"President Rajapaksa’s progress served as a constant reminder of the tactical blunder of the LTTE demigod Prabhakaran who, by preventing the voters of the north and parts of the east from participating at the presidential polls, is likely to have contributed to Rajapaksa’s victory." +++++++++++++++++Another Westminster Intervention in the Sri Lankan Conflict
(March 03,Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The versions of what transpired at the recent meeting between representatives of the House of Lords and the House of Commons and a delegation of the ‘British Tamil Forum’ (BTF) as reported in the press (including several websites that carry news on Sri Lanka), though varied in content and focus, could be summarised as follows:The meeting was chaired by Lord Malloch-Brown, the Minister of 
State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom. Responding to the BTF submissions, Lord Malloch-Brown expressed concern on both the continuing prosecution by the Sri Lanka government of the war against the LTTE as well as what he perceived as excessive violation of human rights in Sri Lanka. While remaining non-committal on imprecations for imposing trade and travel sanctions and the curtailment of aid to Sri Lanka made by Suren Surendiran (a spokesmen for the BTF) and Gajan Ponnambalam (a Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian of Sri Lanka), Malloch-Brown reiterated his view that there could be no military solution to the "problem" (which problem his lordship had in mind was not made clear), that there should be an all out effort by the international community to persuade the government to resume negotiations, and that Sri Lanka must seek a political solution involving devolution of power to the Tamil areas of the country. Further, he pledged support to the demand being made by Louise Arbour and several other officers of the UN and by certain leaders of the EU for greater intervention of the world body in Sri Lanka for protection of human rights. A contrasting stance was adopted by Lord Naseby (former Conservative Party MP) who, according to Tamilnet, "…denounced the BTF and its views". Lord Malloch-Brown himself expressed reservations on the parallels which the BTF delegation had attempted to draw between Kosovo and Sri Lanka.
The statements attributed to Lord Malloch-Brown even in the reports carried by pro-LTTE publications cannot, in respect of their substance, be construed as representing a significant change in the stance of the British government vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan conflict. Examined individually, they are no more than repetitions of the same superficial and generalised observations that have been repeatedly made throughout the past few months by spokespersons of certain government and non-government ‘western powers’ including their Colombo-based representatives and lackeys. Likewise the vehemence discernible in the tone of what was allegedly said by his lordship could be understood in the context of the fact that he is known to be exceptionally self-opinionated. For instance, a ‘Profile’ published by London’s prestigious Sunday Times (18 November 2007) stated: "Malloch-Brown’s worst enemy is his own big mouth. He lost little time after his appointment to brag of his reputation", and attributed to him the claim: "From Colin Powell to Condi Rice all the way through to Richard Holbrooke or Madeleine Albright, across that massive swathe of American foreign policy, I would bet you a drink that you would find that I am their favourite multi-nationalist Brit". Thus, one cannot rule out the possibility of his having performed true to form at the meeting with the BTF.
Will this vastly experienced, urbane, "multi-nationalist Brit" ever understand that devolution of power to the "Tamil areas" (presumably, the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka) cannot, by any stretch of imagination, bestow upon the Tamil community of the country greater powers of democratic governance than they exercise at present when more than half of that community live outside the north-east, and as long as "the most powerful terrorist outfit in the world" (so described by intelligence services of two major western powers) led by a ruthless megalomaniac whose record of heroics include the extermination of almost all political leaders of his own community continues to retain the capacity to enslave through terror and force of arms the remaining segment of that community and other inhabitants of that part of the country? Will Malloch-Brown and others of similar persuasion ever bother to study the Sri Lankan conflict adequately to appreciate the basic fact that it was not the government of Sri Lanka that abandoned the peace initiatives of 2002 and that what the government formally discarded in December 2007 was literally a non-existent ceasefire? When will these great champions of human rights appreciate that serious violations of human rights (killing of non-combatants, abductions, torture, conscription of children for war, ethnic cleansing) constitute nothing other than the essence of Tiger terror; that these occur almost entirely in parts of the country (north-east and Greater Colombo) where the democratically elected government constantly faces the challenge of terrorism; that, even in such areas, there has been a remarkable lowering of the incidence of human rights abuses where the security forces of the government has achieved success in vitiating that challenge; and, above all, that the primary objective of the government’s military offensives has all along been the restoration of democratic governance in Sri Lanka?
