Safetynets, double meanings and so much more
 

by Gaston Perera

In an interview he had with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and reported in the Daily Mirror of May 3, the Japanese Co-chair, Yasuko Akashi, made two noteworthy statements. The implications of the first statement relating to the induction of an UN peace-keeping force have been carefully analysed already elsewhere in the media. The second statement as reported and not commented on nor denied so far was that -" -- he also believed there was a limit to external intervention to bring peace to Sri Lanka, noting instead that both the Government and the LTTE have the basic responsibility to put things in order." That this was no mere passing thought or isolated remark or just obiter dicta but a carefully calculated and deliberate statement of considered position is proved by the fact that the identical sentiment was repeated a second time a few days later. According to the front page news item in the Daily Mirror of May 11, he is reported to have said -" -- there should not be high expectations from the international community as the peace process was the responsibility of the Government and the LTTE."

What is the significance of these statements? What is their plain meaning? Shorn of any learned conflict-resolution jargon and suave diplomates what must an ordinary man-in-the-street or uninitiated layman understand as their import? Is the Japanese Co-chair giving expression to a change of heart of the International Community? Or is he making clear something they had in mind all the time but did not spell out before? Is he frankly saying - 'Outsiders cannot get involved in your problems any more. Solve them on your own'. Or is his meaning more bluntly - 'Don't expect us to fight your battles'. Or is he really saying - 'We are washing our hands off this mess.'

If anything like this is his real meaning then recent events acquire a deeper significance. For instance in the prelude to Geneva I when a people's force in the North began setting off claymore mines against the armed forces there were very forceful expressions of disapproval from the Co-chairs. The US Assistant Secretary of State went to the extent of issuing a threat to the LTTE of armed support to the Government. Such denunciations are not heard now. The response to the pre-Geneva II bombs - and bombs everywhere, mind you - is more muted. Is there a message in this, the same as that of the Japanese Co-chair?

But if that is the real meaning of Japanese Co-chair's statements, there are implications of a far profounder nature that flow from it. One such implication relates to the concept of what has come to be known as the safety net. Central to the grand strategy - grand strategy as opposed to military strategy, that is - that was formulated earlier to deal with the ethnic problem was this concept of the safety net. According to this thinking whatever the defects of the Ceasefire Agreement, whatever the violations of the Agreement, whether arms are smuggled in, whether LRRP operatives are bumped off or whether extravagantly outrageous concessions are given in the name of confidence building like handing over sophisticated radio equipment, it did not really matter. In the ultimate analysis no catastrophe could overtake us because the International Community and the Co-chairs would never permit it. That was the rationale of involving them in our affairs. It was this thinking, this grand strategy, that was encapsulated in the concept of the safety net. According to this thinking the International Community was the safety net for Sri Lanka.

What the Japanese Co-chair now asserts demolishes the fundamental premise on which this grand strategy was based. If it is the view now - a view that was never articulated earlier at any time - that there is 'a limit to external intervention' and that we must not have 'high expectations from the international community', it simply means that there is not, and there never ever was, a safety net. That was just wishful thinking. That was wool over our eyes. That was a delusion with which we lulled ourselves and from which we are now rudely woken.

The other profound implication of the Japanese Co-chair's statement is that it is an astonishing confirmation of what critics of the grand strategy of the safety net have always been saying all the time. Those critics watching with dismay the erosion of our rights of decision-making, the inroads into our sovereignty and the abasement of our national dignity have time and again openly argued that we must settle our own problems. Now it seems they were right all the time. The Co-chairs have also realised it. They also say we must settle our own problems.

Still another implication of the Japanese Co-chair's statement is how closely similar the thinking of our ancestors was to their now publicly articulated line of thinking. Things must have been much simpler in former times. When, for instance, the security of the Kandyan state was threatened, the Kandyan king had no 'expectations from the international community'. Hence he did not have to hear after long-drawn circumlocution that he must fight his own battles. Simple man that he was he just went and fought his own battles. When the Portuguese Captain-General in an utterly flagrant violation of Kandyan sovereignty began building a fort in Kandyan territory at Trincomalee he did not seek 'external intervention'. He did not devise elaborate safety net strategies. The benighted man , so completely ignorant of conflict resolution strategies that he was he just went and attacked the Portuguese. And, funnily, was victorious too!

The Kandyan peasant of the 17th century also had that same uncomplicated approach. A threat to the security of the state was something to be resisted, not to seek foreign intervention about. So he never failed to answer the call of his king. Poor, backward, ill-armed and badly-trained he still answered the call and kept on answering the call during the fifty long years of ruthless warfare. What fired him, one wonders.

What gave this ignorant, rustic bumpkin that grit, that tenacity, that tremendous will to survive? If a modern day peace NGO asked him why he fought, how, one wonders, would he have responded? Would he have said, one wonders, - 'I also hate war but there are other things I hate more' Or would he have rather said with that famous highland drawl of his - 'Thamunge hisata thamunge atha' (One's own hand is the only support for one's head.)