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Tamils should ask themselves - is it realpolitik and not moral imperatives drive policy decisions in foreign capitals?
Like that of many of his predecessors, the government of Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse has made fresh representations to the international community that his government seeks a negotiated solution to the island’s ethnic conflict whilst, simultaneously, branding its potential partners in peace, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as ‘ruthless terrorists’ whose activities in should be banned in foreign countries.
Despite
the obvious contradiction in Colombo’s stances toward the LTTE, the
publicly adopted positions of foreign actors suggest that they accept
Sri Lanka’s case at face value.
The
position adopted by Sri Lanka’s foreign minister this week echoes
assertions by former holders of his post (during both times of peace
and war) to their counterparts in the international community. Although
not all leading states involved in Sri Lanka have readily adopted the
anti-LTTE measures demanded by Sri Lanka, their policies have clearly
been moulded within Colombo’s framework.
The argument goes thus: Sri
Lanka is a ‘vibrant’ democracy - perhaps with a few flaws, but those
can be addressed in a more peaceful context - but the ‘fanatical’ LTTE
is a violent group that places its own interests above those of the
people it claims to represent and, as a result, has to be deterred,
using any tools available, from plunging the island (back) into war.
Limiting
the discussion to this simplistic dichotomy seems the only way for
various foreign actors to understand the island’s conflict and draw up
their policies with regards to Sri Lanka.
The international tools
deployed include providing substantial aid to the state’s civil and
military structures, proscribing the LTTE and blunting the
organization’s political project. The objective has been to deter the
LTTE (the hardline protoganist), from challenging the state and,
simultaneously, to bolster the latter against the former.
Tamil
criticism of such international attitudes has largely turned on the
fact that such policies have failed to successfully encourage the Sri
Lankan state to offer a reasonable political solution for the ethnic
question and, more regrettably, to roll back the persecution and
marginalisation the Tamils suffer under the Sinhala-dominated state.
The bona
fides of the new Sri Lankan administration leave a lot to be desired.
Having come to power on a Sinhala nationalist wave, the ruling
coalition is led by a President whose strong Sinhala Buddhist
credentials earned him the support of stridently hard line southern
parties.
The government’s contradictory signals - calling its future
negotiating counterparts ruthless terrorists whilst simultaneously
urging peace talks - could be attributed to political naivety or a need
to balance different constituencies.
However,
Colombo’s unleashing of military violence against Jaffna’s resients is
less forgivable and more revealing of the state’s mindset. Within two
months of Rajapakse’s election, the Sri Lankan military, lead by
hard-line commanders he has newly installed, have revived a regime of
extra-judicial killings, rape, and arbitrary arrests.
The state of fear
that Sri Lanka was notorious for prior to the ceasefire of 2002 has
returned in just weeks.
Last
week the military placed restrictions on the movement of journalists
(and the week before that before that on NGO workers) in and out of the
Northeast, an ominous step that revives memories of blackouts by past
governments of the wholesale atrocities.
Perhaps the most appalling
signal of the new government’s mindset came, however, from comments by
Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweewa to US Secreteray os
State Condoleeza Rice. He told her that his government ‘would be unable
to prevent’ communal violence against Tamils should the international
community fail to intervene to force the LTTE to talks.
The thinly
veiled threat referred, as Tamils know full well, to the 1983
state-sponsored pogrom against them.
The
justification for the increase in state violence and persecution is the
need to confront increasing attacks on Sri Lankan military personnel by
Tamil armed groups - which Colombo insists are fronts for the LTTE.
The
international community has duly commended the Sri Lankan state for its
restraint in the face of attacks by these groups. Unfortunately, the
international community has also refused to criticize Colombo’s
escalating repression against the Tamil civilian population, seeming to
endorse it.
(Notably, when it comes to restraint, there was little
encouragement for LTTE when the organization faced similar and in some
cases far more serious provocations by the Sri Lankan military,
including the sinking of two ships and the assassinations of prominent
regional leaders.)
Even the
assassination of elected Tamil politicians sympathetic to the LTTE by
Army-backed paramilitaries – the most recent murder was of Joseph
Pararajasingham shot dead whilst attending Christmas Mass – has not
drawn a murmur of international protest. The failure by the
international community – especially the European Union, which reacted
so vehemently to the killing of Foreign Lakshman Kadirgamar - to
condemn the murder of a Tamil MP has seriously undermined the moral
basis on which international demands are routinely asserted.
The
international silence accompanying the Sri Lankan armed forces’ ongoing
efforts to put down Tamil discontent with ruthless violence - including
disappearances and summary executions - is a disturbing sign of things
to come: the silence that accompanied Sri Lanka’s blockade on food and
medicine into Tamil areas during the earlier round of conflict is by no
means forgotten.