It is not possible in this brief response to the reports on the British legislators’ meeting with the BTF to embark upon a comprehensive discussion on the misunderstandings displayed by some among the former and the deliberate distortions engaged in by those of the latter. What could be done, however, is to recapitulate the vicissitudes of the Sri Lankan conflict witnessed since the inception of the presidential tenure of Mahinda Rajapaksa, and thus attempt to dispel the myth that it was his government that abandoned the so-called ‘peace efforts’ launched in early 2002 and opted for a military strategy of ending the conflict.
LTTE Challenge to the New President
At the time leading up to the presidential election of November 2005, candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa, while declaring commitment to a search for an ‘honourable peace’, pledged to protect the unitary nature of the Sri Lankan state. He maintained that the peace efforts must involve broad-based participation and not be confined to bilateral negotiations between the government and the LTTE, and rejected both the LTTE claim of being the sole representative of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, as well as the notion of an ‘exclusive Tamil homeland’ comprising the country's Northern and Eastern provinces. On prominent controversies of that time, Rajapaksa stood opposed to both the Norway-authored and LTTE-approved blueprint for an ‘Interim Self-Government Authority’ (ISGA) for the ‘north-east’, as well as President Kumaratunga’s proposals for the establishment of a ‘Post-Tsunami Operations Management Structure’ (P-TOMS), on the grounds that their implementation would bestow official recognition and formal powers of government on the LTTE to the negation of the tenets of democracy. On the frequently violated terms of the government-LTTE ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ of February 2002, Rajapaksa stressed the need to re-negotiate the terms of that agreement. These commitments, while conforming to the policy stances that had been advocated all along by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) — the two parties with which Rajapaksa had entered into electoral agreements at the commencement of his campaign for the presidency — deviated in many respects from those advocated by President Kumaratunga, the leader of his own party.
There is a widespread belief in Sri Lanka that the LTTE leader, Prabhakaran, contributed to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory at the presidential election by enforcing a boycott of the poll in the north and parts of the east. In the aftermath of the election, he began to test the resolve of the new president by articulating with intensifying vehemence the earlier LTTE demands for government intervention in disarming the rebel group led by Karuna, and for greater control over post-Tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction in the north-east. The LTTE leadership also persisted with its efforts at both extending its military control over parts of the Eastern Province as well as provoking the security forces into retaliatory acts of violence. Instigating communal clashes in areas of mixed ethnicity, which it believed was a distinct possibility under the new regime in which the JVP and the JHU stood in high profile, also became part and parcel of the Tiger strategy.
In these latter efforts the LTTE came perilously close to success through a sequence of events the origins of which could be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement when it established a network of military bases in the Sampur-Muttur area south of the Trincomalee Bay, from which it launched occasional attacks on military and civilian targets. After March 2004 these bases were also used for its anti-Karuna offensives. Thus, in accordance with the strategy adopted by the LTTE for its onslaught against the new regime, they escalated their levels of violence in the Trincomalee area both by frequent bomb attacks on security forces personnel as well as by killing Karuna group activists. These evoked counterattacks both by the armed forces of the government as well as by the Karuna group. The violence that ensued included a bomb explosion by the LTTE at a crowded market on April 12 at which the majority of victims were Sinhalese civilians and a three-day backlash of homicide, arson and looting in various parts of the town and its suburbs by Sinhalese mobs consisting mainly of the lumpen elements of the town and, allegedly, of military personnel in mufti which caused the death of 20 civilians — 11 Tamils, seven Sinhalese and two Muslims. Over this spell the LTTE also added to its score of homicide a further 16 personnel of the army and the police.
