Papua New Guinea - killing fields of the Pacific

Tourists are enthralled by the elaborately decorated tribesmen. Picture / Nick Squires

A thousand tribal warriors, their bodies glistening with pig fat and their faces daubed with black and red ochre, swarm on to a muddy arena in magnificent head dresses and grass kilts.

They are armed with lethal-looking axes and spears, and tucked into their belts are daggers made from the bones of the cassowary, a giant tropical bird related to the emu.

Beating drums and chanting war songs, the warriors, some with pig tusks through their noses, are the highlight of the Mt Hagen Show, one of several tribal gatherings held annually in the rugged highlands of Papua New Guinea.

The show last weekend was one of the most exotic anthropological displays on the planet and the warriors' mock battles thrilled the small band of tourists watching from the sidelines.

But in recent years a bloody resurgence in real-life tribal fighting has occurred across the highlands of PNG, fuelled by political intrigue, a breakdown of law and order and the arrival of automatic weapons.

A former British colony, which passed to Australian control in 1906, PNG consists of an uneasy confederation of more than 800 tribes.

Clan warfare has gone on for millennia. But the introduction of high-powered automatic weapons in the past few years has made the age-old system of "payback" far more deadly, turning parts of the highlands into an unruly frontier zone with a Wild West reputation.

Feuds can last months, even years, in a country in which allegiance to wantok - literally "one talk", meaning a person's language group or tribe - is paramount.

Matthew Gispa, 28, proudly recalls the moment he pulled the trigger of his M-16 and killed one of his tribal enemies during a clash in the village of Aviamp, about 64km outside Mt Hagen.

"He had a gun too, so if I hadn't shot him he would have shot me," he said, a razor-sharp machete in his hand. He now fears retribution from the opposing clan. "They will come back, and they will try to kill me."

His assault rifle and two Magnum revolvers are buried at a secret location in the surrounding jungle, ready to be used again.

As with most tribal disputes, the fight started after a disagreement over land. Living in a land of steep-sided mountains and sharp ridges with a limited cultivable area, PNG's highland tribes have always fought over land, but the issue has been intensified by the country's rapidly growing population.

Gispa says he is known to the local police but has not been questioned about the murder, let alone charged.

Many PNG police officers are corrupt, while even the honest ones are hamstrung by a lack of resources.

"We don't even have enough diesel to go out on patrol," said one sergeant, gnawing on a stick of raw sugar cane and keeping a wary look out for his superiors.

"We don't have enough vehicles, firearms or radios. Many times we just have to let them fight it out."

Many of the weapons used by tribal fighters are bought or stolen from the police and the Army - of the 10,000 or so small arms supplied to the two forces in the past 20 years, only a quarter can still be accounted for.

In place of the elaborately decorated stone axes and 1.8m spears paraded by the painted warriors in the Mt Hagen show, tribes are now using grenades.

Even mortars are reported to be in circulation, having been stolen from military armouries. Bamboo breastplates and head-dresses made from bird of paradise feathers have been replaced by flak jackets and helmets.

"Traditionally, when people were fighting with bows and arrows, they would stop after one or two people were wounded," said Nick de Groot, a Dutch missionary and director of the Melanesian Institute, a think tank in Goroka.

"But now you have 15 or 20 people dead in two days. Local mercenaries armed with M-16s hire themselves out to tribes and get paid in money, pigs and women."

Politicians are "deeply implicated" in the gun trade, according to New Zealand gun researcher Philip Alpers, providing their own clans with high-powered weapons. Elections are seen as an opportunity to seize political influence at gunpoint.

During the national election in 2002, more than 30 people were killed and tribal gangs torched ballot boxes before the votes could be counted.

"My clan members were afraid to vote for me," said Sarah Garap, one of a handful of women candidates. "Politicians hired gunmen to intimidate voters."

It is hard to establish the total number of people killed because much of the fighting goes on in remote valleys which are largely cut off from the outside world. Clashes occur all the time, but local hospitals believe more than 90 per cent of deaths go unreported.

In one of the larger documented battles, three years ago, around 120 people were killed in a fight between two rival tribes near the flashpoint town of Mendi.

The deadly use of firearms has a devastating impact on many parts of the country, with schools, hospitals and police stations forced to close.

"It hurts the women and children," said Alan Ropra, a security guard in Mt Hagen. Roads and hospitals, he said, are "bagarap" - the pidgin word for broken down; literally "buggered up".

Forced to sell their highly prized pigs to buy weapons to defend themselves from neighbouring clans, villagers have no money to educate their children or pay for medicine.

"It has become an arms race," said Robert Bruce, a British anthropologist who has witnessed several tribal battles since settling in Mt Hagen 15 years ago.

"When I first came here there were maybe a few shotguns being used, but recently I have heard the sound of rocket-propelled grenades."

Tribes take up arms because they have lost all confidence in the police, the courts and local officials to fairly mediate their disputes. By taking the law into their own hands, they are resorting to an age-old concept of justice that would have been familiar to their grandfathers.

It was not until the 1930s that the highlands were first discovered by white explorers. The small group of Australian gold prospectors who stumbled on this stunning, densely populated area, were greeted as the spirits of long-departed ancestors.

More than 70 years on, the arrival of high-powered weapons has also caused profound shockwaves to PNG's beautiful, but dangerous, mountain interior.

Without an end to the corruption, cronyism and relentless deterioration of law and order in PNG, the killing in the highlands is likely to continue.