The Raskol Gangs of Port Moresby: Tribal Wars, Street Battles and Homemade Guns in Papua New Guinea
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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. October 2011 in the town of Kanantu, Papua New Guinea. Kanantu's a scratch. It's a market stop of 6,000 people on the 430-mile Highland Highway that connects the major towns of PNG's beautiful but troubled northern rainforests.

It's also home to a giant gold mine, K92, run by Canadians and backed by a New York equity firm. Like its notorious highway, Kainantu has been overrun by gangs of violent young men from the Kamano tribe, one of dozens in the region whose traditional laws have creaked under an influx of foreign cash, corruption and guns. Locals know them by a simpler name: the Rascals.

Once a fight with fists or axes or bows might be compensated with a pig or a patch of land. Nowadays the booty and bloodshed is far too big for that. For decades there's been a steady exchange of rascals between the Highlands and the capital city Port Moresby blurring the lines between a criminal underworld and tribal warfare.

State corruption is endemic. 40% of folks are on the breadline and K92, just like so other many projects, that siphon off PNG's natural wealth gives very little back to the people. Police are paid off or they just can't be bothered. The army, well they're just supplying the weapons. Officials in Port Moresby call Kainantu a quote "cowboy town". Running out of options the locals decide to administer some jungle justice.

Armed with nothing but machetes and spears, 500 men of the ruling Agarabi tribe launch wave upon wave of attacks on anybody over the age of 15 they suspect of the banditry. The Kamano rascals are armed with shotguns and even a machine gun, but they quickly run out of ammo, defenceless.

In just four hours, 35 Kamano are wounded and 14 dead. Their bodies are mutilated so badly they have to be carried in pieces. It's one of the most brutal mass killings in the Young Nation's history. "It was like a nightmare," says one local resident. "They slashed them all with bush knives."

But most Papuans cheer on the violence. Most tribal cultures champion revenge attacks and rascals, a word deriving from the local Creole, rarely face retribution for extortion, rape, robbery and murder. As a son of Konantu, I support the Agrabians who said they wanted to clean the town, one reader tells a local newspaper. He blames police for allowing gun crime to flourish. Another Port Moresby resident chimes in.

If it's true the Kamano community were harbouring criminals, they say, then it's fair enough. This may seem like no ordinary reaction to a massacre, but Papua New Guinea is no ordinary nation. And just like the people of tiny Kainantu, the lines between justice and wanton brutality have become wildly blurred. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast.

Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of the show in which you'll learn all about how to hold up a bank with little more than a stapler, some pipes, and even a soldering iron. I'm your host, Sean Williams, and I'm joined today by investigative reporter, Danny Gold, who's just about to jet off an assignment. Tell us any more about that. Yeah, I mean, by the time they actually hear this, I will be back from a little story on fentanyl and murder in St. Louis, and hopefully things went well.

Yeah, yeah. And before we jump into this week's show, a bit of housekeeping. We've got interviews flying on the Patreon. You've got your one on Captagon, I think, a couple of days ago. A guy who actually juried a massive mongrel mob trial in New Zealand got back in touch a while back. And that's a really cool interview that's going to be up soon. If you've been shot, robbed by gangs, or if you prosecuted them or washed their cash or even just their undies, to be honest, guys, just give us a shout.

Um, we had some really interesting folks reach out lately, the underworld podcast at gmail.com. Yeah. And, uh, patreon.com slash underworld podcast to support us. And we, you know, we have the Twitter at underworld underscore pod and the Instagram at the underworld podcast. If you need more. Yeah. And there's tons of it. So, um,

Yeah, Papua New Guinea. What is this place? My only personal interaction with the country is playing cricket with a kid from PNG who is an absolutely incredible player, but also kind of like kicking the shit out of people. When we were about 16, he hit one kid for 76 as he cried while I was batting with him. And he also attacked the wicketkeeper with his bat, which is a bit like a baseball hit at whacking the catcher.

but the catcher's not wearing any gear. It's an absolute madman shout out to Joel, who I guess does kind of tee up this episode somewhat. What have I told you about cricket references, but more? Yeah, I mean, I was excited when I heard you were doing this. I remember reading about Port Moseby being one of the most dangerous cities in the world. I think it actually might've been in a Robert Young Pelton book. And there's just some fantastic photographers I know that have done rascal portraits, right? There's like these really striking photos. And I've always wanted to report there

But things don't always work out the way that we want. And now I'm just a guy doing this sidekick role on a podcast about it from his one bedroom apartment. Oh, come on, you're a little bit more than that. Yeah.

