Qualla: Bougainville Conflict https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bougainville Conflict https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict Bougainville Conflict: Introduction https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict/ Photo credit Igillott, CC BY-SA 4.0. Francis Ona was a former Panguna mine surveyor who knew every truck route, every pit wall, every water pipe. In late 1988, he turned that knowledge against the mine itself. The explosions that destroyed Panguna's power pylons that November were not the opening act of some imported ideology. They were a Nasioi landowner's answer to decades of watching his ancestors' mountain disappear into open pit while the copper flowed out and the tailings flowed into the Jaba River. The conflict that followed would kill as many as 20,000 Bougainvilleans - perhaps an eighth of the indigenous population - before peace arrived a decade later.

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/rqyj-bougainville-conflict-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bougainville Conflict: The Mountain and the Mine https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict/ Photo credit Igillott, CC BY-SA 4.0. Panguna was no ordinary mine. When it opened in 1972, it was the largest open-cut mine on the planet, gouged out of the Crown Prince Range by the Australian company Conzinc Rio Tinto. At its peak it generated more than 45 percent of Papua New Guinea's export revenue - a single ho...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/rqyj-bougainville-conflict-the-mountain-and-the-mine.mp3 0:06 2 full Bougainville Conflict: A War No One Expected https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict/ Photo credit Igillott, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Ona and his cousins blew the pylons in November 1988, the PNG government sent riot squads. The riot squads burned villages. The burned villages produced fighters. By early 1990, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army had pushed the Papua New Guinea Defence Force off the main is...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/rqyj-bougainville-conflict-a-war-no-one-expected.mp3 0:06 3 full Bougainville Conflict: Splintering https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict/ Photo credit Igillott, CC BY-SA 4.0. The BRA was never one thing. Its core came from the Nasioi clan around Panguna, but Bougainville has multiple peoples - Rotokas, Halia, Nagovisi, Siwai, Torau - speaking languages from three unrelated families, each with its own land and its own view of the war. On Buka Island to...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/rqyj-bougainville-conflict-splintering.mp3 0:06 4 full Bougainville Conflict: The Mercenaries and the Mutiny https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict/ Photo credit Igillott, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1997, PNG Prime Minister Julius Chan was desperate. His army controlled maybe 40 percent of the island. A September 1996 BRA attack at Kangu Beach had killed twelve of his soldiers in a single engagement. In January, he signed a 36-million-dollar contract with Sandline Interna...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/rqyj-bougainville-conflict-the-mercenaries-and-the-mutiny.mp3 0:06 5 full Bougainville Conflict: Peace and the Long Horizon https://qualla.com/bougainville-conflict/ Photo credit Igillott, CC BY-SA 4.0. New Zealand, perhaps unexpectedly, brokered what Australia could not. Talks at Burnham military camp outside Christchurch in 1997 produced a truce. An unarmed Truce Monitoring Group arrived - soldiers from New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu, and eventually Australia walking the bush in t...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/j/bougainville-conflict-wp/rqyj-bougainville-conflict-peace-and-the-long-horizon.mp3 0:06 6 full