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| Sunday, 10 August 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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The State and its borders : Resolving insurgency without 'Occupation' Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA One of the recent troop fatalities suffered by United States occupation forces in Iraq was reportedly that of an infantryman in Baghdad who died from wounds received from flying bullets as Iraqis celebrated the deaths of Saddam Hussein's two sons (what irony!). Yes, Iraqi civilians do possess guns (handguns as well as automatic rifles!), even in American-controlled Baghdad, and do fire them off into the air on the streets during celebrations, even during weddings. In this case it was during street celebrations after the Iraqis were finally convinced that the two bodies were not that of Uday and Qusay decoy look-alike but were of the Genuine Article. 'But aren't the US-UK in full control of at least Baghdad?' one may ask in bewilderment. Sri Lankans, of all people, should not ask such questions. "It's only an 'occupation' stupid!" would be my answer. We should recall or, even now, look carefully, at our own war and the way the State forces have been deployed and the nature of the State's response to the North-East secessionist insurgency. From as far back as the nineteen sixties, the State armed forces have been mobilised and deployed in the Northern and Eastern provinces for the purpose of internal security ("homeland" security?) in the face of civilian-political unrest that, in the face of the physical suppression imposed by the police and troops from about 1964 onwards, slowly transformed into militant rebellion and, finally, secessionist war. Proliferation of weapons Since the level of militarization and the geo-physical scale of the confrontation between State and an alienated ('foreign') community is different from that of Iraq (which has a population similar to that of this country but is more double its area), we do not have such a proliferation of weapons as that prevailing in Baghdad. Neither is popular culture militarised in that way (our culture, instead, idolises the cyanide capsule on one side and displays Vesak lanterns in the shape of the helicopter gunships on the other). But the general reality must be recognised as similar; as it would be in the case of most territories forcefully occupied by armies regarded by the local population as 'alien' or 'foreign' or, at least, hostile to the interests of the local community. 'Alien' or 'foreign' could mean either not belonging ethnically to the population of the territory concerned or, being part of a larger dominant structure (e.g. the State) with which the local population does not identify either in terms of 'nationhood' or in terms of socio-cultural class/group loyalty. Thus, the State forces (even if they had not been 99 per cent exclusively Sinhala) were, and are, nothing more than 'occupying' forces in the North-East from Day One. In fact, in the context of the Southern JVP insurgencies too, it is possible to argue that in many Southern rural areas, especially the very remote and very poor (i.e. 'neglected' by the State) areas, the population, especially the poor and low caste groups, had the same attitude to the State forces. The troops were 'alien' or, worse, 'traitors'. That those rustic Sinhala youth who comprised the 'sebalu' in the State forces were equally, if not more, savage in their counter-insurgency violence against the rustic youth of the population of the insurgency-prone areas may reflect a certain social-psychological twist in the transformed relationship between rustic youth (State) and rustic youth (local community). In the North-East it was the Tamil militant movement that was 'our boys' to the local community, while in the South it was the JVP who were the 'sahodarayas' to the majority of the local community. Thus, there are all kinds of borders and boundaries, that are sharpened in the midst of conflict and confrontation - irrespective of whether or not 'non-national' (in the legal 'nation-state' sense) elements are involved. These borders and boundaries, then, are to do with collective identities that could also include some form of geo-physical space differentiation as well. And the collective identities can be ethnic, as in the Tamil community or/and, socio-cultural as in the rural/pastoral, non-westernised and poor social groups among the Sinhalas from among which the JVP insurgencies arose. If the source of Tamil secessionist insurgency was the North-East, the source of the JVP insurgencies were the South-east and parts of the North-central regions. It is this sense of alienation from the State, even in Sinhala populated areas, that results in 'democracy' and 'good governance' becoming nothing more than, what even some of our 'liberal' human rights activists call, a structure of "command-and-control". After all, even if, constitutionally, Sri Lanka is a 'democracy' and a 'republic', even if (also constitutionally) the State is virtually owned by the Sinhala community, significantly large sections of the population do not feel that they are either represented in governance or are participants in the 'nation' or 'society'. Capitalist democracy And capitalist democracy (which is what 'liberal democracy' actually is) cannot ever hope to provide for the equitable social participation that the population aspires to in their conception of 'prajaathanthra'. That is why even liberal human rights activists end up talking about 'command-and-control' when they refer to 'good governance'. Some sections of the population can never fully, equitably, participate (cannot be allowed to, actually) in society and therefore must be 'commanded' and 'controlled'. This kind of terminology, of course, is everyday jargon in counter-insurgency - by the occupying forces, not by the occupied populations. In certain ways, then, even capitalist democracy is no more than a 'civilian-institutional' form of counter-insurgency, as the language of some liberal activists betrays. But my focus this Sunday is on conceptions of 'borders' and the sense of communal 'belonging' in the Sri Lankan context. What I am endeavouring to do is to pitch the ongoing debate on 'territory' and 'state' and 'province' or 'region' to a more elemental level of the sense of community. And what I am trying to point out is that the configuration of 'community' would encapsulate both social-cultural characteristics as well as geo-spatial