Now, the country itself, PNG, occupies one half of New Guinea. That's the second largest island in the whole world. It's kind of like this tilled-shaped thing shared between PNG and Indonesia. It's just above Australia's Queensland Peninsula, with a bunch of islands snaking off out into the Pacific towards the Solomon Islands and further afield.

Most of it is rainforest and it's peppered with gold mines, oil and gas sites and other mineral goodies. It's home to about 9 million people, GDP per head of 2,600 bucks and 40% of the people live below the breadline. Unemployment is massive and when I say massive, it's like insane. And drugs and alcohol abuse are endemic.

It's also been exploited like crazy, right? But I assume you'll get into that. And is it where the Free Papa movement is located or is that the other side of the island? That's the other side. And actually, we're going to get into that in a tiny bit in a minute as well. So, yeah, it's kind of crazy. I mean, when you look at PNG and East Timor, which isn't too far away, those countries have just been pillaged pretty much.

And PNG is home to 851 languages, which I know you're going to remember from our What Guinea Is It Anyway quiz for the Guinea Bissau show.

And PNG is also home to one of the world's only poisonous birds, which is the hooded pitahui, which I know we're not here for ornithology, but I just thought that was kind of cool. Right, it's terrifying. Yeah, kind of. I mean, I saw something where a guy said that he got pecked by one and he just felt kind of warm on the skin. So I don't know how poisonous these things are. But anyway, people have lived in PNG for 50,000 years and tribal culture is everything. Like it's one of the oldest civilizations or something, right?

Yeah, I remember seeing some stuff like that. I mean, it was even like the site of a big archaeological discovery of like a...

kind of like pre-human civilization as well. Yeah, that's what I think I meant. Like one of the earliest discoveries of like man or something along those lines. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's old. And that's what I got for you. Thanks for the science. And four out of five folks in this country live rurally, which is, I guess, a bit of a misnomer in the modern age. And Port Moresby, which is this mottled little port capital, it's actually only home to 400,000 people of those 9 million.

Although it's grim stats somewhat makes up for its lack of size. Some tribes in PNG are so cut off, they still don't use money and they live in these giant 140 foot high houses in the kind of rainforest canopy.

And some, it said, still practice cannibalism today, although the last recorded incident came in 1964, when a village raid ended with a bunch of guys being dashed and beheaded against a so-called bloodstone and their brains eaten out in a stew of ginger, cinnamon, and bark. What is the internet called that? Trad life, right? Yeah, I haven't seen that recipe before. Cinnamon and ginger sounds shit, but I don't know. Brains might be nice. And bear with me anyway, because...

This stuff is really, really relevant today. If you look closely at a map of Papua New Guinea, you're going to see there's this odd little chunk cut out of its border with Indonesia, about two thirds of the way down the island. And that's because in the back of the late 19th century, that

That area was full of local headhunters who quite liked killing and eating European colonizers. And they'd like kind of canoe down a river right on the border. And according to the New York Times, quote, not only did the chunk make it easier to police the region, British patrols could go much further up river without having to cross borders. It also enabled British gold diggers to travel farther inland as well.

Oh yeah, our friends, the British fucking gold diggers. I mean, of course my lot are involved in this. It's actually Portuguese who first wash up on the islands in 1562. And the guy who does that names the main island Ila dos Papuas, or Land of Fuzzy-Head People. And to be honest, mate, I can't see that getting past the editors today.

Yeah, no way. That would definitely not fly. Nah, nah. But it sticks. And Britain arrives in 1884 and it sets up, what else, British New Guinea in the southeast and Germany takes the north. In 1895, they find gold and that kicks off a series of battles for control of its excavation and supply. In 1906, the Brits hand over control of BNG to the Aussies who occupy the northern German-held part of the island during the First World War.

There's another gold rush. I think that's in the 20s. And then the Japanese occupy the region in the Second World War. Then they get booted off. Indonesia takes control of the western part of the island. And it calls that the region of West Papua, which I think is what you were mentioning before.