Meanwhile the LTTE extended its offensive to other parts of the country. In what constituted a major attack on the very heart of the country’s security establishment, a suicide bomber blew herself up within the precincts of the army headquarters in Colombo on 25 April 2006 in an attempt to assassinate (and causing near-fatal injury to) the Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka. A month later, a Tiger claymore-bomb attack in a remote poverty-stricken area of the North-Central Province resulted in the wholesale massacre of a bus-load of 64 villagers — many of them, women and children. Again, on 19 June, there was an abortive attempt at an attack on ships berthed in Colombo harbour which, had it succeeded, would have caused large-scale damage to the Sri Lankan economy. A week later, Lt. General Parami Kulatunga, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the army, was assassinated by a suicide bomber.
The intensification of Tiger belligerence in the early months of the new regime should be understood in the context of the remarkable success President Rajapaksa achieved in consolidating his grip over the politics of Sri Lanka’s ‘South’. Though elected to office with a wafer-thin majority, in the first few months of his presidential tenure he succeeded in a way that none of his predecessors had done in achieving a higher level of intra- and inter-party consensus for his approach to the secessionist threat. Within his own party he finessed Kumaratunga in a series of manoeuvres that ended in his own unanimous appointment as president of the PA. The message he repeatedly conveyed to the people was that he remains unswerving in his commitment to the ‘Mahinda Chintanaya’ (ideology) as proclaimed in his election manifesto. It appeared to carry sufficient weight to preserve (despite increasing stresses and strains) the alliance with the JVP and the JHU, and to attract into the ranks of the government the CWC (plantation Tamils) and the SLMC (Muslims, mainly of the ‘south-east’) both of which had supported Wickremesinghe at the presidential election. Indeed, as matters stood up to about April 2006, within the political mainstreams, it was only from the United National Party (UNP) reeling from the effects of successive electoral defeats, and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) the LTTE proxies in parliament, that the president faced perfunctory and petulant opposition which, of course, he could afford to ignore. Apart from this ‘internal’ consolidation, Rajapaksa appeared to be gaining increasing endorsement and support from those of the ‘international community’ proactive in Sri Lankan affairs, who at the time of the presidential election had left hardly any room to doubt that Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP was the man they preferred. On 10 April 2006 the new Conservative Party government of Canada added the LTTE to its list of 38 outlawed terrorist organisations, and followed the ban with raids on the offices of the ‘World Tamil Movement’ (an LTTE ‘front’ outfit) in Montreal, Scarborough and Toronto. About a month later the European Union adopted a resolution recommending the conscription of the LTTE in its member countries. Meanwhile, in the United States, the FBI foiled a large-scale clandestine transaction of arms attempted on behalf of the LTTE, arresting and incarcerating several Tiger agents involved in the deal.
Tiger Offensive and Retaliatory Action
President Rajapaksa’s progress served as a constant reminder of the tactical blunder of the LTTE demigod Prabhakaran who, by preventing the voters of the north and parts of the east from participating at the presidential polls, is likely to have contributed to Rajapaksa’s victory. The LTTE strategy, it may be recalled, was based upon the premise that Wickremesinghe, hailed internationally as the ‘peace candidate’, if elected, would place in serious jeopardy the secessionist cause with his offer of federalism ("Who on earth asked for federalism?", as the LTTE theoretician Balasingham was to soon argue), and thus make it difficult to sustain its ‘liberation struggle’. Its expectation was that Rajapaksa, if elected, will jettison the existing ceasefire agreement and evict the "White Tigers" (Norwegians) from their role of facilitator of the peace efforts. This, the LTTE leadership believed, would pave the way for a resumption of the military campaign in earnest, backed by vastly enhanced international sympathy and support for their cause. All indications up to this time, however, were that President Rajapaksa’s performance would blast that hope. He and his allies remained conscious that nothing could be gained by negotiating with the Tigers. But they were equally aware that everything could be lost by anything less than a total commitment to the pursuit of peace through negotiation.
