tamilweek.com

by Izeth Hussain

Fool and scoundrel guide the State
Peace is whore to Greed and hate.
Yvor Winters — Before Disaster

A defective peace process based on a defective CFA has led, just as practically everyone anticipated, to total war in all but name. In this situation it is to be expected that Norway, the Co-Chairs and others who have been trying to facilitate the peace process will experience a sense of exasperation and of fatigue. The corollary is to ask India, as the regional great power, to play the primary role rather than the non-regional players who really have no vital stake in the peace process. In addition Karunanidhi’s ascent to power is clearly pushing India to play that role.

In earlier articles, I have argued that India playing that role can lead to a solution of the ethnic problem, but equally it can lead to disaster as has happened in the past, and further that we should bear in mind the Cyprus parallel as a worst case hypothesis. In this article I will point to the relevance of some recent developments in relation to India’s new role. Thereafter I will argue that Sri Lanka’s legitimate interests can best be safeguarded by paying sufficient heed to the moral dimensions of the ethnic problem, instead of resorting to the kind of crude realpolitic that led to disaster in the past. I am postulating that moral power is now more important in international relations then ever before in the past.

The first development I want to point to is the unexpectedly poor showing of Jayantha Dhanapala in the race for the UN Secretary General’s post. For years he was fancied as the front-runner, but at the Security Council poll he ended up as the last of four candidates, with the South Korean being placed first, the Indian second, the Thai third, and the Sri Lankan last, even though he was possibly the best qualified.

Poor showing

This is not the first time that an eminently well qualified Sri Lankan has put up a poor showing in a contest for a prestigious international post. Part of the reason may be Sri Lanka’s poor international image, which seems to be much poorer than is warranted for reason that I cannot quite fathom. In this case, however, the Indian candidature seems to have been the decisive adverse factor. That candidature was announced at a very late stage, And quite unexpectedly because it is obviously incompatible with India’s aspiration to permanent membership of the Security Council. Understandably, it was surmised that the clandestine purpose was to sabotage Dhanapala‘s chances.

I am reminded of what happened at a time when our relations with India were at a nadir under the 1977 Government. It was thought that India was determined to sabotage all our chances for prestigious international posts and membership at executive levels in UN institutions. The intention, it was surmised, was to see that Sri Lanka was internationally regarded as a country of no account whatever in the affairs of the world. Much could be done against such a country, unlike say against Singapore, without provoking an international furore. Aggression against Sri Lanka could then be made to seem as really not much more than transgression, going beyond international norms and laws for understandable reasons. Having a Sri Lankan as UN Secretary General would not fit into that scheme.

The second relevant development was the visit of the State Department‘s Steve Mann as US special envoy. After the visit Mann returned directly to Washington, showing that the visit was exclusively to Sri Lanka and therefore had a special importance. Ostensibly the purpose of the visit was to call for an immediate cessation of the war particularly because its humanitarian fall-out was unacceptable. But that message was a commonplace one, hardly requiring the despatch of a special envoy. I suspect that the real purpose of the visit was to impress on the Government’s mind that there was a real danger of Indian intervention because of pressure from Tamil Nadu.

Air drop

I am reminded of what happened on the day of the air-drop in 1987. On that morning the then US Ambassador sought an immediate meeting with the then Foreign Minister to convey a very urgent message from his government. The message consisted of two parts, the first of which was that in turning away the Indian flotilla carrying food for the Jaffna residents the Government had missed an excellent opportunity of defusing a dangerous situation. The second part of the message was that in the course of that day the Indian Government would be doing something that would be very upsetting for Sri Lanka. The US plea was that the Sri Lanka Government should not over-react in any way as that would make the situation much more dangerous.

The first impression given by that message was that the CIA had got secret information about the forthcoming air-drop and was alerting us to possible dangers in a friendly way. Retrospectively it seemed to me that the US Government was really conveying a message from the Indian government. A direct warning from the Indian Government would have been unacceptable. A warning through a friendly intermediary was acceptable. I suspect that in this case also the US acted as a friendly intermediary.

The third relevant development was the attempted assassination of the outgoing Pakistan High Commissioner, clearly indicating that Pakistani involvement in our ethnic problem had gone much deeper than most members of our public had imagined. It appears that both the outgoing and the incoming Pakistan High Commissioners have been closely connected with the Defence and Security establishments of Pakistan.