And we'll probably, yeah, get to that a bit further down the line because West Papuans are ethnically obviously a world apart from most Indonesians. So they face all kind of subjugation and they end up forming some of the most fearsome gangs in Jakarta and other cities. Yeah, those Indonesian colonizers, they kind of sneak past all the European colonizer-focused activists, you know? Yeah, I mean, what is Indonesia? It just baffles me.

At some point, there's a whole part of the highlands in PNG that none of the white people think is actually inhabited. And then they suddenly like, air quote, discover over 100,000 people living in remote village clusters, which actually makes that bit the most densely populated part of the whole island. So that kind of tells you everything about this place.

And there were growing movements to have an indigenous rule in New Guinea until 1975. And that's when the country gets independence and it changes its currency. But a northern island cluster called Bougainville, that roils up and it fights for its own independence, warring between 1988 and 1999 at the cost of thousands of lives. Actually, Bougainville may be the world's next independent nation. It actually had a referendum vote in 2019 and that's when it was

and that returned 98% in favor of breaking off from PNG. Locals reckon they'll probably achieve statehood by somewhere around 2027. Well, I had no idea, but congratulations and good for them. Yeah, yeah, it's a war that not many people know about. And one of the problems is that these international borders, they're so obtuse, and there are literally hundreds of different tribes living on islands, forests, shoulder to shoulder, or even hundreds of miles away, and almost inaccessible.

What do you mean by international borders? Do you mean like how the islands kind of split down the middle between Indonesia and the other? Yeah, that. And then there's Bougainville. And then there's also the Solomons on the eastern side. And then there's even like the Torres Straits in Australia in the south. And they're all kind of like mishmash, you know, like arbitrary borders.

Um, to be honest, I don't really even understand how PNG or the Solomons or even Indonesia, like one of the world's biggest nations, even functions as a modern state, like hundreds and thousands of islands together. How do you kind of bring them all together? And I'm getting a little tired of your Indonesia slander right now. Ah, shit. We're going to piss off Indonesia lobby or the big Indonesia. I don't know.

So in many ways, to be honest, I guess all of this doesn't function right. Where in some countries, corruption could be said to be endemic or rampant. I mean, I'm doing media mocking air quotes over here. In PNG, it literally is the national culture. There's this thing called one talk or one talk in top person, which is this Creole culture.

spoken widely over there, where people connected by language, ethnicity, district, or even geographical boundaries, which themselves are telling me called one talks, basically just keep it all in the family.

Now, if you're living in some two-horse town in the middle of a rainforest, like surrounded by rival tribes, Wontok is the system for you. But if you're trying to build institutions, cities, good governance, well, it's a bit of a nightmare. State nepotism is a complete out of control, and migrants to the big cities often rely on and benefit only their own. They try to accumulate wealth outside the bounds of social obligations.

A dev policy article I read had a survey with 99% of respondents. They say that they believe that corruption is either, quote, highly problematic or problematic in the public service. Officials often ask for, quote, side coins or, quote, Coca-Cola money to do the most basic shit. You're sounding very judgmental right now, Sean. Like, you know, the UK is really on the up and up.

It's not like Brits to look down on any other nation on earth. And I'm just being fully reverential here. A woman speaking to that journalist in that article says, by the way, quote, in my village, if I want to enroll my son in school and there are no more spaces, I have to give some Coca-Cola money to the headmasters to have my child enrolled. From the village to the town, it's the same. If I'd already purchased a plane ticket, but there are no spaces, I have to give some Coca-Cola money to the ticket officer,

to create a space for me to travel. When I arrive in a city, it's just the same. Everywhere there is corruption. The ways of Bakshish. Gotta love some Bakshish or fucking hate it. And in case you're not getting the point that corruption is, well, endemic, in 2018 the PNG government designs and builds this crazy $37 million conference hall in Port Moresby for the APEC summit. That's when Asia's leaders get together and shake hands and, I

I know, kiss and do stuff like the G20. And it also buys dozens of luxury Maseratis with public money worth about 4 million bucks. And later on in Al Jazeera documentary crew finds 40 of these things just parked up in a Port Moresby lot gathering dust. As late as last October, the government admits the cars were a quote, terrible mistake.

