Word: fiji
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hired guns are even more in evidence at the checkpoints in Baghdad's Green Zone, although there is a hierarchy as to who guards what. The outer gates of compounds are typically guarded by third-country nationals, experienced soldiers of fortune from such countries as Nepal, Chile and Fiji who are paid a fraction of what a British or American former soldier or policeman would get. The highest-paid independent contractors are known as tier-1 personnel. These are the former U.S. special-forces soldiers. On Helvenston's tour in Iraq, he was making about...
...Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, the decision to remove the government of Laisenia Qarase in a coup on Dec. 5 was painful but simple. "The racist policies of the past," he says, sipping coffee in his office at the Republic of Fiji Military Force Strategic HQ in Suva, "would have taken us to hell-and we would never have come back." For many observers in the outside world, most vocally Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Bainimarama's actions were an unacceptable interference in the democratic process, but the armed forces chief and now interim Prime Minister is unrepentant. "If you want...
...Bainimarama says entrenched corruption, race-based policies that favored the 51% of Fiji's population who are indigenous, and runaway crime drove his intervention. He rejects Downer's suggestion that he has acquired a taste for power as "the height of insensitivity and arrogance," saying he didn't want to be Prime Minister, and accepted the position only at the urging of his military council. "I hate this job," he says, "but it has to be done. And we are going to stay until we complete this business...
...Zealand or the U.S., which have demanded a swift return to civilian rule. But if foreign disapproval counts with Bainimarama, he's not showing it. "They want to bully the small nations of the Pacific," he says. "Downer's policy is to ensure there is weak government in Fiji so they can take advantage of it." If outsiders really want to help Fiji, he says, "they should just lay off. Stop attacking what we're trying to do here, because it's not going to make any difference to us." He relies instead on popular support, which, he claims...
...says Hughes was ignorant of Fijian politics, a charge he lays at many doors. Foreign politicians like Downer and his New Zealand counterpart Winston Peters are getting bad advice from their Fiji missions, he says, and don't know what's happening on the ground. "The diplomats got along better with Qarase's people," he says. "They want business as usual-even if it's going downhill." Last month Fiji's Reserve Bank predicted the economy would shrink 2-4% this year; before the coup, it had forecast growth of 2%. Speaking the day before his government's first Budget...