How will we cope with 100,000 boat-people a year?

From time to time there are media reports of PNG being on the verge of a failed state. When a government periodically looses control of its military and police forces, that country has to be seen as being a failing state. When bribes can win the votes of an entire village, that country has to be seen as being a failing state.

And, as the already 50 year-long civil unrest continues in West Papua, the increasing number of victims moves towards its critical mass. One can imagine the pressure on the Indigenous in the western half of the island to become armed subversives when so many families living under the Indonesian military have a member who has been the victim of disappearance , murder, imprisonment, execution, rape, torture or confiscation of property.

Afghanistanshould have taught us how effective is an armed insurgency driven by an obsession to right a wrong. A standing army with sophisticated equipment can barely contain the insurgency. And, just as the Taliban are fortified by Pakistani sympathy, the West Papuans will be fortified by many in PNG. Racial identity is as powerful a glue as religious identity.

Fear and hunger in the population at large is the inevitable by-product of an armed conflict. Many not interested in fighting anybody will want to escape across into PNG. From there they move into the Torres Straight islands i.e. Australia. Then what happens? How are we who get into a lather over 10,000 boat-people a year going to cope with a worst-case-scenario that is beyond our imagining?

Whatever the future holds, it must be advisable to start thinking more deeply about the escalating refugee problem confronting the entire world than what one reads in Sydney's Daily Telegraph.