Where is the money coming from? Like, is the government itself broke or are they making money off, off like an exploitation of natural resources? Yeah. I mean, I mean a tiny bit from column a and mostly from column B because it's

Yeah, I mean, there's loads of backhanders obviously getting bandied around as well. But whatever little money they make, they're going to buy Maserati with it. They're a shower of shit. I respect it. Yeah. In May 2020, cops arrest and charge the president from that time, who's Peter O'Neill, with abuse of office over two generators he bought from Israel for 14 million bucks. Last October, O'Neill was found not guilty. But, you know, this isn't the New York Times, so I'm going to put it in there anyway.

So you've got a poor country, right? And it's governed by assholes with 851 languages, a culture of corruption and tribal warfare so embedded that some massacres like don't even get reported for months, even years. Add to all of this mineral wealth getting sucked out of PNG and it's barely a wonder the place is a fertile breeding ground for gang violence.

The first rascal gangs pop up in 1950s Port Moresby, in the city's southern suburbs, which is near the beaches on the Pacific coast. But it's not until the euphoria of independence and the chaotic rule that ensues that gangs really start dominating the city. By 1979, rascals are in full swing all over Port Moresby.

One night that year, Alan Amara, who's a rookie member of the Kip's Kobani Gang, or KGK, one of the many so-called rascal street gangs vying for control of this tumble-down little capital, he is leaving the Islander Travel Lodge Hotel after a few too many to drink. And Kobani means devil in the Motu language, by the way. Then there's an altercation outside this place, and out of nowhere, somebody lunges at Omar with a knife, leaving a 15-inch gash down his side.

I mean, post-independent Moresby has already lost its innocence, right? Gangs are organising and the cops are tooling themselves up for fights. Violent acts like the one that nearly kills Amara are becoming more and more commonplace. He survives, but he loses a rib and a spleen. I think you've only got one spleen, right? And others aren't nearly so lucky. What does a spleen even do? Answer on the postcard. By the mid-1990s, four major groups terrorised Port Moresby.

That's the Bomai, the Kobani, Mafia and the 585. And although these gangs are kind of territorial street gangs, there's little evidence at this point of them heading across turf or getting involved in gang wars. There's actually a great journeyman doco from 1995 in which a rascal says, and see if you can spot the subtle misogyny here, quote, if my wife or my pig goes and destroys your garden, no call, we just fight.

If we have a quarrel and you punch me and then the tomorrow there will be a fight. We don't know what court is. We only solve problems by fighting. When we are fighting, says another villager, we don't even want to see a chicken walk in. And I mean, I don't know what kind of like destruction a pig does comparable to a human female. But yeah, anyway, take his point. So the confluence of violent tribal blood feuds in the big city,

Like there's warring clans coming into closer contact with each other in this kind of modern PNG. And there's a switch from handheld weapons like axes and bows to guns. Any idea where the guns come from or is that discussed later on? Yeah, we're going to get into that. But, you know, short answer is Australia and the U.S.

And much of the time people escaping communal violence in the Highlands, they find themselves wrapped up in the same deadly disputes in Port Moresby, or even fighting them. There's no, quote, Tombuna Passing, which is the local term for the Ways of Ancestors, essentially being the method of tribal elders de-escalating violence. Why is there none of that left?

Because there's a massive disconnection, right? You've got all of these warring or kind of like factions or tribes coming down from the highlands. You've got Port Moresby, which is on the beach, like a few hundred miles south.

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And none of the elders are kind of telling the youngsters what to do. So they're kicking off and there's none of the sort of fail safes kicking in that would have stopped fighting. And plus there's guns instead of bows and arrows. So you can imagine how much worse it's getting.

And so you can add to that all of the cutting off of high-end political society by corruption and that so-called one-talk system I mentioned earlier that's cutting off everything into like family or tribal factions. And you've got this society where fights will kick off quickly and they do not stop until there's a lot of blood spilled.

Gangsters and police who are chronically underpaid get into private security work, meaning that the rule of law effectively becomes a privatised industry. Quote, But there are no guarantees. Says a 2004 book called Ting Gang's A Global View,

Quote, the organization of the criminal underworld, like that of the Melanesian clan, Melanesia is the rough area from in which PNG sits in the world, is essentially segmentary. Each of the four major conglomerates consisted of an indeterminate number of loosely associated subgroups that had their own names and leaders and, in practice, exercised a higher degree of autonomy.

The continuous variation in the size and configuration of criminal groups, generally following the fortunes of individual leaders, parallels that of traditional political organisation.