Then came the startling article by B. Raman, the former head of India’s intelligence service, RAW. It is necessary to quote some details from that article to show why its contents were startling. Raman quoted supposedly reliable Tamil sources to claim that 12 to 15 members of the Pakistan armed forces were stationed in Colombo to guide the SL security forces in their counterinsurgency operations. He claimed further that Pakistan’s intelligence service had always coveted a strong presence in Sri Lanka for several reasons. It would provide a window on South India where many of India’s nuclear and space establishments are located, it could serve as a base to promote Jihad terrorism in South India, and it could act as a counter to India’s increasing presence in Afghanistan.

Members of the public like myself cannot say to what extent any of that might be true. But there has clearly been a shift in Pakistan’s policy towards Sri Lanka. Earlier the policy was to help Sri Lanka over its ethnic problems, if necessary rushing military aid in its hour of need as happened after the Elephant Pass debacle in 2000, without getting too directly involved. The evident reason for that restraint was that a deep involvement of Pakistan in the ethnic problem could cause problems with India, and should India choose to intervene military in Sri Lanka, Pakistan would not be in a position to counter that intervention. It was a policy that was encapsulated in a brief admonition of former president Zia-Ul Haq. According to an entirely reliable source, Zia used to advise us repeatedly against trying to solve the ethnic problem in opposition to India, and he used to add, “If you do, you will sink into a bottomless pit.” That policy of helping Sri Lanka without getting too directly or deeply involved has evidently changed.

Primordial duty

It is necessary to insist, before proceeding any further, on one point. It is that nothing, nothing whatever, should preclude Sri Lanka getting aid from Pakistan, or any other country of its choosing, in putting down an internal rebellion. The very raison d’etre of a State is that it holds a monopoly of the legitimate means of violence. Consequently the State has the right, or perhaps it might more appropriately be called a primordial duty, to put down a rebellion if necessary with the help of a friendly foreign power. This is not something that can possibly be denied us by India or any other member of the international community.

However, common sense dictates that in exercising rights and duties we should be mindful of possible consequences. We can learn from the developments that led to the horror of 1987. In 1979 the Soviet Union brought off a communist coup in Afghanistan, and later invaded that country. It became clear from archival material released after the collapse of the Soviet Union that it was motivated by genuine anxieties about the possible spread of Islamic fundamentalism, which was expected sooner or later to threaten the stability of the Soviet’s Central Asian Islamic republics. Soviet control of Afghanistan was thought off as a pre-emptive measure. But outside the pro-Soviet communist world it was seen as an expression of an expansionist drive.

However, India as the foremost non-communist ally of the Soviet Union backed its Afghanistan adventure, while Pakistan and the US opposed it. In that situation it should have been obvious that any South Asian country getting close to the US would be viewed by India as its actual or potential enemy. The then Sri Lankan Government exercised its sovereign right in getting closer and closer to the US, and had to face the consequences in 1987. Today it may make excellent sense to get closer to Pakistan, but we have to think about possible consequences.

There is a great deal more to be said about the Pakistan connection from a Muslim standpoint, of which I am intensely conscious as I am a Muslim. But all that would not be relevant to the purposes of this article. Here I am only concerned with the developments that are pushing India to play an overtly active role in the peace process.

II

Indira Gandhi: “A local newspaper article quoted Indira Gandhi as having stated that what matters in international relations are interests, not principles, apparently in connection with the 1971 intervention…”

I will now argue that Sri Lanka can best secure itself by paying sufficient heed to the moral dimensions of the ethnic problem. Sri Lanka’s military power is negligible compared to that of India, and no one is going to fight India on Sri Lanka’s behalf. SL’s economic power is also comparatively negligible. In this situation we really have no alternative to trying to use moral power as the weapon to secure our legitimate interests.

This makes sense because moral power counts today in international relations far more than ever before in human history. The reasons for this is that practically the entire world is going through a revolutionary process because of a mighty force, namely the mighty force of the aspirations of the peoples of the world to a better life. I will not go into details about this revolutionary process. Instead, I will point to just a few details to show the efficacy of moral power in the contemporary world.

The two super-powers of the last century had enough military power to blow up the entire globe several times over by using just a fraction of their nuclear arsenals. Yet the US could not impose its will on Vietnam, nor could the Soviet Union do so in Afghanistan. It is arguable, though not really convincingly, that each super-power was constrained by fear of a nuclear riposte by the other side. But the US as the sole super-power could not impose its will on Iraq after the Gulf War. Nor is it able to impose its will after its latest aggression against Iraq. In fact the US aggression has been strengthening the Shias……. in Iraq, so that the bizarre outcome is that the world’s sole super-power is serving as the auxiliary of its enemy, Iran.

