Noah Musingku made a fortune with a Ponzi scheme and then retreated to a remote armed compound in the jungle, where he still commands the loyalty of his Bougainville subjects

One autumn morning, I boarded a plane from Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, to Buka, the capital of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. A collection of islands and atolls the size of Puerto Rico, Bougainville is located 600 miles east of Moresby, across the Solomon Sea. Its southern shore is just three miles from the politically independent Solomon Islands, and its people share a culture, linguistic links and dark skin tone with their Solomon neighbours. But thanks mostly to European colonisers, who drew the borders, Bougainville is the farthest-flung province of Papua New Guinea, whose lighter-toned inhabitants Bougainvilleans often call “redskins”, betraying a sense of otherness in their own country that partly explains why I am writing about them here.

I say partly because if not for the islands’ having fought a bitter, decade-long war against the Australia-backed Papua New Guinea – which remarkably they won – and demanding Papua New Guinea allow Bougainville’s independence by 2027, the story I am about to tell would likely never have happened.