So what that means is basically a street gang of mostly young men, mostly school dropouts, with strong father figures who've brought clan politics of the rainforest right into the city. And leaders are often actually called, quote, the father. So sort of these gangland fagging kind of characters. What do they actually do, though? I mean, how do they earn drugs, extortion, robbery?

There's drugs, but that's to a smaller extent in PNG. I mean, there's people who grow weed, and we'll get into that in a minute, but essentially this is extortion and a lot of armed robbery as well. There's a great episode of Ross Kemp on Gangs. I really think that's a good show. And he gets shown a bunch of guys. They kind of just stage an armed robbery for him on a random street, and they take people's cars and stuff. It's mostly low level, but...

Sorry? I was going to say it's ethical reporting right there. Yeah, yeah, really ethical. And stuff that I would love to do if any editors are reaching out. But that's pretty much where the Dickens references end, right? Because these guys, they're really brutal.

In 2004, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Port Moresby the least livable place on Earth. And it follows it up by ranking it only second worst behind Dhaka, Bangladesh. And that gives a whole raft of journalists the excuse they need to jump on a flight and see how bad things really are. God, such an unoriginal industry. That, like, that intelligence unit thing really is like, it kicks off everything. And here's a guy at The Guardian, by the way, and he's cranking up the Joseph Conrad. Quote,

In Lagos, expect chaos. There are gun battles in Bogota. Crime has become a curse in Karachi. Can you think of any others like that? I don't know. But there is nowhere on Earth quite like this. According to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the capital of Papua New Guinea has beaten all comers again to take a title that no city on Earth would covet.

With poverty, crime, poor health care and a rampant gang culture, Port Moresby consistently scores highest in the unit's, quote, hardship table, meaning it's regarded as the worst place to live among 130 world capitals. Baghdad is not on the list. I mean, I don't know why.

Tales of the Rascals exploits a legion, this story continues, from bank robberies with N-16 machine guns to car hold-ups by mobs armed with machetes. Rape cases are even worse. In one widely reported incident last year, that would be 2003, an injured nurse was dragged away from a car crash to be gang-raped.

And I mean, that's awful, right? And look, I'm not a massive fan of this breakdown porn. I've no idea if Port Moresby is actually as bad as Dakar or if Dakar is actually as bad as Essex or whatever. It all seems a bit suspect and bullshit. This writer also says that the homes of the rich, quote, sit behind walls tipped with razor wire and gates watched by security guards. But like, man, I saw that in South London a couple of weeks ago.

Also, isn't I mean, this was from a while ago, but isn't Bangladesh doing pretty well these days? I think it went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to like having a really fast growing economy. Yeah, I guess so. But I mean, also, that was Ethiopia like last year and what's happening there. I never know what to make of all these fucking tables and stuff. It just yeah, I don't know. Anyway, here's Aussie photographer Stephen DuPont, who's published a book about the rascals. I think that's one of the ones that you might have mentioned at the top of the show.

Quote, I'm not sure how they come up with these statistics, but it feels overrated to me. Yes, Moresby is a harsh and dangerous place where security is the biggest business and unemployment is extremely high. But I can tell you I've been in many more unlivable and dangerous places. I mean, Moresby is not Lagos, Mogadishu or even Kabul.

Like any big city, if you know the lay of the land, take precautions and hang out with the right people, you can generally find yourself having some good experience there. Like making friends with rascals, so you can roam safely and freely in some of the city's worst neighbourhoods.

And I mean, this place is clearly bad if you're like, well, it ain't Mogadishu. I mean, in a city whose unemployment rate has sometimes dropped below 20%, so that's an 80 to 90% unemployment rate, the rascals run town. According to one stat I saw, it's the 12th most dangerous city on earth, with a murder rate of 54 per 100,000 people, and regular kidnappings, robberies, and other violent crimes.

84% of businesses in Port Moresby pay for security, and according to the World Bank, the indirect long-term social impacts of crime and violence limit them from operating for their full potential. The Australian High Commission, surrounded by high concrete walls and razor wire, is jokingly referred to by locals as false shit scared. According to DuPont again, quote, it really is quite tribal and territorial. The settlements are like ghettos.