A strange and unexpected development in recent years has been the emergence of Latin American governments that show contempt for the US and much sympathy for Castro‘s Cuba. Some years ago such contumacious behaviour in America’s imperial backyard would have been countered by the despatch of the US marines to install brutal right-wing dictatorships. The will to do so seems to have got seriously eroded. This unexpected development seems to coincide with a sudden and precipitous decline in the international reputation of the US. It tends to be viewed nowadays, rightly or wrongly, as the world‘s outstanding pariah power, together with its ugly racist underling, Israel.

We seem, in fact, to be witnessing the demise of the American empire, which was foreseen some years ago in a brilliant book by Emmanuel Todd, the French political scientist who acquired fame as a futurologist by accurately forecasting the demise of the Soviet Union. My point in referring to that book is to suggest that to expect the demise of the American empire is not just the expression of a visceral anti-Americanism. In any case, the moral to be drawn for the purposes of this article from the declining power of the US is clear enough. The US holds in its hands the highest concentration of military power in history. The moral power asserting itself in international relations is nullifying that military power. This is consistent with a strange image in a play by one of the great analysts of political power, Shakespeare, “Pity like naked new-born babe/ Strides the blast.”

What is immediately relevant to the present problem of Sri Lanka is the question whether India pays heed to moral power in its relations with its neighbours. It is of course a complex question that cannot be properly addressed in this article. I will therefore take the solitary case of the triumphant use of military power by India against a neighbour, namely the military intervention in East Pakistan in 1971.

Some weeks ago a local newspaper article quoted Indira Gandhi as having stated that what matters in international relations are interests, not principles, apparently in connection with the 1971 intervention. It would appear, then, that intervention was an exercise in realpolitic in which only the regional power interests of India counted and not at all the suffering and aspirations of the East Pakistanis. However, it may be possible to serve one‘s interests while at the same time paying heed to moral power, and that certainly applies to the way India broke up Pakistan.

First of all the Pakistan Government put itself in the wrong by nullifying the democratic election victory of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman because it could not accept the idea of the central power in Pakistan being exercised by a leader and party based in East Pakistan. General Yahya Khan took power and the rebellion that broke in East Pakistan was put down with increasing brutality over the ensuing months. The international community came to hold the view that the problem was one of internal colonialism, the East Pakistanis being the colonised. It was a wrong view, I believe, but it was held widely and solidly.

The interesting point is that India did not leap quickly at the opportunity of breaking up Pakistan. Instead it waited almost a year, during which time it made huge propaganda capital out of the difficulties caused for itself by the vast influx of refugees from East Pakistan. By the time India intervened, international opinion was solidly on the side of the rebels and India, a fact shown by the celerity with which the breakaway state of Bangladesh got international recognition. India secured its interests as a regional power, but only after paying full heed to the moral power manifest in the international community.

The reader might accept my argument that moral power counts in relations far more than ever before, and further that it did count when India broke up Pakistan. But it does not necessarily follow that it counts in India’s relations with Sri Lanka, a small and weak country generally regarded as militarily indefensible against India and of no great political importance for the rest of the world consequent to the decline in importance of naval power. Therefore India can act against Sri Lanka without any moral constraints whatever. According to fairly widespread Sri Lankan perceptions, that precisely is how India has been behaving towards Sri Lanka. I cannot in this article provide an alternative reading of Indo-SL relations. Instead I will make some observations on the developments leading up to the air-drop of 1987 to show that more was involved than realpolitik.

The underlying issue was that of using famine to end a rebellion The Indian Government’s position was that the Jaffna people had been reduced to eating just one meal a day, people were expected to start dying of hunger before long, and as soon as that happened there would be an uproar in Tamil Nadu and the Government in Delhi would be put in an extremely difficult position. India’s legitimate interests therefore required that the SL Government give up its alleged strategy, or the Indian Government would find itself compelled to take pre-emptive action.

The question that has to be asked is why the Sri Lankan Government was not regarded as having the right to put down a purely internal rebellion by any means of its choosing, including the use of famine. It has been regarded as legitimate in warfare right down the millennia. For instance, in the late ‘sixties the Biafran rebellion in Nigeria was put down by the threat of famine, without any adverse reactions from the international community whatever. In the case of Sri Lanka the Vadamarachchi operation, which could conceivably have led to a military solution, was abandoned because of objections from India, a flotilla was despatched by India, the air-drop took place, the IPKF came in, and the Peace Accords uniquely favourable to India were concluded. As President Jayewardene declared the rest of the International community had abandoned Sri Lanka.

