A diagnostic scan of the conflict

by Dayan Jayatilleka

It is a dubious distinction. With the war raging in Lebanon and Fidel's sudden ill-health it wasn't easy to grab a slice of attention from the global media, but Sri Lanka has succeeded in doing so with its recent and continuing bout of intense fighting.

The multi ethnic east was always regarded as the more favourable battlefield for the Sri Lankan forces. The heavy going over the past week brings home three stark realities:

I) The Sri Lankan armed forces beat the Tigers at Elephant pass in 1991, pacified the East so that local government elections were held in 1994, liberated Jaffna in 1995, defended it in 2000, had Prabhakaran on the run with the targeted assassinations of the Tiger high command in 2001. So what we are witnessing today is the truth of Lakshman Kadirgamar's warning of the LTTE build-up in Trincomalee during the CFA, and what we are undergoing is the consequence of what the Ranil Wickremesinghe interlude did "to" our military and "for" the LTTE.

II) We have to strengthen ourselves; change the military balance so that it is in our favour. The Karuna factor alone will not do - it requires external support. And that requires doing what is needed to obtain that support, while desisting from whatever would prevent such support.

III) All talk of de-merger is rhetorical fantasy, utterly irrelevant on the ground.

We have been pulled, thrust or tripped into war without the creation of political conditions needed to change the balance of forces in our favour, outflanking, isolating and undermining the enemy. No matter. It is possible - and vitally imperative- to create those conditions without further delay.

Abraham Lincoln embarked on the socio-political reform needed to win the Civil War only after the war had commenced. That task, the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, generated a huge wave of recruitment of Southern blacks into the invading Union (Northern) armies and enabled Lincoln to keep the Union together, preventing the Confederacy from seceding.

*Five factors*

Is it four or five? That is the question. Are the main features of the Sri Lankan conflict four in number, or must a fifth be added? If the former then there is still a way out; if the latter there does not seem to be one.

The main features of the crisis are as follows:

1. The Tigers can win battles, perhaps even a campaign, but they cannot take and retain the Northeast, corresponding to what they call Tamil Eelam. This stems from four factors.

a) The Sinhalese are not an outside or colonial power, and live on a small island with no co-ethnic neighbours. Therefore they cannot retreat beyond a point and will always mount a comeback.

b) There is enduring and overwhelming population preponderance for the Sinhalese, who will always reassert themselves under this or that administration and after however long an interval.

c) 'Tamil Eelam' will have a long border, a small population and sparse geographic-ecological endowments, and is therefore strategically indefensible.

d) Stemming from its own terrorist behaviour (the Rajiv killing), its cause (separatism in an independent democratic state) and the nature of its enemy (Sri Lanka is a functioning democracy), the Tigers do not and will not enjoy the support of an established state either in the neighbourhood or further away but with an adequate power projection capability. Therefore it can never be an Israel.

2. The Tigers will not agree to a negotiated political settlement within a united Sri Lanka. If they would, then a number of major chances would not have been sabotaged by them: the ceasefire of April 1987, the Indo-Lanka accord of '87, the post-IPKF Premadasa talks of '90, CBK's 1995, 1997 and 2000 autonomy drafts, the April 2003 Tokyo conference, and the Ranil candidacy at the 2005 presidential elections.

3. There is no purely military solution to the problem. The Tigers cannot be eradicated on their home ground by purely military means. We do not have the manpower to take, hold and keep secure (police) the North-East against a powerful guerrilla force that is more native to the area (certainly the Northern Province) than we are. These tasks can be achieved only if we have (a) 'force multipliers' i.e. weapons systems which will greatly augment our firepower and (b) a sufficiently large and effective *indigenous *i.e. Tamil force as allies/auxiliaries. Both require a political reform package which can secure us military assistance internationally while empowering the anti-Tiger Tamil organisations.

4. The international community including India will not permit massive civilian casualties to be inflicted upon the Tamil community in a no-holds-barred Total War waged by the mobilisation of the whole Sinhala nation (as the JHU wishes). Furthermore, economic realities (such as the fact of dependency) and the social class structure will not permit the successful waging of a 'revolutionary' or 'people's war of national liberation' (which is the project of the JVP). Conscription is no answer: Nicaragua's Sandinista government lost power in 1990 due to the unpopularity of conscription, and the 'revolutionary' Ethiopian conscript army was beaten by the much smaller Eritrean irregulars.

The Israel Illusion

Contrary to a common delusion on the island, neither the Sri Lankan state nor the LTTE - and neither the Sinhalese nor the Tamils - can "*do* an Israel", because neither "are" nor can ever "be" an Israel. Unlike the Tigers, the Israelis won their very first war of independence against huge odds, in 1948. Unlike the Sinhalese, the Israeli air force didn't almost get wiped out on the ground in their main airbase because its sentries waved through Palestinian attackers singing Yiddish songs on a bus! More vitally Israel enjoys a cast-iron security guarantee, diplomatic support and a virtually unlimited supply of top-notch aircraft, tanks, weapons, equipment and munitions from the USA- which is the kind of commitment that neither the Sri Lankan state (under any administration, however Right or Leftwing) nor the Tigers/Tamil Eelam will ever obtain from "any" country.