These gangs rise up to really act as a security force to protect the settlements in times of tribal conflict. But individuals will often go on their own and commit crimes. And he adds, quote,

On the main roads at night time, they'll often try and jack cars, basically armed hold-up stuff, particularly Friday and Saturday night when they've been around alcohol or drugs. Their culture really comes through in the way they dress and behave. They have tribal colours, but you'll see a little bit of Western culture, Ice Cube and Bob Marley t-shirts, with a traditional billum bag, that's a woven traditional kind of tote bag.

I don't think Bob would be on board with carjacking, to be honest with you. I doubt it. I don't know what my Ice Cube views on carjacking are, but it is surprising. A lot of these guys are rasters, and that's something that comes through in a lot of the docos I saw. And this is DuPont again, right? And his work is really fantastic. You should check it out.

And something I don't think you'll see in another part of the world is that these guys make their own guns, he adds. I think it's quite strange and beautiful, almost like art pieces. It sort of goes back to how they would make their weapons in tribal times. So, I mean, you know, I'm probably doing it right now, but everyone falls into the Conrad hole when they're talking about PNG, it seems. Yeah, of course, there are guns.

A 2005 government audit finds that thousands of Australian and American assault rifles have been sold to PNG rascal gangs and warring forest tribes. Of 7,664 assault rifles delivered by Australia and the US to PNG, just over a quarter could be officially accounted for.

Most are sold on by police or army members. Most gangsters use M16 from PNG Defence Forces or AR-15s from the police. But it's the homemade guns that are, like DuPont says, kind of grotesque works of art.

Many gangs fashion their own guns out of pipes and other bits of scrap. Some of these guns are crazy. They're just two bits of pipe for the barrel on the grip, hair trigger and a stolen police bullet. Some are even made out of staplers. I've put some pics up on the reading list in case folks want to see more.

Wait till they find out about 3d printing, man. Yeah. Good luck getting one of those to PNG, but, um, that's pretty scary. I mean, to address the widespread use of firearms in crime and tribal conflict in 2018, uh,

PNG's government passes a bunch of laws, including fines of up to 300 grand, that's US dollars, or five years jail time for having unlicensed guns. I mean, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say most guys are going to do the time for that. And manufacturing guns now carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. But figuratively, and I mean, pretty much literally, that horse has bolted the stable.

The concept of justice is just junk in PSG from a ton of angles. First, there's the cops supplying weapons and siding with whichever rascal gang is either from their tribe or giving them the biggest kickback.

There's this Al Jazeera documentary recently where the crew does a ride along with officers. It's just like nuts, right? Arrest riots appear not to exist at all. Cops arrest a guy after a hold up at a grocery store. They're just whacking him with a cash and tying him up with a dog leash. They don't even have any handcuffs. Then when the police come back to where the store robbery was, the manager refuses to answer to them because police often shake down the shops themselves.

And then finally, the employee is certain the suspect isn't involved in the robbery at all, and they let him go without an apology. In September 2020, Police Minister Teddy Kramer admits that his forces have a, quote, rampant culture of police ill-discipline and brutality. That took him a while. He says he'll reform, quote, from the top down, but he doesn't say how he's going to do that at all.

says one member of the Bomai Rascals, quote, And if you wind up in prison after all of this, well, there's probably a way out. Prison breaks are comically commonplace in PNG. To put this into context, I'm going to focus on one single prison. It's a place called Boimo in Ley, the second city of PNG. Okay, so...

In January 2016, 50 inmates are sprung from the place before a breakout the following month prompts guards to shoot at least 11 attempted escapees dead. In May 27, there's another break and guards this time shoot 17 inmates dead. I'm not done. In January 2020, there's another breakout and then that August, Boimo sees yet another break with guards shooting dead 11 prisoners.

Prisoners rush a gate when a sick inmate is being moved to get medical treatment. They stab a guard, then they run from the compound. And this is one prison in one city in four years. Some places just have four unarmed guards for 600 inmates. So they have to do stuff like designate prison leaders, let people have phones or other contraband, just to make sure they pretty much don't routinely get stabbed to death.

So what do you do when you cross this lawlessness with the street rascals and the rapidly increasing armed tribal insurgencies that tumble down from the Highlands into Port Moresby?