Crucially,
for the peace process, and the credibility of its international
underwriters, the failure of the Sri Lankan state to adhere to key
agreements already reached have also been readily forgiven.
Amongst
these are the Ceasefire Agreement itself, which stipulates that the
state must allow the 800,000 displaced Tamils (nearly a quarter of the
Tamil population) to return to their occupied homes. The joint
committees set up between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE during
the four years with the aim of rehabilitating the Northeast failed due
to government lethargy.
Yet there was no international criticism. The
final cooperative venture between the state and the LTTE was, of
course, the failed Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structures
(P-TOMS), designed to provide much needed humanitarian assistance to
the region worst hit by the natural disaster last year.
The declaration
by Sri Lanka’s supreme court that the P-TOMS was unconstitutional put
paid to that venture. Again, hardly an international protest.
It
cannot have escaped the international community that the Sri Lankan
state has absolved its responsibilities for those living outside the
areas it controls, as evidenced by the sabotaging of the P-TOMS
structure and its earlier efforts to appropriate and divert
international aid.
By contrast, the LTTE has demonstrated via its civil
structures, redevelopment work and humanitarian efforts – especially in
the face of the tsunami (and repeated floods) - that it has adopted the
role of the state large parts of the Northeast.
The
conventional state/non-state logic is thus not applicable in Sri Lanka,
due to the reversal of role between the two primary domestic actors.
Hence, concerns that were traditionally considered when contemplating
the spectrum of action against the state has to apply to the non-state
actor as well.
Sri Lanka has asked the United States to shut down the
Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) for example. Acceding to the
request will immediately impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Tamils who rely on the organization.
The
belligerent state, whose delusional assertion of sovereignty have
included unilateral efforts to dislodge Norway, the facilitator in the
peace process and whose government is too dependent on extreme
right-wing elements to take any constructive steps toward a substantive
peace. By contrast, the LTTE has made notable concessions and reached a
number of agreements aimed at returning stability and normalcy to the
war-torn regions - the latest of which was the ill-fated P-TOMS.
The
state has chosen to ignore the plight of an entire ethnic community,
whilst the non-state actor has built an infrastructure to maintain law
and order and provide social services and humanitarian assistance to
those living within the areas it controls.
Over the
past two decades the international community has no doubt had to
re-evaluate its understanding of the ethnic problem on the island,
assisted by academic institutions, which have sought to fit the complex
conflict to a model which could explain its observable dynamics.
Over a
decade ago the conventional wisdom and the line promoted by Colombo,
were largely that the LTTE was a fanatical, fringe organization that
did not enjoy widespread support amongst the Tamil community and the
solution to a peaceful Sri Lanka was the military elimination of the
entity, and certain reforms of the state that would placate Tamil
grievances.
More recent policies suggest that though the international
community accepts that the Tamil community have genuine grievances (for
which some feel federalism is the necessary solution), it still feels
that the LTTE - despite its popular support - is a hardline
organization whose end objectives are not aligned to a peaceful
solution.
But the
fundamental aspect of the Tamil community’s relationship with the LTTE
that the international community has failed to appreciate is that the
movement is still the only entity on the island that is still pursuing
Tamil interests, both humanitarian and political. Despite four years of
peace, the Sri Lankan state has failed to deliver on a single signed
agreement, and a quarter of the Tamil population remain displaced from
their homes. Amid the impasse on aid, the Sinhala parts of Sri Lanka
grow stronger whilst the Tamil parts remain destitute.
A situation in
which the Northeast remains trapped in an economic stalemate whilst the
South prospers economically suits the hawkish Sinhala. Wittingly or
otherwise the international community has played a crucial part in this
dynamic over the past four years.
It is in
this abject humanitarian environment that Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry
is pressuring the members of the European Union to proscribe the LTTE
as a terrorist organization. Should the EU buckle under the weight of
Sri Lankan diplomatic pressure it would further undermine the bloc’s
standing as an impartial actor in the island’s ethnic conflict.
Under
these circumstances, an EU proscription – and its associated moral
condemnation - will do little to improve the Europe’s strategic
leverage on the island’s deteriorating situation. To date the LTTE has
been banned in four major countries where there is a substantial Tamil
Diaspora. The organization has continued to thrive despite the
proscriptions.
However, the states that banned the LTTE have been
unable to fully engage in the peace process with both key protagonists.
Should the EU follow suit it too will be restricted to working the
hawkish new administration of President Rajapkase and third party
dialogue via the Norwegian facilitators.
Most
importantly, it will also reinforce Tamil perceptions that realpolitik
and not moral imperatives drive policy decisions in foreign capitals
and thus re-emphasize the need for self-help and self-reliance in all
matters, including security.
Source:TG
Jana Nayagam
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