serious problems that is mainly happening in the Highlands.
In the late 1980s, tribal fighting took a nasty turn for the worse with firearms replacing bows, arrows and spears. More than hundreds are killed every year in tribal fights in the region.
It is a fear that the death toll will rise because of the use on modern weapons.
The use of guns has added a new dimension and has fundamentally changed the nature of the conflict unlike the past.
Guns have swept bowmen off the battlefield as surely as the German Panzers brushed aside the valiant Polish cavalry men on the North European Plain in September 1939.
The reasons for tribal fighting are complex.
It happens mostly in the Highlands, mostly in areas that were discovered relatively late and mostly in places where there is increasing stress on the population .
Tribal fighting traditionally was a method of resolving disputes.
Most of the investigations into why fighting remains endemic conclude that for many Highlanders, the modern mechanisms for dispute resolution are just not working. In coastal PNG before World War 2, the two Australian administrations sometimes took extreme measures to stamp out inter-village warfare. Thanks to that!
While fighting on the coast appears to have been less common traditionally anyway because land pressures were not as high.
The actions taken to end tribal warfare are not available to the authorities in an independent PNG.
For example, head hunting disappeared from the Sepik only after punitive expeditions in which alleged head hunters were rounded up and hanged.
The present day highlands tribal fighting presents the police with a huge problem.
Whatever the police do, they can’t seem to provide lasting peace between warring tribes or clans.
The police do not have a solution and do not know if there is any.
Maybe in time the situation will improve.
But today, we can’t crack down like the colonial administration did.
Unlike under the Australian administration, we are now living in a democracy.
Papua New Guinea does not have the death penalty for any crime, except treason, although many PNG parliamentarians have advocated its reinstatement.
In the highlands, the official emphasis seems to have shifted to stopping fighting rather than solving disputes.
The net result is that the dispute remains unresolved in an atmosphere of intense bitterness and economic and social deprivation.
Instead of allowing the law to take its own course, the highlands man is taking the law into his own hands.
A person who has committed a crime is now defended by his tribesmen against the victim’s tribe.
According to Highlanders, the life of a man is equivalent to a coca cola carton and a pig.
They used to say “Kill as many men. Money and pigs will fix the mess”.
Some people who uphold stone age mentality have this attitude of “don’t care about the law.”
We all as citizens have duties and responsibilities.
We need to learn from our mistakes and make better informed decisions for the future.

Bid Ambassi, Wabag, Enga