Push Back: Sri Lanka's Dance with Global Governance - Hardcover

Judith Large

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 178360655X ISBN 13: 9781783606559

Publisher: Zed Books, 2016

Synopsis

In 2009, after decades of conflict, the Sri Lankan government proclaimed the decisive defeat of the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Elam. Subsequently, the state proved resistant to attempts by the UN and other international bodies to promote post-war reconciliation or reform.

In this incisive new work, Judith Large investigates the ways in which the Rajapaksa government was able to subvert international diplomatic efforts, as well as exploring the wider context of rising Sinhalese nationalism, the attendant growth of discrimination against minorities, and efforts by both the diaspora and citizens within Sri Lanka to work towards a positive peace.

Push Back is vital reading not only for those interested in Sri Lanka, but also for those concerned about the wider implications of the conflict for human rights, peace-making, and geopolitics.

About this title

About the Author

Judith Large is a senior research fellow at the Conflict Analysis Research Centre at the University of Kent. She has over twenty-five years experience in international conflict analysis, mediation and peace building, ranging from work with civic groups and national governments to UN agencies including the UNHCR, UNDP, BCPR, WHO, and others.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Push Back

Sri Lanka's Dance with Global Governance

By Judith Large

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2016 Judith Large
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-655-9

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Abbreviations, 
Timeline of Sri Lankan history, 
Foreword, 
Map of Sri Lanka, 
Introduction: reflections on 'optics' – Sri Lanka and dilemmas in the study of violence and global governance, 
1 War's end and competing models for recovery, 
2 Executive presidency and the unitary state, 
3 Non-interference Sri Lankan style, 
4 The outsiders, 
5 Majoritarianism or divide and rule, 
6 Home-grown solutions and the quest for accountability, 
7 Small state in a large system, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

War's end and competing models for recovery

Peace without unity, unity without reconciliation, and reconciliation without accountability. (Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu)

The way the war ended cast a legacy on its aftermath, and two models of recovery were advocated by those in power as a means to peace: namely, the Singapore model of economic development to make Sri Lanka the Wonder of Asia, and notions of reconciliation, as defined in government circles. The residual dilemma was the clash between these dominant approaches and the actual underlying causes of the war.

War to peace transitions may be understood through the prisms of resistance, accountability and that elusive term 'governance'. Resistance because civil war and its ending entail the reconfiguration of power relations and friction among and between societal actors; accountability because a population and its leaders need to come to terms in some way with the effects of violence and construct a viable narrative on which to begin again; and 'governance' in the sense of levels of norms and mechanisms to enable the renewed functioning of a given society. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fought for over three decades in Sri Lanka, a bitter armed struggle in which ceasefires failed to hold and a degree of territorial control was achieved and then lost. This civil war arose from historical grievances over language rights, issues of land, higher education, employment and the socio-political status of the minority Tamil community.

War's end

In the aftershock of the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, a mixture of euphoria, anxiety and profound uncertainty seemed to grip the capital Colombo. The city was a grey and concrete labyrinth of military fortification: watchtowers, roadblocks, checkpoints, razor wire, enforced curfew and armed patrols. International media had reported for months about the northern assault: a frantic situation in the Vanni including entrapment and deprivation and attacks on thousands of civilians. In February, an interview with Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa aired on BBC appeared to condone attacks on hospitals if they were outside the official no-fire zone (Crawford 2009). Satellite imagery abounded of the full pincer effect of the assault, as well as rumours of additional satellite imagery held by US intelligence. What had been fever-pitch activity in embassy and mission corridors to find a ceasefire or halt to hostilities gave way to diplomatic numbness, while citizens were encouraged to celebrate a final victory over terrorism.

For over a quarter of a century, the veracity of the Tamil–Sinhala conflict had attracted considerable international attention and intervention attempts, from the Government of India (at considerable cost, with the related assassination of Rajiv Ghandi) to numerous relief and development NGOs dedicated to peace making, a process of Norwegian-brokered talks and the international donor community backing economic incentive packages, particularly in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. As the Petrie report would later observe, the UN's political engagement in Sri Lanka during the period from 2007 to the end of the conflict in May 2009 was consistently secondary to the efforts of other external actors (UN 2012). These included countries in the region, primarily India and China. Norway sponsored the Ceasefire Agreement, with the EU, Japan and the US joining a Co-Chair Group of States to coordinate financial contributions to Sri Lanka in support of the peace process. The UN was not invited to be a member of the Co-Chair Group.

The final determined government offensive of the war was launched in late 2008. International agencies were forced by official directive to relocate from the Vanni in September 2008, a time when hundreds of thousands were being displaced within this increasingly dangerous conflict zone (IDMC 2009). By January 2009, an editorial in The Economist was asking 'Where have all the people gone?' in reference to the deserted streets and destroyed buildings in Kilinochchi, once the showcase de facto capital city of the declared Tamil Eelam (The Economist 2009). The LTTE had lost the city, with thousands of families displaced into the district around Mullaitivu. A final offensive was under way under the rubric of counter-terrorism with a rejection of perceived half-way measures and compromise as per the Norwegian brokered (aborted) peace initiative. There was a total rejection of calls for a ceasefire as the final battle loomed in 2009. Rajapaksa was quoted as saying: 'They are trying to preach to us about civilians. I tell them to go and see what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan' (Revise 2009). It was widely reported that a quarter of a million civilians were trapped in a shrinking area of land, caught in the crossfire and suffering casualties as well. Rumours flew of a massacre of people who were not themselves combatants and had no exit possibility, later confirmed in the wake of the final battle (Weiss 2012).