It might seem at first sight that the difference between the two cases was that there was nothing comparable to the Indian factor on Nigeria’s border. The crucial difference therefore was the exercise of brutal realpolitik by India. However, a plausible case can be made out to show that a moral power was motivating India, not a brutal realpolitik, … by shifting the focus from India as a whole to Tamil Nadu. There is the inescapable fact of ethnic community across the Palk Straits. It means that what happens to the Tamils in Sri Lanka leads ineluctably to a fall-out among the Tamils in Tamil Nadu. In 1983 Tamil Nadu and the rest of the world saw the ethnic majority in Sri Lanka as having engaged in genocidal racism against the Tamil minority. An attempt to defeat the LTTE through famine would have been seen in the same terms in Tamil Nadu, and the resultant restiveness there could have become dangerous. It becomes arguable that India’s legitimate interests set up a moral responsibility requiring the Delhi Government to take pre-emptive action. That was certainly the reason why the international community as a whole showed an indulgent attitude towards India over that was done against Sri Lanka in 1987.

III

At the time there was clearly a conflict between two sets of legitimate interests, rights and duties. The Sri Lankan State clearly had the obligation to militarily defeat the LTTE rebellion if it was feasible, as otherwise it would not be fulfilling the first condition of a State which is to hold a monopoly of the means of violence, the violence at the disposal of the State alone being regarded as legitimate. On the other had the Indian State had the obligation, equally clearly, of countering any restiveness in an ethnic group that could lead to threats against the territorial integrity and political unity of India. If indeed there was such a conflict, the question that has to be asked is why the international community so distinctly favoured the Indian side in 1987.

I believe that the answer is that the Sri Lankan Government of the time had a very poor image in terms of internationally accepted standards of morality. This will become clear if we consider the reason for the contrasting international reactions to the use of famine as a strategy by the Nigerian and Sri Lankan Governments. Nigeria benefited from a decision of the Organisation of African Unity in the early sixties to regard the existing frontiers between black African states as sacrosanct, even though they were arbitrarily drawn for the convenience of the former colonial masters. Dismantling any of them might lead to the disintegration of the whole of black Africa, causing death and suffering on an epic scale Ending a separatist rebellion through famine was acceptable as a lesser horror.

Perhaps more important is the fact that the behaviour of the central Nigerian Government towards the Biafrans was not all that morally reprehensible. The discrimination did not seem to be of an intolerable order. It was more a problem of the Biafrans, who were educationally and in other ways more advanced than other Nigerian ethnic groups, believing that their further advance was retarded by their membership of a backward Nigeria. There was nothing like the genocidal racist fury witnessed in Sri Lanka in 1983. Furthermore, in striking contrast with Sri Lanka, the holders of power in the central Nigerian Government had always been willing to try out various mixes of federalism to accommodate the extraordinary ethnic mix of Nigeria.

In contrast, Sri Lankan governments were widely seen as having subjected the minorities to systematic discrimination over a long period. The 1977 Government, instead of taking the corrective action that had been expected, resorted to State terrorism which rose to a genocidal crescendo in 1983. that Government, like its predecssors and unlike the Nigerian ones, was allergic to federalism, and even to any significant measure of devolution. The 1981 District Development Councils elections were blatantly rigged, and thereafter those Councils were made inoperative. The Government lost its democratic legitimacy by its infamous Referendum of 1982, and became notorious for its arrogant abuse of power. I can attest from first-hand experience that its handling of foreign relations was appalling. That was among the major reasons why, as President Jayewardene himself acknowledged, Sri Lanka came to be abandoned by the entire international community in 1987, and he had no option but to turn to India. It was the result of the functioning of moral power in international relations.

The usual explanation for our isolation was that the world respected the military and economic power of India, which could for instance offer a huge market while Sri Lanka’s is a negligible one, and so on. Therefore, it was argued, India and its instrument against Sri Lanka, the LTTE, could get away with murder, domination and aggression being excused as no more than understandable transgression. The explanation, in other words, was in terms of realpolitik with no weight whatever being given to the factor of moral power.