To Be Continued…
State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom. Responding to the BTF submissions, Lord Malloch-Brown expressed concern on both the continuing prosecution by the Sri Lanka government of the war against the LTTE as well as what he perceived as excessive violation of human rights in Sri Lanka. While remaining non-committal on imprecations for imposing trade and travel sanctions and the curtailment of aid to Sri Lanka made by Suren Surendiran (a spokesmen for the BTF) and Gajan Ponnambalam (a Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian of Sri Lanka), Malloch-Brown reiterated his view that there could be no military solution to the "problem" (which problem his lordship had in mind was not made clear), that there should be an all out effort by the international community to persuade the government to resume negotiations, and that Sri Lanka must seek a political solution involving devolution of power to the Tamil areas of the country. Further, he pledged support to the demand being made by Louise Arbour and several other officers of the UN and by certain leaders of the EU for greater intervention of the world body in Sri Lanka for protection of human rights. A contrasting stance was adopted by Lord Naseby (former Conservative Party MP) who, according to Tamilnet, "…denounced the BTF and its views". Lord Malloch-Brown himself expressed reservations on the parallels which the BTF delegation had attempted to draw between Kosovo and Sri Lanka.The statements attributed to Lord Malloch-Brown even in the reports carried by pro-LTTE publications cannot, in respect of their substance, be construed as representing a significant change in the stance of the British government vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan conflict. Examined individually, they are no more than repetitions of the same superficial and generalised observations that have been repeatedly made throughout the past few months by spokespersons of certain government and non-government ‘western powers’ including their Colombo-based representatives and lackeys. Likewise the vehemence discernible in the tone of what was allegedly said by his lordship could be understood in the context of the fact that he is known to be exceptionally self-opinionated. For instance, a ‘Profile’ published by London’s prestigious Sunday Times (18 November 2007) stated: "Malloch-Brown’s worst enemy is his own big mouth. He lost little time after his appointment to brag of his reputation", and attributed to him the claim: "From Colin Powell to Condi Rice all the way through to Richard Holbrooke or Madeleine Albright, across that massive swathe of American foreign policy, I would bet you a drink that you would find that I am their favourite multi-nationalist Brit". Thus, one cannot rule out the possibility of his having performed true to form at the meeting with the BTF.
Will this vastly experienced, urbane, "multi-nationalist Brit" ever understand that devolution of power to the "Tamil areas" (presumably, the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka) cannot, by any stretch of imagination, bestow upon the Tamil community of the country greater powers of democratic governance than they exercise at present when more than half of that community live outside the north-east, and as long as "the most powerful terrorist outfit in the world" (so described by intelligence services of two major western powers) led by a ruthless megalomaniac whose record of heroics include the extermination of almost all political leaders of his own community continues to retain the capacity to enslave through terror and force of arms the remaining segment of that community and other inhabitants of that part of the country? Will Malloch-Brown and others of similar persuasion ever bother to study the Sri Lankan conflict adequately to appreciate the basic fact that it was not the government of Sri Lanka that abandoned the peace initiatives of 2002 and that what the government formally discarded in December 2007 was literally a non-existent ceasefire? When will these great champions of human rights appreciate that serious violations of human rights (killing of non-combatants, abductions, torture, conscription of children for war, ethnic cleansing) constitute nothing other than the essence of Tiger terror; that these occur almost entirely in parts of the country (north-east and Greater Colombo) where the democratically elected government constantly faces the challenge of terrorism; that, even in such areas, there has been a remarkable lowering of the incidence of human rights abuses where the security forces of the government has achieved success in vitiating that challenge; and, above all, that the primary objective of the government’s military offensives has all along been the restoration of democratic governance in Sri Lanka?
It is not possible in this brief response to the reports on the British legislators’ meeting with the BTF to embark upon a comprehensive discussion on the misunderstandings displayed by some among the former and the deliberate distortions engaged in by those of the latter. What could be done, however, is to recapitulate the vicissitudes of the Sri Lankan conflict witnessed since the inception of the presidential tenure of Mahinda Rajapaksa, and thus attempt to dispel the myth that it was his government that abandoned the so-called ‘peace efforts’ launched in early 2002 and opted for a military strategy of ending the conflict.