characteristics. Both forms of sharp social conflict here, as discussed above, have demonstrated the operation of these defining characteristics. However, there are significant differences in the nature of conceptions and perceptions on the different sides in the conflicts. In both cases, that is both the Eelamist as well as the JVP insurgencies, the State's conception of 'border' and 'boundary' has a greater emphasis on the geo-spatial aspect while the rebelling community's conception has a greater emphasis on the socio-cultural definitions of either ethnicity, in the case of the Eelamist war (it has progressed from insurgency to a near-conventional war mode in recent years), or of socio-cultural class, in the case of the JVP insurgencies. This is as it should be. The modern State (from its European-capitalist origins), after all, is predicated on fixed geographical borders that define protected 'national' markets for the benefit of the respective 'national' capitalist class. But a critical means by which these states ensured the stability and integrity of their territorial configuration was that of modern Nationalism. The ethnicity of the dominant social groups of these states-in-formation (France, Germany, the UK etc) became the building blocks for a larger, 'national' ethnicity which was extended to include as many related social groups as possible in order to configure the geographical territory of the states concerned. This writer is indebted to benedict Anderson (his seminal 'Imagined Communities') for this general conception, while agreeing with partha Chatterjee's (see his 'The Nation and Its Fragments') reservations about Anderson's thesis and some presumptions. This original 'national' tendency is at the root of the dynamic of 'nation' formation in the colonial and post-colonial eras which has resulted in numerous communities of all types (from tribes to larger ethnic groups) aspiring to nation-statehood. Thus, for the State to focus on territory is almost 'natural.' Likewise the social group dominating a given state also must, almost instinctively, focus on the integrity of territory. That is why the ethnic war in Sri Lanka was fought, from the State's point of view, in terms of every square metre of territory, while the Tamil militants always gave greater emphasis to infiltration and guerrilla was on the basis of ethnic mobilisation transcending regional boundaries and even international borders. Even today, the LTTE, while now taking on board more 'statist' concerns, including that of territorial reach, actually embodies a proto-state whose reach far transcends any projected 'national' boundaries. The Tamil proto-state embodies a 'nation' a large component of which lives outside proto-Eelam in areas of the Sri Lankan State. In fact the LTTE is attempting to use the current peace process to take control of regional-level, existing territorial institutional frameworks in the form of an 'Interim Administration' for the North-East as a means of consolidating its direct political control of a region substantially outside its actual political military possession. The ridiculous paradox is that these territorial definitions, such as 'Northern' province and 'Eastern' province are those not based on ethnic or other socio-cultural group configurations but on administrative configurations imposed by the old British colonial State! This is the hypocrisy and mediocrity demonstrated by the Tamil Eelamist movement. It does not define its territorial aspirations in accordance with the ethnic population demography but, instead, attempts to include areas outside the traditionally Tamil populated areas that are conveniently included in the colonially defined 'provincial' boundaries. Ethnic configuration The Sri Lankan State and much of the Sinhala population (mainly the elite and urban middles classes) that identifies itself with the ownership of the State, have demonstrated a similar mediocrity and hypocrisy. At an intermediate level the Sri Lankan State also limits its conception of territory and boundaries to that of the colonial provinces, except when it chooses to ignore these boundaries by settling people (Sinhalas) from other provinces in areas within the Northern and Eastern provinces. That there is an implicit recognition of the 'Tamil' ethnic configuration of the North-East is betrayed by the use of terms such as 'border villages' in the Southern discourse. Another betraying Southern discourse is the reference to the Eelamist claim to Puttalam and areas just north of Negombo as if it is an 'illegitimate' claim extending beyond the North-East boundaries - the implication being that the Eelamist claim to the North-East combined province is legitimate. One would have thought that the very experience of war over these boundaries of ethnicity and territory and the depth and complexity of the contestation would have helped Sri Lankans, of all ethnic communities, understand that the resolution to the problem cannot lie within the existing framework of borders and boundaries. Rather than relying merely on the compulsions of the existing State or on the ostensible advantages or conveniences of the old colonial administrative boundaries, it would be more fruitful it approaches to the problem is made with an understanding of our island society as yet re-building our political community after half a millennium of colonial domination and triage. That is why, while both the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE dominated Tamil proto-state are locked in this neo-colonial confrontation, other social forces need to be strengthened that can mobilise society on all sides towards re-conceiving the 'State' itself in a way that, firstly, transcends the kind of class and ethnic exclusions imposed by the current political structures (both Sri Lankan and Eelamist). Secondly, the nature of the State itself must be oriented towards the de-centralisation of power so that various levels of population and various regions enjoy a republican governance and a popular sovereignty that is not the sham that is centralised capitalist democracy. Finally, a social movement that transcends both existing Statist concerns and rebel-state concerns would be the kind of mediating 'third force' that could unravel both the problem of a lack of 'Sinhala consensus' as well as the problem of territorial ownership. The problem is that everyone (or almost everyone) seems so infatuated with the State. Hegel would love to have been here. |
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