So what's going on? I mean, I'm getting a little muddled between the tribal insurgencies and the rascals. So essentially there are two different things, right? So you've got your street gangs in the capital and lay to a smaller extent. And then you've got these tribal disputes kicking off in the Northern Highlands, which were a couple of hundred miles away to the North. And over time,

the waters are getting muddied. The tribal conflicts are pouring from the highlands into the city. Rascals who kind of haven't found their fortunes in the city, they're heading back. And the whole, these whole two worlds are just kind of like blending into one. And because there's no demarcation between the two, these sort of

ways that tribal conflicts or street gang violence would get mitigated by various leaders they're kind of not anymore and then you throw in a bunch of australian and u.s guns and how shit the police are that's the kind of world that we're in now with these rascal gangs kind of it's hard to tell where the tribal violence ends and the street gangs begin

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. And like, for one, with all of this, you get this hellish level of sexual and gender-based violence. Like that charming fellow earlier mentioned, women are often considered of lower value to men than pigs. And rascals openly and proudly use rape as tools of terror or for initiation rites.

Two out of three Papuan women suffer violence or abuse, and whole neighbourhoods in Moresby are no-go areas for single women. In June 2020 alone, according to Human Rights Watch, the city records 647 cases of domestic abuse in the city alone. Accusations of sorcery and witchcraft also unleash unbelievable levels of sexual violence on women. That's a very common thing in the Highlands as well, the belief in witchcraft.

And there's a crazy moment in the Al Jazeera doco I mentioned earlier where the crew meets this guy. He's on community service from prison and he meets his two daughters that he hasn't seen for nine years. And it's like this really emotional, teary moment. And then they ask him what he's doing in prison. It turns out he's been doing time because he killed his wife, their mother, which is

which is a, quote, mistake, he says. I mean, what the fuck? And Doctors Without Borders says that it deals with levels of sexual violence in Port Moresby that it usually only sees in war zones. Here's journalist Vlad Sokin on his 2012 multimedia piece Crying Mary, and Mary means woman. Quote, Every day most of the crimes committed against women from the Port Moresby slum areas.

Jesus Christ, this is dire. I mean, new listeners, I swear to you, it's not usually like this.

No, there's usually a fart joke in there somewhere. Here's Moses, who claims to have raped more than 30 women himself. Quote, First, a young gang member should steal something, money or a car, and he will be admitted to the gang. After that, he must prove his intentions are serious and he must rape a woman to complete his initiation.

And it's better if a boy kills her afterwards. There'll be less problems with the police. Jesus. I mean, this is just unpleasant. Absolutely. Fucking hell. Yeah. And it doesn't help that PNG men drink tons of potent illegal moonshine and they chew beetle, which is this coke-like stimulant that dyes people's mouths red.

Bro, bro, bro. I mean, Beatles, like, it's like caffeine, you know, it's not that strong. It's not crazy. It's pretty rough though, right? It's like disgusting. Well, it's disgusting and people get addicted, but it's not like a potent drug, you know?

Well, yeah, I mean, it kind of like strings people out, though. So like add that with like 80 proof fucking moonshine from the jungle. I mean, you know, you're going to be compromised. And weed that's being grown in greater quantities in the fertile highlands. I mean, it could maybe slow some of these guys down. But like any commodity grown in an impoverished place, its profits often just fuel even more turf wars between rival tribes.

And those are getting worse and worse by the day, the tribal conflicts, I mean. And like we heard on the intro to this episode, the line between gang, tribe, organized crime, mass murder, they're just getting more and more blurry. In July 2018, something so bad happens that it makes international news, so brace yourself.

Photos emerge from a village called Corrida in Heller Province in the Highlands, and it's bodies wrapped in blue mosquito nets like cocoons, tied like hogs to wooden poles and placed at roadside. The nets hold the bodies of 18 people, 10 women, 6 children and 2 unborn babies, all hacked to death before dawn. A health worker tells the Guardian the bodies are so bad they don't know which parts belong to which person.

Even in PNG, people are utterly repulsed by this. A local chief tells reporter, quote, this I have never seen in my life. Teddy Kramer, the police guy we mentioned earlier, he declares that the killings have, quote, changed everything. It will become the new trend.

Also, I want to let potential advertisers know that other episodes, they're not like this. You know, Sean's in a weird place these days. It gets really dark in the winter in Berlin. I think I'm just, like, going to start sleeping under the desk. Hella police chief Teddy Agui tells local news that, quote, this is not a tribal fight where the opposing villagers face each other on field. This is a fight in guerrilla warfare, meaning they play hide-and-seek and ambush their enemies.

