Monday, 28 May 2018

India and Sri Lanka’s internal conflict Q & A: Part 3 Did international mediation prolong the agony of war?


Col R Hariharan

[This is part 3 of the 9-part series of notes used in a telephone interview  with a civil society social group, which aims to “promote pathways for solving the ethnic issue under a federal solution” in Sri Lanka and to address human rights violations committed during the ethnic conflict by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. The interview was conducted in January 2017, its contents remain still valid.]

Q3: Mr. Menon then stated, “The strategist Edward Luttwak argues that there are situations in which one should give war a chance. Was Sri Lanka one of them, where peace building efforts and international mediation only prolonged and worsened the agony?” Menon asks and concludes by saying: “These are difficult counterfactuals that go against the grain of liberal thinking, but they do seem appropriate to the Sri Lankan case.” Do you believe Sri Lanka was a case where international mediation only prolonged and worsened the agony?

I agree with Mr Shivshankar Menon’s reasoning about international mediation. Norwegian-led mediation failed because it was idealistic and lacked pragmatism to succeed in the South Asian social environment. Even otherwise, talks between warring sides merely on the premise that it was better to talk peace than go to war does not work, except to cool down the overheated environment so that both sides are ready, optimistically, to talk peace. But usually it does not follow the script and they go for another round of war.

In Sri Lanka, the conflict that preceded the peace talks had led to a lot of bloodletting by both sides and the raw emotions and trauma kindled by it had not healed the wounds. The traumatic experience could not be papered over by the financial incentives offered by the backers to coolly sit across the table to talk peace. A neutral force to separate the two adversaries to ensure both sides comply with the ceasefire terms was not there. On the one side, we had Sri Lanka government, an accountable entity, which followed international norms of conduct. On the other side, the LTTE an insurgent group which was a law unto itself, fighting the state to destroy it, wanted to be treated as equal, which it was not.

If only the LTTE had deposited their arms to a neutral custodian who guaranteed their security, perhaps the insurgent group might have behaved differently. This has been tried in many nations including Indonesia, India and Nepal with moderate success. In Nepal and Nagaland in India, chances for peace increased as the insurgent groups agreed to talk peace even without a neutral force. Without that such a structural framework the 2002 peace move was bound to fail because the LTTE behaved like a loose cannon, violating the ceasefire with impunity. 

This was made easy as the government in “cohabitation” mode was paralysed in taking the peace talks forward due to the cold war between the President Chandrika and the Prime Minister Wickremesinghe. This emboldened the LTTE to take full advantage of the situation to import arms to build its conventional military capability and win at propaganda war, cocking a snoot at the frustrated government, effectively sidelining the Norwegian peace mission.

Q4: India and Sri Lanka also signed an agreement that brought the Indian Peacekeeping Forces into Sri Lanka to accept the surrender of arms by Tamil militants as part of a general cease fire. 

Prabhakaran had reportedly stated that he was “not keen to give up all [the LTTE’s] weapons but hand over some and see the Accord being implemented.” To your knowledge, was this true? And if so, was this an unreasonable demand on the part of Prabhakaran to agree to give up some of the weapons and then gradually give up more of the weapons as parts of the Accord are implemented?

Actually, I never believed Prabhakaran. Whatever he said about his intentions to see the Accord in action, I don’t think he would have surrendered the arms. Even my contacts in the LTTE told me so and they were unhappy about it as they thought the Tamil Tigers should not fight India. Anyone who had dealt with Prabhakaran would tell you that he would never give up his dream of creating an Independent Eelam. 

His aim was to establish himself as the sole arbiter to liberate Tamils; so he never accepted India or Sri Lanka equating LTTE along with PLOTE, TELO and EPRLF. He firmly believed it was his destiny to lead the Tamils’ fight for independence and never factored any peaceful method that fell short of independence.

Premadasa, who gave the LTTE a lease of life by arming it against the IPKF, ensured the IPKF was packed off from island and ignored the LTTE’s slaughter of hundreds of policemen, could not pressurize the LTTE to talk peace. Ultimately, the LTTE killed him to have its way because he was the President of Sri Lanka, just as they killed Rajiv Gandhi. These killings showed the true nature of Prabhakaran’s leadership.  

The LTTE accepted Norwegian peace proposal only after Norway arm-twisted Sri Lanka to accept LTTE as the sole representative of Tamils at the talks. So I consider any talk of LTTE gradually giving up arms to ensure the Accord is at best a joke, though in reality it was a lot of hogwash. (To be continued)


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