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| Sunday, 26 February 2006 |
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After Geneva: Can the bottom lines hold? by Kumar David The release of the opening statements by the two sides at the commencement of the negotiations between GoSL and the LTTE in Geneva on February 22nd and 23rd breached an earlier agreement to observe secrecy and exposed the bottom line of each side. But no matter, there were no surprises, all this was well known beforehand. Understandably, the bottom line for the government was a near desperate endeavour, for both political and military reasons, to prevent a breakdown of the cease-fire. A new president has been elected and some of his allies are perceived as hardcore Sinhala extremists, his manifesto contains concessions to this quarter, hence an outbreak of hostilities would have allowed his critics to cry: "We told you so". Militarily too, the short-term advantage, if all out war erupted, may have gone the LTTE's way. Hence GoSL's urgency to hold fire on both sides is entirely understandable; in Geneva this was the bottom line - any expectation of getting amendments or an appendix to the CFA included was just a hope for icing on the cake. The bottom line stated by the LTTE is also entirely understandable and reasonable from its point of view: "Stop Karuna: Disarm the Karuna forces". The post-Karuna situation is the most dangerous crisis in the history of the LTTE; no previous factional struggle has erupted into a sustained military challenge within the Tamil population itself. But this is more than military; the Eastern province is already a conundrum because there is no simple devolution formula which can fit both Tamil homeland and Muslim identity demands. It can be worked out, but the options are not superficially clear and will take time and effort to achieve. Furthermore, for a long time there has been a subtle Jaffna Tamil - Batticaloa Tamil sensitivity, and the Karuna issue is playing on this sociological background. Yes, for the LTTE getting the Karuna dilemma firmly out of the way is indispensable. The joint press statement says, in effect, that each party has got its bottom line, so is all going to be well now? Will the second meeting in April be another step forward to other more medium and long term issues? Not so fast, it all depends. From the GoSL side, can it deliver on its undertaking? The obstacles are not only political - there are plenty of Karuna lovers in the South these days - but also military. Does the government have the authority and muscle to bring sections of the military which have been consorting with the Karuna forces to heel? We have to wait and see. If the government is smart it will do the obvious - incorporate the Karuna forces as a battalion in the army. This will bring it under military control and discipline and will make it, ultimately, answerable to the Commander-in-Chief, the President. There is no provision of the CFA under which the LTTE can oppose this measure; in fact it is likely to support this as the most realistic option that GoSL can take. This also deals with a much bigger problem, the de facto reality that the Sri Lanka defence forces are in truth a "Sinhala army" much derided by Tamils. It is time to start making the army a national establishment not the symbol of one community, and even more important, the experience gained may, in the long run, facilitate a symbiosis of armed forces of GoSL and LTTE, a much larger challenge. On the LTTE side there is a post-Geneva problem - what is the point of a cease-fire agreement if it is just a cease-fire in perpetuity, if it is a road to nowhere? There is a point to the Tamil, not just LTTE, complaint that fifty years after Sinhala Only (Official Language Act) and after four years of cease-fire, a new constitutional dispensation is nowhere on the horizon. What is the "solution", the new system - devolution, federalism, or whatever - going to be? How soon will it be enacted? Are the Tamils going to live in a cease-fire limbo forever? Surely this is fair comment, not a veiled threat of return to war. I do not agree with those who assert that the LTTE is simply indulging in a charade to arm itself, disarm international criticism of its human rights violations, and biding its time to restart hostilities. It is not in the interests of the LTTE to go to war if it can get what it wants, initially some kind of interim administrative arrangement where it will be the main beneficiary, and subsequently a new constitutional dispensation acceptable to the Tamil people, without war. If April in Geneva flowers into a springtime agreement on the former and sets the ground for initiating constitutional discussions about the latter, well it will be worth it. So the verdict on Geneva is: One small step forward, many more to go. |
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