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| Sunday, 18 September 2005 |
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President sets tone at UN : Govt gets tough on LTTE by Ranga Jayasuriya The government's new tough line on the LTTE is a policy born out of the failure of the previous one, i.e. the appeasement of the Tigers to see them give up terrorism. When President Chandrika Kumaratunga urged the United Nations to pass sanctions on terrorists and their front organisations, she was reasserting this new strategy, which had already been made clear by the Peace Secretariat Chief, Dr. Jayanatha Dhanapala who complained that the "root of appeasement" had not worked and Minister Anura Bandaranaike who urged India to tell the world that "this (LTTE) is a terrorist group". President's speech The President's speech was also a pointer to the failure of the "carrot and more carrot approach" of the international community and an admission of the futility of the government's strategy of the indulgence of the Tigers. "As part of the peace process, successive Governments have given the LTTE all facilities as a party to negotiations, including access to foreign entities and Governments, at times using the good offices of the facilitators - the Norwegian Government, who have made considerable efforts to move the process forward under difficult circumstances". Facilitators "However, this process of engagement and accommodation does not seem to have persuaded this group to move away from terrorism, as is evidenced by their recent killing of my Foreign Minister, their continued recruitment of child soldiers and their killings of political rivals". Exposing the LTTE terrorism was a priority of the foreign policy of the Kumaratunga Administration since it came to office in 1994, which indeed made a dramatic turnaround of the image of the Sri Lankan government and saw a number of Western nations banning the Tigers, thanks to international diplomacy by the able Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. One reason which drew the LTTE to the negotiations table was aggressive global campaign by the government which threatened the existence of the LTTE's global network which is indeed the lifeline of the LTTE. The Wickremesinghe Administration took a U turn on this aggressive anti-LTTE campaign of its predecessor after it revived the peace process, consolidated by the Ceasefire Agreement. The good intentions of the then government was that this would help the Tigers to transform from terrorism to democracy. The LTTE was provided with numerous incentives, including opportunity for interaction with the international community. Jet dashing We saw LTTE leaders jet dashing all over Western Europe and diplomats lining up to meet LTTE Political Commissar S.P.Thamilselvan in Kilinochchi. But, the strategy of engagement and accommodation of the LTTE is doomed to be a failure. And opportunities for greater international access were utilized by the Tigers to bolster their campaign for legitimacy and recognition against the sovereignty of the Sri Lankan State. Killing Understandably, the killing of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was the focal point which forced the government to a reassessment on its strategy, even though the writing was on the wall since long ago about the futility of the indulgence of the Tigers. The number of non-LTTE Tamil political activists and military intelligence operatives gunned down by the LTTE are ample evidence of the total lack of commitment on the part of the LTTE to give up terrorism. Such a mind-set in the LTTE ranks could be understood, given the fact that the Sun God has silenced all his opponents through the barrel of the gun and not through political discourse. Thereby he hijacked what would otherwise be a legitimate resistance of Tamils against majoritarian policies and brought it to the extremes of butchery unseen in the history of Sri Lanka, perhaps with the exception of Premadasa-Ranjan Wijeratne era. In a frank assessment, one would find that what helped the LTTE to take an upper hand over the other militant organisations was its use of outright terror. No other Tamil militant group was ever engaged in massacres of border villagers, monks and pilgrims and bombing public places. (It will be interesting research topic as to whether the Tamil polity was attracted by the ruthlessness of the Tigers in the pursuit of its goal) Ruthlessness If it is the ruthlessness that fascinated the Tamil polity, an equally ruthless response was to come from the Sri Lankan State which, after all, has a legitimate right to protect its territorial integrity. It was a former militant and EPRLF heavyweight, Sridharan who recently said that the Tamil liberation struggle ended in 1987. What followed since was terrorism. All that is history. And mistakes of history should not be repeated. Both the Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe Administrations believed that the interaction between the LTTE and international community would compel the Tigers to act in a responsible manner and be a deterrent to war. Carrot and carrot But, as the Peace Secretariat Chief Jayantha Dhanapala complained last week at a congressional forum on Capitol Hill "root of appeasement... the approach of carrot and more carrot did not work". Indeed, as he said that "we can not see any sticks" used by the international community to tame the Tigers. While Thamilselvan was touring Scandinavian countries on study tours on federalism, his pistol men had a free run over the corpses of non-LTTE Tamil political activists. When President Chandrika Kumaratunga told the UN that "the engagement of armed groups for peace should not be done at the expense of the capability for democratic governance of a sovereign State," she makes it clear that the Government of Sri Lanka would no longer welcome diplomats who made it a fashion to meet Thamilselvan every now and then. Indeed, it was new Foreign Minister Anura Bandaranaike who sometimes back said that the government did not want diplomats other than Norwegians to meet the LTTE. The President told the UN: "...although we had the option of a military response, we have rejected it. And instead are choosing a different approach - to reiterate our commitment to a ceasefire and to a political solution, whilst reviewing the previous approach towards negotiating with this group. This review has begun with a call to the international community to help exert real pressure on the LTTE, in order that we can engage them in a process that will lead to a lasting peace, bringing about democracy and human rights". Peace process The Sri Lankan peace process is heavily internationalised and it is hard to expect that any government would be able to distance the peace process from its extra-territorial actors. Indeed, rationale of such a move is open to question as all the previous peace efforts carried out in isolation had collapsed. The question needs to be addressed is how the participation of the international community would be rationalised and used to expedite a negotiated settlement. The government needs to prepare a strategy which has both carrot and
stick and need to have a few countries - of course, including India- with
financial and military muscle who would play a pivotal role in such a
strategy. |
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