In fact, Norwegian facilitation (Sorbo et al. 2011) had been accepted and tried not long after the advent of the US-led narrative on 'the war on terror', described in detail by Kleinfeld in 2003. Kleinfeld documents how both the People's Alliance Government and the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam used the '9/11' lexicon 'associated with the U.S. attacks and early global response to brand their adversary as terrorist, to recode political and conflict narratives in September eleventh terms, and to indicate the appropriate scale and scope of the war' (Kleinfeld 2003). The future Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a US citizen, was living in California at the time of the Bush administration measures that echoed 'with us or against us' as an uncompromising stance (Montlake 2009). His official governmental website invoked geo-political analogies when referring to subsequent United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) war crimes investigations, stating that the:

Sri Lankan government should closely study the Iraq case. It should be a priority. The Iraq case presents an excellent opportunity to highlight the double standards adopted by those threatening to haul Sri Lanka up before an international war crimes tribunal on the basis that the local process lacked credibility. (MoD Sri Lanka 2014)

It was Gotabaya who warned ambassadors, news agencies and international NGOs of dire consequences if they were 'partisan' in their concern for the LTTE or made comments in support of their cause during the military ground offensive. As he singled out BBC journalists and the Swiss and German ambassadors for particular criticism, a joint statement was issued by five leading Sri Lankan bishops calling on both sides at war in the Vanni to keep civilians safe from the line of fire and calling on the government to invite the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and independent Tamil leaders to monitor and manage relief in the war zone. When the President met with Manmohan Singh in New Delhi in November 2008, the Indian Premier also called for restraint and presented a copy of a unanimous resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu state legislative assembly that called for an immediate ceasefire and resumption of negotiations (trans Currents 2008; Kelegama 2013).

Just seven years earlier it had been suggested that Sri Lanka had come 'to serve as a laboratory and showcase for liberal peace building' (Höglund and Orjuela 2012: 94) when the country embarked on a path of third party facilitation to resolve the long-standing conflict with the LTTE. Now the picture changed to one of triumphant military victory, as video footage released on 18 May 2009 showed the bloodied body of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, after a violent all-out attack by the Sri Lankan military under the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa (Saddlesmania 2009). Public statements from Colombo rejected notions from Western governments at the time that clemency should have been shown; moreover, civilian deaths were denied and Western interference decried, as a 'Look East' policy was revived with pride and defiance. According to UN documentation, approximately 40,000 civilians had been killed in the first five months of 2009, with an estimated 300,000 displaced in the Northern Province (UN 2011a). Most internally displaced persons (IDPs) were held at the Manik Farm, the government IDP centre located between Vavuniya and Mannar districts. It was not long before 'credible allegations' associated with the final stages of the war surfaced in a way that would only loom and grow for the next five years. The Panel of Experts mandated by the Secretary-General reported that 'between September 2008 and 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Army advanced its military campaign into the Vanni using large-scale and widespread shelling, causing large numbers of civilian deaths. This campaign constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni' (UN 2011b). This was in stark contrast to the government's framing of operations as a humanitarian rescue operation. Sri Lanka is party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (but not to additional protocols) and saw accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1997. But Mahinda Rajapaksa signalled that this 'small island state, 270 miles long and 150 wide as the crow flies' (Tambiah 1986), once a newly independent democracy with pride in a democratic constitution and parliamentary system, would stand up to liberal global norms and that his government alone knew what was best for its people – for all its people. At least its ruling elite did so, defiant in triumphalism, rejecting any question of means and ends and being particularly angered by press reports of diaspora Tamil protests across the world during the final days of what the UN Independent Review Panel would later refer to as 'carnage'. The same panel found that the LTTE was also guilty of severe human rights violations against civilians in the course of combat.

War's end, while a relief for many citizens, particularly in the South (where people had suffered decades of uncertainty and fear), left many minority communities in an initial state of shock. Its coverage was fraught with competing narratives and depictions. Was it heroic triumph or brutal bloodbath? 'We have liberated the whole country from LTTE terrorism,' Rajapaksa declared, addressing parliament in the Tamil language and stressing that the war 'was not waged against the Tamil people' (Weaver and Chamberlain 2009). To general Sinhalese euphoria in the South, a national holiday was proclaimed and the victory celebrations began. Meanwhile, a chasm of desperate proportions loomed between southern experience and what was happening in the North and East of the country. Overseas Tamil diaspora groups mourned and in many cases protested, as in London, where frantic demonstrations led to violence outside the Houses of Parliament. Speculation resumed on 'what next' for post-war recovery.

