POINT OF VIEW

Talking: Continuation of war by other means?

Rajan Philips

To talk, or not to talk: that seems to be the question. The answers have been mixed and many, triggered by the surprisingly sensational announcement out of Brussels. Even if well intended, the Co-Chair spokespersons could have avoided the impression of jumping the gun, or stealing the thunder, whatever the metaphor. The news about the talks should have been broken simultaneously in Sri Lanka and Europe following protocol consultations.

These are sensitive times and the international mediators and facilitators should not only be neutral, they should also seem to be neutral. Individuals involved in this process must eschew ego boosting publicity and careerism. There is too much at stake here, especially the lives and livelihoods of people who are neither seen nor heard on the matter.

The Co-Chairs representing 58 donor countries interested in Sri Lanka must do everything in their powers to persuade the government and the LTTE to stop the violence in every form, starting immediately and lasting indefinitely. But as for the actual talks, rather than rushing them the two sides should be guided to proceed in small but firm steps.

No Military Solution

Amidst all the insistences about terms and conditions for the talks, it is heartening that both the government and the LTTE do really want to talk. The recent military successes have brought on the government considerable pressures, from within its ranks and outside, to reject the resumption of talks and to continue the attacks on the LTTE. The government seems to be resisting such pressures and is emphasizing the search for a political solution.

A military solution to the Tamil question can only mean one thing: turning the whole of the North and East into permanent high security zones and feeding the people there with daily dry rations. Such an ending, even if it were feasible, will not bode well for the rest of the country politically, economically and socially. That will be the end of Sri Lanka as a moral entity.

Last Sunday I wrote about the disastrous situation of the displaced people in the North and East. To the lot of the displaced I should add the tales of the disappearing. The ominous White Van that sent shivers through the South in the late 1980s is reported to have re-emerged in Jaffna. Kidnapping and targeted killings of Tamils are not confined to the peninsula, however, but are committed in Colombo and in the East as well.

The LTTE has no moral bone in its body to complain on behalf of the affected Tamils but that does not excuse the State of its basic responsibility to all its citizens including Tamils. A state consumed by military operations will invariably fall short of its civic responsibilities, and the State of Sri Lanka has fallen far, far short of this responsibility, time and time again. For this reason alone the resumption of talks should be welcomed as a positive development.

There has been much complaining by government circles about the international community treating the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE as equals in regard to the ceasefire agreement. The fact though is that when an agreement is signed between two parties in regard to a particular matter the two cannot be treated differently in the execution of that agreement. That does not make the two parties equal in all respects. Clearly, there is, or ought to be, more to the State of Sri Lanka than its ceasefire agreement with the LTTE, but this difference has to be manifested not though vacuous verbal assertions but positive actions on other fronts that fall within the legitimate purview of the State.

The tail wagging the Lion

Thus, the government could and should act on reaching a consensus with the UNP in the South, opening a forum for identifying the concerns of the Muslims in the East, dealing with non-LTTE Tamil groups, and reaching out to the Tamil Diaspora. There is nothing preventing the government from acting on these fronts while engaging the LTTE in bi-lateral talks. What is important, however, is that the government has to be open, generous and consistent in its dealing with all the multiple stakeholders. It would be counterproductive to try to play one against the other, especially the Muslims against the Tamils, or the non-LTTE Tamil groups against the LTTE.

Next to the LTTE talks, the other positive news this week has been the initiation of talks between the PA government and the UNP opposition. Kumar David, in his article last Sunday, persuasively argued that a PA-UNP marriage should be based on a definite program centered on the political solution to the ethnic problem. The consequences of the PA and the UNP not reaching a consensus cannot be over emphasized.

Together, the PA and the UNP represent the vast majority of the Sinhalese and allowing the JVP and the JHU to dictate the government’s policy on the ethnic question is really a case of the tail wagging the lion. The JVP’s overtures to the armed forces and its access to the soldiers through the Manel Mal movement can be ignored by the PA and UNP leaders only at their peril and that of the country.

Unlike Pakistan and Bangladesh, Sri Lanka has been spared of military coups and the ordeals of military rule because of the close social and kinship ties linking the military personnel and the Sinhalese society and the resulting lack of exclusive elitism among the military top brass. This was the social backdrop to the common front of the government and the army against the two JVP insurrections of 1971 and 1988. The common front saved the South from the fate that has befallen the North under the LTTE.

The question has often been raised that if it was alright for the army to crush the JVP, why should there be qualms about letting the army to finish off the LTTE now? The answer is simple: it is the ethnic disparity between the army (which is all Sinhalese) and the LTTE (which is all Tamil) with the result that any fight between the army and the LTTE takes a far heavier toll on the non-combatant Tamils than the army’s attacks on the JVP (all Sinhalese) drew on the general Sinhalese population. The army in fact saved the Sinhalese from the JVP, but the Tamils are tossed between the fire and the frying pan as the army and LTTE battle on.

Calling the LTTE’s bluff

The government’s second major concern about being rushed into talks is that the LTTE, as in the past, will use the cessation of hostilities to regroup and arm itself for future fighting. If the results of the recent fighting are any evidence, the last ceasefire period does not seem to have done LTTE much good by away of enhancing its military capabilities.

There is no question that the ceasefire and the political distractions played a role in the Karuna split and the blunting of the LTTE’s fighting edge. Only those who insist on an untrammeled military solution will insist in denying the weakening effects of the ceasefire on the LTTE.

That said and given the context of continuing ceasefire violations, the government has already called upon the international community “to put in place a practical mechanism to prevent the illegal procurement of arms and an effective blockade to the induction of weapons by the LTTE.” But the practicality of such a mechanism and blockade is highly doubtful given the open market on weapons.

There is a widespread notion in Colombo that the LTTE has been given preferential treatment by the international community compared to other armed organizations in similar conflict situations, e.g. the PLO, Hamas, IRA etc. What is unique about the LTTE, in comparable world situations, is that the international community has had no alternative Tamil agency to formally and effectively deal with.

Even the late lamented Lakshman Kadirgamar never offered to present a Tamil position to the international community even though all of the diplomatic mileage he secured for Sri Lanka was based on the fact that he was an ethnic Jaffna Tamil. What is more, Kadirgamar did not make a concerted effort to build a constituency among the Tamils at home or abroad for a non-LTTE Tamil position.

The failure of every government since 1994 to adopt and enact a constitutional framework that would have satisfied the criteria of the international community, regardless of the organizational needs of the LTTE, has also made it impossible for the international community to conclusively call the LTTE’s bluff. The most important factor of all is the devastation that the war has wreaked on the people of the North and East and the inability of the government and the LTTE to work together even for the limited purpose of providing redress to these people.

The resumption of talks gives the government a new opportunity to address the omissions of previous governments in building a southern consensus, reach out to the Muslims and non-LTTE Tamil groups, address the needs of the displaced people, put an end to kidnapping and targeted killings, and develop a political solution to call the LTTE’s bluff.