It is north east of the PNG mainland. It has a population of just over 200,000 people. Bougainville is a beautiful tropical paradise with pristine beaches and untouched jungles. It is home to a people group that are proud to be distinctly different than mainland Papua New Guineans. In the 1960s and 1970s Bougainville was known for the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, Panguna Mine. Bougainville was also one of the world’s largest producers of cocoa. The Bougainville Revolutionary War in 1989 ended the operations of the mine and the export of cocoa.
The war, many times called the “crisis” by the locals, was centered around the mismanagement of the Panguna mine by the PNG government and the mining companies. The people of Bougainville wanted independence from Papua New Guinea and for the control of the mine to go back to the original land owners. The war lasted for ten years with 10% of the population of Bougainville paying the ultimate price for independence. The war ended with a peace agreement forming the government of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Although Bougainville is still under Papua New Guinea, the peace agreement gave hope to Bougainville to one day be an independent country.
For the past nineteen years little has happened in Bougainville. Many people on the island talk about the crisis like it was yesterday. It is almost as if they are trapped in a hopeless state of destruction. In the last five years, Bougainville has begun to come out of the ashes of war and begun economic growth through the sale of cocoa again. Bougainville has the potential to have a bright future in cocoa, coffee, gold, and copper exports, but the island is still politically unstable with the desire to be independent of Papua New Guinea.
Buin is a town at the southern tip of Bougainville. Bougainville is divided into three government regions: North, Central, and South. Buin is the capital of the southern region of Bougainville. It is famous for being the area that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto crashed landed and died during World War II. Because Buin is on the southern most part of Bougainville, it was the main port that the BRA, Bougainville Revolutionary Army, used during the crisis to smuggle supplies from the Solomon Islands to Bougainville. Buin is a small town with locally-owned trade stores and a popular fish market. Buin is home to ruffly 5,000 people with many more people in the surrounding villages.