That explanation becomes very questionable when we look at the changing international image of the LTTE. It was once very positive, but it has been transmogrifying into a negative one while the images of successive Sri Lankan Governments were improving. Why? One reason is that successive Sri Lankan Governments have been for more in earnest about a peaceful solution than the LTTE. The peace processes initiated by Premadasa and Kumaratunge were unilaterally broken by the LTTE, and Ranil Wickremasinghe who bent over backward to be accommodative to the LTTE, was rewarded with a hard emasculating kick on the groin. It has been become more and more evident that the primary reason why there has been no significant movement towards a peaceful solution is that the LTTE wants Eelam or at the least a confederacy, which would be Eelam in all but name.

Other factors working against the LTTE are its abortion of democracy in the North, while it has been entrenched in the south, its policy of assassinating anyone who might be useful in promoting a peaceful solution. It is not necessary to draw up a full charge-sheet against the LTTE. The reactions of the international community speak loud and clear. More and more countries are banning the LTTE, and in recent weeks its members are being interrogated and even jailed in the US, Canada, and Australia, which would have been barely conceivable some time ago. It is clearly seen less and less as a liberation organisation and more and more as a terrorist one. The reason for this transmogrification surely has nothing to do with the deployment of military or economic power. It has everything to do with moral power.

I will now conclude with a few brief observations on a subject that really require in-depth treatment, namely the relation of moral power to the present phase of the ethnic problem. One aspect of the new phase is that there are so many visits to Delhi by crucially important Sri Lankan personages that the impression is given that the centre of gravity of our politics has shifted to Delhi. It is not surprising that Anura Bandaranaike asked India to stop interfering in our internal affairs. The other aspect is of course the war.

Sri Lanka’s international image is today comparatively far better than it was at the nadir of 1987, but it is still unsatisfactory. However, the LTTE’s image has become much worse, so that on balance we should be far less vulnerable to India. Unfortunately there has been serious retrogression on the ethnic problem under the present Government. Its position makes it practically impossible to reach a peaceful solution. The consequences of this fact can again make us dangerously vulnerable to India.

A plus point for the Government is that the responsibility for the war certainly lies with the LTTE, and not the Government. The former has been endlessly provocative since the Presidential election, because it has wanted a war to militarily establish the case for Eelam. The Government‘s refusal to fight could have come to be interpreted as meaning that the Government was conceding the case for Eelam by default. Another plus point is the splendid performance of the armed forces up to now. However, the probable outcome of further fighting will be a stalemate. The LTTE will not be able to militarily establish the case for Eelam, while the Government will not be able to militarily defeat the rebellion in a definitive way.

That statement will clearly dictate a power-sharing arrangement, that is a solution on the basis of federalism. But the government is allergic to federalism and insists on a unitary constitution. I will not here go into the reasons why the Government’s position is an untenable one. I am concerned with a fact, the fact that the Co-Chairs and the international community clearly believe that there is no danger that federalism will lead to a breakup, and that it provides the best option for a peaceful solution. That is why they got the two sides to agree to explore the possibility of a federal solution. If the Government’s position does not lead to a peaceful or a military solution, its behaviour will be seen as thoroughly immoral as it will lead to the holding back of economic development and more death and suffering for the people, while the holders of power thoroughly enjoy themselves on the benefits of whatever economic development that there might be.

The Government can also be morally vulnerable if there is a failure to establish a southern consensus. If the two major parties cannot come together to end a destructive, and self-desructive, civil war it means that the requisite degree of cohesion is not there to build a worthwhile nation-state in Sri Lanka. The defining characteristic of the nation-state is a sense of unity far greater than has been possible under any other state system, which is why it has proved to be so dynamic a phenomenon over the last two centuries. If the majority ethnic group itself is so hopelessly divided, the international community can come to believe that there simply is no basis for a united multi-ethnic state in Sri Lanka. It might as well break up in that case.

Finally, there is the humanitarian aspect. There have been steep increases in the number of extra-judicial killings and disappearances, and for too many cases in which fingers are pointed plausibly at the Government. I will not go into details as they have been much publicised in the media. In such cases it is counter-productive for the Government to resort to arguments that cannot be taken seriously even at the school debating society level. Also counter-productive is the appointment of so-called independent investigatory commodities. The President must take quick action to stop the killings and disappearances because they more than any thing else can cause moral outrage in the international community, and obviously be used to stir up feelings in Tamil Nadu that can catalyse dangerous developments.

According to the Sunday Leader of September 10 the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies has reported that there is so severe a food shortage in Jaffna that people can die of starvation unless the situation is corrected with in the next two weeks. Memories are stirred, and I feel uneasy. So must many other Sri Lankans. [island.lk]