To re-state: It takes two sides to negotiate a compromise and one -the LTTE- is manifestly unwilling to; and no third party has been able to get the LTTE back on a negotiating track. Both the Tigers and the Sri Lankan state can resist each other virtually indefinitely. The prospect is of permanent deadlock, politically "and" militarily.

Overcoming the Tiger

If this is indeed the case, then there are still two alternative scenarios out of our crisis:

a) Elements of the international community which can bring to bear sufficient positive inducements and negative, i.e. coercive pressure, converge to outline and enforce a settlement. This means pressure on the Tigers to demilitarise and democratise under international supervision, and on the South, to federalise and multiethinicise the state especially the armed forces. Or

b) The Sri Lankan state breaks the deadlock by a dramatic political move which wins over the external support required to supplement our military capacity. Such a move could shift the enormous diplomatic weight of India actively onto our side, and win over or neutralise a significant section of the Tamil community on the island and outside, thus undermining and weakening the LTTE.

As I said at the beginning of this article, it all depends on whether the Sri Lankan crisis has the above mentioned four aspects or whether a fifth should be added.

5. The forces of xenophobia and ultranationalism are sufficiently strong, or to put it differently the forces of moderation and realism are so weak-willed, as to block "both" exits from the crisis listed above. This after all is what the anti-devolution forces have been able to do for at least half a century.

If that is the case, then we shall continue to bleed and die slowly as a country, a state, a society, an economy. If not, and this fifth factor can be defeated, downsized or neutralised, then we can come out of this decades-long crisis.

Fascist, not Mercenary

Voltaire said that "if we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities".

In a context of an ethnically sensitive conflict, it is particularly imprudent to open the military to the ideological influence and propaganda of a demagogic party with fairly extreme views on the settlement of that conflict. According to the pro-JVP website "Lanka Truth", Mr. Weerawansa told assembled army men on a visit to Jaffna that there was no ethnic issue but only a terrorist conflict in Sri Lanka and that the LTTE was a mercenary army. A merger of (Rohana) Wijeweera-ism and (D.B.) Wijetunga-ism, this goes completely contrary to President Rajapaksa's speech to the expert advisory committee of the all-parties conference. I might add that if the JVP spokesman's views are correct then the LTTE is the only mercenary army in the world to be able to motivate its fighters to carry cyanide capsules and to blow themselves up! The truth is that the LTTE is not a "mercenary" army: who on earth is its paymaster? Who is it employed in the service of? It is far more dangerous than a mercenary army: it is a highly motivated, fanatical, "fascist" army. The "Asian Tribune", a website broadly sympathetic to Karuna carried a lengthy statement by Pillian, a TMVP leader in the East, condemning the JVP-led proposal to scrap the merger. His statement contained a rebuttal of the news report of their party's assent at the meeting of the JVP -led 7 party front. Meanwhile the EPDP and Dr. Wigneshwaran's party has slammed the de-merger slogan. My point is that the JVP's latest political initiative is far too extreme even for the most anti-LTTE Tamil elements, who are the indispensable allies of the Sri Lankan state. The inculcation of extremist ideology into the armed forces could result in the kind of ethnic carnage that the former Yugoslav army resorted to when it decomposed into a formation with a militant Serbian ideology.

So long as the anti LTTE forces are not pro-autonomy, the anti LTTE cause will be de-legitimised in the eyes of the world at large. So long as the pro-autonomy forces are not anti-LTTE (i.e. anti-separatist terrorist) or perceived as pro-LTTE, the cause of autonomy will be discredited in the eyes of a majority of Sri Lankan citizens. It is only if the anti-separatist/terrorist forces become pro-autonomy or the pro-autonomy forces become anti-separatist/terrorist or the two forces unite in a broad national coalition, that the key to the crisis can be cast. None of the three prospects seems likely.

Devolution in a bullock-cart

War is said by Clausewitz to be politics by other means, but politics is lagging far behind the war. While the war accelerates and the situation spirals downward fast, the search for devolution - an alternative which can strengthen us by securing support from our neighbour - paradoxically proceeds at the pace of a bullock-cart!

The JVP is striving to hold President Rajapaksa hostage to the 'unitary' slogan of Mahinda Chinthana, in the same way that S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was prevented from implementing the B-C pact in '57, by the lobbies and pressure groups that pushed the SLFP into 'Sinhala only' in '55-'56. The JVP's intractability on devolution calls into question its desirability as a formal coalition partner of the Rajapaksa administration, since such a partner will wield a veto over the President's ability to push through the reforms that the situation so desperately requires (according to everyone ranging from Anandasangaree to Richard Boucher and Manhmohan Singh). A formal governing coalition with the JVP will also tarnish the image of the Rajapaksa administration internationally, making it easier for the pro-LTTE lobbyists to depict it as hostage to radical Sinhala chauvinist forces. Far better then, the induction of UNP dissidents and an early general election.

If the ruling SLFP is unable to rid itself of dependence on dogmatic, demagogic ultranationalists in the name of 'the unity of anti-UNP forces' and the UNP is unable to rid itself of its eternally unelectable pro-Tiger leader, then the conflict may never cease and Sri Lanka will be a country at a dead-end, where imagined historical memory is long, while life is "nasty, brutish and short".