And it continues. In June 2020, eight are killed and 20 injured when one armed tribe attacks another who are heading home under police escort. There's this police van that's navigating a rough road up a hill towards the village of Nandi when armed men spring from the bushes either side, firing high-powered weapons at the van's passengers. Women and children are among those murdered. This is the tribal stuff, not the gang stuff, or is it still kind of mixed?

Yeah, I mean, this is a bit of both. Like I mentioned, nowadays, these tribal and gang conflicts are kind of getting wrapped up in one. And last February, also in Heller, which has like the coolest flag ever, by the way, which I've stuck on the reading list, more than 6,000 people flee murderous rascal mobs tearing across free villages after a land dispute.

By the end of the month, 21 are dead and dozens more wounded. Gianluca Rampolla, who's a local UN chief, pleads that, quote, this senseless violence must stop now before more innocent people are killed, wounded or displaced. The United Nations stands by the Heller government and is already mobilised to provide for the immediate needs of those affected by the fighting.

Police and soldiers, by the way, they're not going to go in because they want special allowances paid beforehand. And it's no coincidence that Heller is one of the most minerally rich parts of PNG. So much so that there's now a counter-migration of city gangsters flooding back into the highlands to cause mayhem, kill and lay claim to the land. It's like it's an insane mess.

Bent officials, rapacious foreign companies, tribal wars supercharged with Aussie and US guns, rascals running riot in the capital, and police hamstrung by graft and loads of bad habits. I mean, no wonder bloodletting like this is happening all the time. It's just, I mean, you're really painting quite a picture of this place. Yeah, I mean, everyone says this. I kind of didn't want to say that PNG is this really beautiful place, but I'm going to say it now because I've basically just talked about death and violence.

But apparently it's a really nice place to go on holiday. So don't let me put you off, guys. But I'm pretty sure that like 45 minutes into the piece, people aren't going to be booking flights to Port Boresby. And I want to mention actually that Highland Highway that was in the intro. That's like one of the main places that these gangs do their work. It's supposed to be one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Loads of carjackings and armed robberies and stuff.

Anyway, today, remember Alan Amara? He's that rookie in the Kipskabonny gang. He was almost stabbed to death, lost his spleen in 1979. Decades later, he's a so-called general. He's a greybeard of the rascalism that's gripped Moresby. Guns everywhere. And feuds, they're just spilling from the forest into the city and vice versa. I mean, if he'd been pissed at that hotel now, Amara would almost certainly have been shot dead.

For many in this brutal world, becoming a rascal is the only road to fulfillment. Quote, I tried to walk the path of Jesus, but it was no good, one gangster tells a journalist. There were no material goods, no work, no girls. Now I travel the road of Satan and it's much better, he adds. I can get what I want.

So has it been bad there for a while? I know it's been bad there for a while, but it sounds like things are reaching like a head or is it getting increasingly worse? I think the main thing, like the main takeaway that I got was like this blurring of the lines between tribe and gang. So I think it is getting worse. And I mean, like I was saying with the prison breaks and these like tribal massacres that have been carried out and the general lawlessness that's being spurred by

mineral wealth getting dug out the ground and not being given to the people. Again, that's kind of like fueling the corruption in the big city. So just like it's just created this environment where the rascals not even making enough money from carjacking, they're looking to the oil and gas and gold fields. The tribes, they can't sort of suppress these tribal conflicts that are going on because they're all getting carried out with fucking M16 rifles instead of bows and arrows.

And no one at the top really gives a shit. And it's hard to see where the sort of positive side to this story is, but it's somewhere. I just haven't found it. So if any guys from PNG are listening to this episode, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you because I really want to try and find a nice side to this. But unfortunately, guys, not going to find it in this 45 minutes.

Yeah, I think that about does it. Yeah. Advertise with us, guys. Patreon.com, Sassanian World Podcast. I want to thank, too, our top-tier people, John Simon, Patrick Rowland, Tanner McLeave, Sam Ramsey, Juan Ponce, Pete Thomas, Mike Ulrich, William Wintercross, Train Ants, Matthew Cutler, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, and Doug Prindle. Thanks, guys. Yeah, thanks so much. Until next week. See ya. See ya.

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