A British attempt to rescue the Tigers: A response
Part I
by G. H. Peiris
Another Westminster Intervention in the Sri Lankan Conflict
The versions of what transpired at the recent meeting between
representatives of the House of Lords and the House of Commons and a
delegation of the ‘British Tamil Forum’ (BTF) as re****ted in the press
(including several websites that carry news on Sri Lanka), though varied
in content and focus, could be summarised as follows:
The meeting was chaired by Lord Malloch-Brown, the Minister of State for
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom. Responding to
the BTF submissions, Lord Malloch-Brown expressed concern on both the
continuing prosecution by the Sri Lanka government of the war against
the LTTE as well as what he perceived as excessive violation of human
rights in Sri Lanka. While remaining non-committal on imprecations for
imposing trade and travel sanctions and the curtailment of aid to Sri
Lanka made by Suren Surendiran (a spokesmen for the BTF) and Gajan
Ponnambalam (a Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian of Sri Lanka),
Malloch-Brown reiterated his view that there could be no military
solution to the "problem" (which problem his lord****p had in mind was
not made clear), that there should be an all out effort by the
international community to persuade the government to resume
negotiations, and that Sri Lanka must seek a political solution
involving devolution of power to the Tamil areas of the country.
Further, he pledged sup****t to the demand being made by Louise Arbour
and several other officers of the UN and by certain leaders of the EU
for greater intervention of the world body in Sri Lanka for protection
of human rights. A contrasting stance was adopted by Lord Naseby (former
Conservative Party MP) who, according to Tamilnet, "…denounced the BTF
and its views". Lord Malloch-Brown himself expressed reservations on the
parallels which the BTF delegation had attempted to draw between Kosovo
and Sri Lanka.
The statements attributed to Lord Malloch-Brown even in the re****ts
carried by pro-LTTE publications cannot, in respect of their substance,
be construed as representing a significant change in the stance of the
British government vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan conflict. Examined
individually, they are no more than repetitions of the same superficial
and generalised observations that have been repeatedly made throughout
the past few months by spokespersons of certain government and
non-government ‘western powers’ including their Colombo-based
representatives and lackeys. Likewise the vehemence discernible in the
tone of what was allegedly said by his lord****p could be understood in
the context of the fact that he is known to be exceptionally
self-opinionated. For instance, a ‘Profile’ published by London’s
prestigious Sunday Times (18 November 2007) stated: "Malloch-Brown’s
worst enemy is his own big mouth. He lost little time after his
appointment to brag of his reputation", and attributed to him the claim:
"From Colin Powell to Condi Rice all the way through to Richard
Holbrooke or Madeleine Albright, across that massive swathe of American
foreign policy, I would bet you a drink that you would find that I am
their favourite multi-nationalist Brit". Thus, one cannot rule out the
possibility of his having performed true to form at the meeting with the
BTF.
Will this vastly experienced, urbane, "multi-nationalist Brit" ever
understand that devolution of power to the "Tamil areas" (presumably,
the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka) cannot, by any stretch of
imagination, bestow upon the Tamil community of the country greater
powers of democratic governance than they exercise at present when more
than half of that community live outside the north-east, and as long as
"the most powerful terrorist outfit in the world" (so described by
intelligence services of two major western powers) led by a ruthless
megalomaniac whose record of heroics include the extermination of almost
all political leaders of his own community continues to retain the
capacity to enslave through terror and force of arms the remaining
segment of that community and other inhabitants of that part of the
country? Will Malloch-Brown and others of similar persuasion ever bother
to study the Sri Lankan conflict adequately to appreciate the basic fact
that it was not the government of Sri Lanka that abandoned the peace
initiatives of 2002 and that what the government formally discarded in
December 2007 was literally a non-existent ceasefire? When will these
great champions of human rights appreciate that serious violations of
human rights (killing of non-combatants, abductions, torture,
conscription of children for war, ethnic cleansing) constitute nothing
other than the essence of Tiger terror; that these occur almost entirely
in parts of the country (north-east and Greater Colombo) where the
democratically elected government constantly faces the challenge of
terrorism; that, even in such areas, there has been a remarkable
lowering of the incidence of human rights abuses where the security
forces of the government has achieved success in vitiating that
challenge; and, above all, that the primary objective of the
government’s military offensives has all along been the restoration of
democratic governance in Sri Lanka?
