Security and Weapons Analysis of the New Caledonia Uprising

Background: Violent Unrest in New Caledonia

May of this year saw the most intense political violence in the small South Pacific French territory of New Caledonia since the struggles of the 1970s-1980s, known as Les Événements (The Events), which claimed multiple lives and led to an unsatisfactory agreement between both Paris and independence-bound elements in the island capital of Nouméa. However, the recent uprising that not only rocked the territory but also mainland France on the run-up to a legislative election has been long-brewing even after disputes over autonomy and political influence were seemingly resolved at the end of the 1980s with an agreement known as the Nouméa Accord. The latter established a framework for the eventual transition to fully free local administration, but such efforts have since been fraught by episodes of power struggles between nationalists in France, European settlers in New Caledonia, and the indigenous Kanak people, who are a minority but still make up roughly 41% of the population.

New Caledonia is a small, mineral-rich archipelago—known for large nickel deposits and timber exports—which lies approximately 700 miles east of Australia. They have been a French territory since the mid-19th Century and, particularly after World War II, there have been serious bids for autonomy and outright independence, culminating in the formation of the indigenous Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), which has led the political and armed struggle for both greater autonomy from metropolitan France and eventual independence since the 1980s. The period ofthe late 1970s up to the agreement of 1988, which had to be renegotiated in 1998, has been described as a near civil war between the Kanak people and European settlers.