Peace as Legal Fiction:

International aid and the return to violence in Lanka

by Dr. Darini Rajasingham Senanayake

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Peace in Sri Lanka is increasingly an international legal fiction; an assumption contrary to ground realities. The country's four year old 'peace process' brokered by Norwegian mediators has waned. The ebb of peace in the palm-fringed, tourist-friendly island is indexed in the return of 'dirty war', a rising body count, and trickle of refugees to South India, as well as suicide bombings and barricades in the capital [E1], Colombo.

For the first time, there have been coordinated attacks on international aid agencies. As the head of the Scandinavian peace Monitoring Mission noted recently, there is a low-scale, low-intensity war ongoing.

Neither the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), nor the Government has given the required two weeks' notice to the Norwegian peacemakers that they have withdrawn from the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) signed in 2002. Thus the belief persists that the peace process sustains, although it is unlikely that the parties would give formal notice of contract termination given the reputation damage it would incur.

Meanwhile the new war continues the spiral of the (para)militarization of civil society, with a "war economy" sustained by terror, taxation and international post-conflict and post-tsunami reconstruction assistance. The current conflict may also achieve a self-sustaining momentum beyond ethnic minority grievances as it has done in the past.

Increasingly, Sri Lanka's war and peace process (they seem to be the same thing these days!), pays diminishing returns to the 3 principle actors in the island's peace and conflict dynamic-the LTTE, government, and international community-none of them being homogenous.

The international community (sic), though a set of apparently external observers, has become intrinsically embedded and intertwined in Sri Lanka's conflict and peace process over the past decade.

Given the $ 4.5 billion international aid industry and bureaucracy in the country the return of war despite the Norwegian's best efforts raises fundamental questions about its relevance and impact on conflict transformation. The fiction of peace defers this question and enables business as usual for the aid industry.

With the wisdom of hindsight, it is apparent that a highly internationalized and "legal-bureaucratic" approach to peace building and reconstruction, coupled with the wrong economic policies for the transition, undermined the Norwegian-brokered CFA.

The promise of US$4.5 billion for reconstruction came with a policy requirement of structural adjustments (SAPs), and liberalization favoured by the World Bank. Simultaneously, the privatization of aid saw various international agencies and consultancy companies benefit from reconstruction funds and projects, while little reached the communities affected by the disasters, and from which the majority of combatants are recruited.

A recent Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission Report notes on the subject of child recruitment: "some underage children freely volunteer to leave their families due to economic reasons to join the LTTE". Mis-targeted aid translated into an economic bubble, a dramatic rise in the cost of living, increased inequality and poverty in the communities from which soldiers are recruited, and further erosion of the welfare state.

In a very short time the government that signed the peace agreement with the LTTE was voted out of power-and the rest is history. The tide in the affairs of men that may have led to fortune, even to peace in Sri Lanka, had turned.

Rather, the attempt here is to do some stocktaking of the peace process since such an exercise may provide some timely lessons for other highly internationalized peace processes in the Asian region-from Nepal to Aceh.

Moreover, a recent study of peace processes has noted that of 38 internationally mediated peace efforts in the decade between 1989-1999, 31 had returned to conflict in the first few years (Darby). [E2] This scenario poses the need for critical analysis of the role of international reconstruction and development assistance in Sri Lanka and other parts of the global south.

As a number of analysts have noted, international assistance in low-intensity armed conflicts and peace processes may either ameliorate or become part of a renewed conflict cycle. As such the attempt here is to develop a structural analysis of the three principal actors and their relationship [E3], based on analysis of political economy of the international aid industry and bureaucracy in Sri Lanka. Since a great deal of ink has been spilt on analysis of the GoSL and LTTE, this essay primarily focuses on the role of the international community [E4] (sic).

The International War

Not too far back, in 2003, Sri Lanka was projected in international reconstruction and development conference circles and media as a test case of 'liberal peace building and reconstruction'. After the Norwegian-brokered Ceasefire Agreement in 2002 that brought bought relative calm and respite to the war-weary country, three different international pledging conferences for Sri Lanka were held in Oslo, Washington and Tokyo.

The conferences gleaned the promise of US$4.5 billion for post-conflict reconstruction. During the peace interregnum, four co-chairs were appointed to Sri Lanka's peace process-Norway, Japan, EU and US. The World Bank, that had positioned itself to lead the expanding international reconstruction industry and bureaucracy in the island, was appointed custodian of the North East Reconstruction Fund (NERF).

During the peace interregnum Lanka like Nepal (another attractive tourist destination), drew more disaster and development technical experts and volunteers per capita than most other disaster-affected counties in the past decades. Relative to its size and geo-strategic importance the island attracted a large volume of international funds and experts for "peace, reconstruction and development".

Given donor emphasis on the privatization of development assistance, international consultants, private companies and I/NGOs competed for lucrative reconstruction contracts-from de-mining, to road building, to peace education and advertising.

Part II Next Week...