It is not possible in this brief response to the re****ts on the British
legislators’ meeting with the BTF to embark upon a comprehensive
discussion on the misunderstandings displayed by some among the former
and the deliberate distortions engaged in by those of the latter. What
could be done, however, is to recapitulate the vicissitudes of the Sri
Lankan conflict witnessed since the inception of the presidential tenure
of Mahinda Rajapaksa, and thus attempt to dispel the myth that it was
his government that abandoned the so-called ‘peace efforts’ launched in
early 2002 and opted for a military strategy of ending the conflict.
LTTE Challenge to the New President
At the time leading up to the presidential election of November 2005,
candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa, while declaring commitment to a search for
an ‘honourable peace’, pledged to protect the unitary nature of the Sri
Lankan state. He maintained that the peace efforts must involve
broad-based participation and not be confined to bilateral negotiations
between the government and the LTTE, and rejected both the LTTE claim of
being the sole representative of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, as well as the
notion of an ‘exclusive Tamil homeland’ comprising the country's
Northern and Eastern provinces. On prominent controversies of that time,
Rajapaksa stood opposed to both the Norway-authored and LTTE-approved
blueprint for an ‘Interim Self-Government Authority’ (ISGA) for the
‘north-east’, as well as President Kumaratunga’s proposals for the
establishment of a ‘Post-Tsunami Operations Management Structure’
(P-TOMS), on the grounds that their implementation would bestow official
recognition and formal powers of government on the LTTE to the negation
of the tenets of democracy. On the frequently violated terms of the
government-LTTE ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ of February 2002,
Rajapaksa stressed the need to re-negotiate the terms of that agreement.
These commitments, while conforming to the policy stances that had been
advocated all along by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the
Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) — the two parties with which Rajapaksa had
entered into electoral agreements at the commencement of his campaign
for the presidency — deviated in many respects from those advocated by
President Kumaratunga, the leader of his own party.
There is a widespread belief in Sri Lanka that the LTTE leader,
Prabhakaran, contributed to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory at the
presidential election by enforcing a boycott of the poll in the north
and parts of the east. In the aftermath of the election, he began to
test the resolve of the new president by articulating with intensifying
vehemence the earlier LTTE demands for government intervention in
disarming the rebel group led by Karuna, and for greater control over
post-Tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction in the north-east. The
LTTE leader****p also persisted with its efforts at both extending its
military control over parts of the Eastern Province as well as provoking
the security forces into retaliatory acts of violence. Instigating
communal clashes in areas of mixed ethnicity, which it believed was a
distinct possibility under the new regime in which the JVP and the JHU
stood in high profile, also became part and parcel of the Tiger strategy.
In these latter efforts the LTTE came perilously close to success
through a sequence of events the origins of which could be traced back
to the immediate aftermath of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement when it
established a network of military bases in the Sampur-Muttur area south
of the Trincomalee Bay, from which it launched occasional attacks on
military and civilian targets. After March 2004 these bases were also
used for its anti-Karuna offensives. Thus, in accordance with the
strategy adopted by the LTTE for its onslaught against the new regime,
they escalated their levels of violence in the Trincomalee area both by
frequent bomb attacks on security forces personnel as well as by killing
Karuna group activists. These evoked counterattacks both by the armed
forces of the government as well as by the Karuna group. The violence
that ensued included a bomb explosion by the LTTE at a crowded market on
April 12 at which the majority of victims were Sinhalese civilians and a
three-day backlash of homicide, arson and looting in various parts of
the town and its suburbs by Sinhalese mobs consisting mainly of the
lumpen elements of the town and, allegedly, of military personnel in
mufti which caused the death of 20 civilians — 11 Tamils, seven
Sinhalese and two Muslims. Over this spell the LTTE also added to its
score of homicide a further 16 personnel of the army and the police.
Meanwhile the LTTE extended its offensive to other parts of the country.
In what constituted a major attack on the very heart of the country’s
security establishment, a suicide bomber blew herself up within the
precincts of the army headquarters in Colombo on 25 April 2006 in an
attempt to assassinate (and causing near-fatal injury to) the Army
Commander General Sarath Fonseka. A month later, a Tiger claymore-bomb
attack in a remote poverty-stricken area of the North-Central Province
resulted in the wholesale massacre of a bus-load of 64 villagers — many
of them, women and children. Again, on 19 June, there was an abortive
attempt at an attack on ****ps berthed in Colombo harbour which, had it
succeeded, would have caused large-scale damage to the Sri Lankan
economy. A week later, Lt. General Parami Kulatunga, the Deputy Chief of
Staff of the army, was assassinated by a suicide bomber.
