As eco-anarchists we in OPM SG (Brighton) do not support ‘national liberation’ struggles. This is not ideological nit-picking. Most of the population of this earth live in countries ‘liberated’ by the struggles of the anti-colonial wave. Millions of courageous workers and peasants sacrificed themselves for their ‘nation’s liberation’. Mostly all that was gained was the freedom to be oppressed and exploited by an emerging native managerial class. "National liberation’ builds nation states while obscuring pre-existing and emerging class antagonisms with the ideology of nationalism. Indonesia itself was forged in the heat of a guerilla war of national liberation against the Dutch and Japanese.

Often radicals in western countries project onto a 3rd world movement an image that is largely a reflection of their own ideologies not the aspirations of the movement itself. For understandable reasons of survival and diplomacy many 3rd world organisations help this situation by either saying different things to different groups or remaining vague enough to be all things to all people. Is this the case with West Papua?

Papua’s mountains and jungles have shaped one of the most diverse people on earth. The million or so West Papuans constitute less than 0.1% of the worlds population but account for up to 25% of all known languages. Some tribes live far from civilisation (literally meaning the culture of cities’) carving out a subsistence lifestyle. Others live in or near the Indonesian created towns and roads and have seen their land destroyed by mining, logging, and oil exploration. In some places missionaries have made Papuans reject their culture and traditional (un)dress while in others the godbotherers still get attacked if they try to spread the ‘good news’.

It would be ridiculous to claim that all Papuans have the same ideas about their struggle. In fact some do not know that the sturggle, the OPM or Indonesia even exist. Those Papuans who know ‘Indonesia’ has declared war on their race and their ecology could not for a moment envision Jakarta, the New York Stock Exchange or the matrix of global industrialism. Some of the baggage of 20th century ‘revolutionary nationalism’ has reached the OPM - flag raisings, pompous sounding military titles, in the past even a minute amount of Marxism. On the whole however the OPM has more in common with American Indian resistance in the wild west than Leninist guerillas in Kurdistan.

There is always a danger that the struggle against Leviathan turns people of the resistance into monsters themselves. Is there a state waiting to be born within the OPM? It is possible but we think unlikely. There are many factors playing against the OPM ending up as ‘national liberationists’. The scattered OPM guerrillas have a number of leaders but no central command. They love the land and dislike cities. They demand an end to logging and mining, not just a share of the profits. No other nation states of any meaningful size support the West Papuans- if they get aid at all it will be from either Pacific indigenous groups or anarchist/ecological networks. The diversity of their tribal cultures and the geography of their land both negate state creation. They defend the traditional and largely reject the modern. Their prime demand remains- ‘Leave Us Alone!’

However it is not inconceivable that a native managerial elite could be constructed from Papuans in exile, some within the OPM and members of the Papuan Presidium Council. Anarchist orientated elements in the OPM have been guarding against this possibility both in word and deed. The OPM is at root a tribal war of stateless peoples, anarchist peoples, against the destruction of their land by the global industrial machine. As long as that remains so it is our responsibility as radicals in the heart of the empire that attacks them to aid them in whatever way we can.

- OPM Support Group (Brighton, U.K.)