An article in the Indian Defence Review concluded that in the final analysis the Rajapaksa model was based on a military precept and not a political one: 'terrorism has to be wiped out militarily and cannot be tackled politically. That's the basic premise of the Rajapakse Model.' The writer went further to argue that the first principle in the Rajapaksa model was political will and 'the second principle of Rajapakse's "how to fight a war and win it" is telling the international community to go to hell', as the British and French foreign ministers, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, found out during their visit. They were cold-shouldered for suggesting that Sri Lanka should halt the war and negotiate with the LTTE (Shashikumar 2009). As late as five years later Mohammad Ali Babakhel was widely quoted from an article published in a national Pakistani newspaper saying that Sri Lankan forces' all-out onslaught against the Tamil Tigers can be replicated in Pakistan against the Islamist rebels. 'The Sri Lankan strategy shows that with military might and popular support the state can defeat insurgents,' Babakhel said in his opinion piece. 'If the [Sri Lankan] model cannot be replicated, at least it can be a source of inspiration [for Pakistan]' (Daily Mirror 2014). Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi commended Sri Lanka on its success in defeating terrorism and reiterated China's support for maintaining Sri Lankan independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty – and also for supporting 'One China' with regard to Taiwan and Tibet (Asian Tribune 2009).

Winning the war and winning the peace: constitutional reform and devolution

There was, however, some residual hope for the political following the military, and the stated national agenda in the immediate post-war period seemed promising. For many observers, 'the defeat of the LTTE secessionist insurgency in 2009 provided the government with an unprecedented opportunity to move in the direction of ethnic reconciliation, constitutional reform for greater democratization, and enhanced regional autonomy for ethnic minorities' (Uyangoda 2011a). The President stated: 'Our intention was to save the Tamil people from the cruel grip of the LTTE. We all must now live as equals in this free country ... we must find a homegrown solution to this conflict. That solution should be acceptable to all the communities' (Weaver and Chamberlain 2009). There was some hope that, at a minimum, a demoralised Tamil population would be offered something in the form of a '13th plus', a reference to a constitutional amendment intended to devolve power to provincial councils. This measure was introduced to create provincial councils as a follow-up action to the Indo–Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987 in order to devolve powers to the Tamil majority North and East (Senadhira 2013).

Now Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasized the acute need to address the resettlement of IDPs, and urged the government to undertake speedy rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Singh underlined the need for meaningful devolution, based on the thirteenth amendment that would create the necessary conditions for lasting political settlement. It was widely reported that Sri Lanka had given assurances to India during talks between Rajapaksa and Manmohan Singh (and subsequently to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon) that the government would go beyond the thirteenth amendment to devolve substantial powers to Tamil majority areas. Rajapaksa announced that his government was committed to a political solution. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), as the largest political group representing the Sri Lankan Tamil community, dropped its demand for a separate state and advocated for dialogue and meaningful federal solutions. Supporters of the government encouraged it to take steps towards reconciliation and the rebuilding of trust between Sri Lanka's three major ethnic communities: Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. There were also calls for the government to investigate the allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by both sides in the final stages of the war and to establish at least some degree of accountability.

In the course of the thirty-year protracted war, a negotiated settlement had been continuously pursued and pushed by interlocutors and the donor community. 'Reconciliation' became a loaded term, just as the word 'federalism' was so highly charged that it became almost taboo. The resumption of the war had 'made reconciliation synonymous with defeatism in the majority psyche, and an elusive goal for the minority' (Thaheer et al. 2013). Post-victory, the Sri Lankan government would regard reconciliation as almost synonymous with reconstruction and the maintenance of stability. And the first priority was to consolidate the regime. Rajapaksa called for presidential elections in November 2009, some two years ahead of schedule, in order to secure an indisputable majority and capitalise on his post-war popularity. Ironically, his main challenger was former colleague and General Sarath Fonseka, who campaigned on a platform of restoration of democratic rights, polling well among Tamil and Muslim voters. Rumours flew when presidential candidate Fonseka was routed in his attempts at political opposition in 2010, then imprisoned after claims that he held evidence of war crimes and was prepared to go public. It was increasingly clear that the President would not look backwards but instead would focus on a march forwards that was to have no detractors. His emphasis was on reconstruction and infrastructure development as the path to the future for an economically vibrant Sri Lanka, an 'Emerging Wonder of Asia'. Then, in an interview for Indian television, Defence Secretary Gotabaya resoundingly refuted any prospect of a political solution:

Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa's comments, made in the course of an interview to Headlines Today television, reveal a troubling contempt for the Tamil minority. He has trashed 'the political solution talk,' asserting, among other things, that it was 'simply irrelevant' because 'we have ended this terrorism in Sri Lanka, making the egregious assertion that when the13th Amendment was being drafted, 'the government of Sri Lanka was not involved.' (The Hindu 2011)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Push Back by Judith Large. Copyright © 2016 Judith Large. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 178360655X
• ISBN 13: 9781783606559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304