The intensification of Tiger belligerence in the early months of the new
regime should be understood in the context of the remarkable success
President Rajapaksa achieved in consolidating his grip over the politics
of Sri Lanka’s ‘South’. Though elected to office with a wafer-thin
majority, in the first few months of his presidential tenure he
succeeded in a way that none of his predecessors had done in achieving a
higher level of intra- and inter-party consensus for his approach to the
secessionist threat. Within his own party he finessed Kumaratunga in a
series of manoeuvres that ended in his own unanimous appointment as
president of the PA. The message he repeatedly conveyed to the people
was that he remains unswerving in his commitment to the ‘Mahinda
Chintanaya’ (ideology) as proclaimed in his election manifesto. It
appeared to carry sufficient weight to preserve (despite increasing
stresses and strains) the alliance with the JVP and the JHU, and to
attract into the ranks of the government the CWC (plantation Tamils) and
the SLMC (Muslims, mainly of the ‘south-east’) both of which had
sup****ted Wickremesinghe at the presidential election. Indeed, as
matters stood up to about April 2006, within the political mainstreams,
it was only from the United National Party (UNP) reeling from the
effects of successive electoral defeats, and the Tamil National Alliance
(TNA) the LTTE proxies in parliament, that the president faced
perfunctory and petulant opposition which, of course, he could afford to
ignore. Apart from this ‘internal’ consolidation, Rajapaksa appeared to
be gaining increasing endorsement and sup****t from those of the
‘international community’ proactive in Sri Lankan affairs, who at the
time of the presidential election had left hardly any room to doubt that
Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP was the man they preferred. On 10 April
2006 the new Conservative Party government of Canada added the LTTE to
its list of 38 outlawed terrorist organisations, and followed the ban
with raids on the offices of the ‘World Tamil Movement’ (an LTTE ‘front’
outfit) in Montreal, Scarborough and Toronto. About a month later the
European Union adopted a resolution recommending the conscription of the
LTTE in its member countries. Meanwhile, in the United States, the FBI
foiled a large-scale clandestine transaction of arms attempted on behalf
of the LTTE, arresting and incarcerating several Tiger agents involved
in the deal.
Tiger Offensive and Retaliatory Action
President Rajapaksa’s progress served as a constant reminder of the
tactical blunder of the LTTE demigod Prabhakaran who, by preventing the
voters of the north and parts of the east from participating at the
presidential polls, is likely to have contributed to Rajapaksa’s
victory. The LTTE strategy, it may be recalled, was based upon the
premise that Wickremesinghe, hailed internationally as the ‘peace
candidate’, if elected, would place in serious jeopardy the secessionist
cause with his offer of federalism ("Who on earth asked for
federalism?", as the LTTE theoretician Balasingham was to soon argue),
and thus make it difficult to sustain its ‘liberation struggle’. Its
expectation was that Rajapaksa, if elected, will jettison the existing
ceasefire agreement and evict the "White Tigers" (Norwegians) from their
role of facilitator of the peace efforts. This, the LTTE leader****p
believed, would pave the way for a resumption of the military campaign
in earnest, backed by vastly enhanced international sympathy and sup****t
for their cause. All indications up to this time, however, were that
President Rajapaksa’s performance would blast that hope. He and his
allies remained conscious that nothing could be gained by negotiating
with the Tigers. But they were equally aware that everything could be
lost by anything less than a total commitment to the pursuit of peace
through negotiation.
Part II tomorrow
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For genuine Situation Re****t visit:
http://www.nationalsecurity.lk
http://www.defence.lk/
http://www.army.lk/index1.php
http://www.nmatnet.com/
http://www.sinhalaya.info/index-EN.php
Worth to look following to see how brutal Tamil Tiger Terrorists are
Child Soldiers of LTTE Tamil Tiger Terrorists in Sri Lanka
http://www.spur.asn.au/childwar.htm
Ethnic Cleansing in Sri Lanka
http://www.spur.asn.au/ethnic_cleansing_in_sri_lanka.htm
LTTE TAMIL TIGER ATROCITIES
http://www.spur.asn.au/ltteatrp.htm
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