LTTE Challenge to the New President
At the time leading up to the presidential election of November 2005, candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa, while declaring commitment to a search for an ‘honourable peace’, pledged to protect the unitary nature of the Sri Lankan state. He maintained that the peace efforts must involve broad-based participation and not be confined to bilateral negotiations between the government and the LTTE, and rejected both the LTTE claim of being the sole representative of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, as well as the notion of an ‘exclusive Tamil homeland’ comprising the country's Northern and Eastern provinces. On prominent controversies of that time, Rajapaksa stood opposed to both the Norway-authored and LTTE-approved blueprint for an ‘Interim Self-Government Authority’ (ISGA) for the ‘north-east’, as well as President Kumaratunga’s proposals for the establishment of a ‘Post-Tsunami Operations Management Structure’ (P-TOMS), on the grounds that their implementation would bestow official recognition and formal powers of government on the LTTE to the negation of the tenets of democracy. On the frequently violated terms of the government-LTTE ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ of February 2002, Rajapaksa stressed the need to re-negotiate the terms of that agreement. These commitments, while conforming to the policy stances that had been advocated all along by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) — the two parties with which Rajapaksa had entered into electoral agreements at the commencement of his campaign for the presidency — deviated in many respects from those advocated by President Kumaratunga, the leader of his own party.
There is a widespread belief in Sri Lanka that the LTTE leader, Prabhakaran, contributed to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s victory at the presidential election by enforcing a boycott of the poll in the north and parts of the east. In the aftermath of the election, he began to test the resolve of the new president by articulating with intensifying vehemence the earlier LTTE demands for government intervention in disarming the rebel group led by Karuna, and for greater control over post-Tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction in the north-east. The LTTE leadership also persisted with its efforts at both extending its military control over parts of the Eastern Province as well as provoking the security forces into retaliatory acts of violence. Instigating communal clashes in areas of mixed ethnicity, which it believed was a distinct possibility under the new regime in which the JVP and the JHU stood in high profile, also became part and parcel of the Tiger strategy.
In these latter efforts the LTTE came perilously close to success through a sequence of events the origins of which could be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement when it established a network of military bases in the Sampur-Muttur area south of the Trincomalee Bay, from which it launched occasional attacks on military and civilian targets. After March 2004 these bases were also used for its anti-Karuna offensives. Thus, in accordance with the strategy adopted by the LTTE for its onslaught against the new regime, they escalated their levels of violence in the Trincomalee area both by frequent bomb attacks on security forces personnel as well as by killing Karuna group activists. These evoked counterattacks both by the armed forces of the government as well as by the Karuna group. The violence that ensued included a bomb explosion by the LTTE at a crowded market on April 12 at which the majority of victims were Sinhalese civilians and a three-day backlash of homicide, arson and looting in various parts of the town and its suburbs by Sinhalese mobs consisting mainly of the lumpen elements of the town and, allegedly, of military personnel in mufti which caused the death of 20 civilians — 11 Tamils, seven Sinhalese and two Muslims. Over this spell the LTTE also added to its score of homicide a further 16 personnel of the army and the police.
Meanwhile the LTTE extended its offensive to other parts of the country. In what constituted a major attack on the very heart of the country’s security establishment, a suicide bomber blew herself up within the precincts of the army headquarters in Colombo on 25 April 2006 in an attempt to assassinate (and causing near-fatal injury to) the Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka. A month later, a Tiger claymore-bomb attack in a remote poverty-stricken area of the North-Central Province resulted in the wholesale massacre of a bus-load of 64 villagers — many of them, women and children. Again, on 19 June, there was an abortive attempt at an attack on ships berthed in Colombo harbour which, had it succeeded, would have caused large-scale damage to the Sri Lankan economy. A week later, Lt. General Parami Kulatunga, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the army, was assassinated by a suicide bomber.
The intensification of Tiger belligerence in the early months of the new regime should be understood in the context of the remarkable success President Rajapaksa achieved in consolidating his grip over the politics of Sri Lanka’s ‘South’. Though elected to office with a wafer-thin majority, in the first few months of his presidential tenure he succeeded in a way that none of his predecessors had done in achieving a higher level of intra- and inter-party consensus for his approach to the secessionist threat. Within his own party he finessed Kumaratunga in a series of manoeuvres that ended in his own unanimous appointment as president of the PA. The message he repeatedly conveyed to the people was that he remains unswerving in his commitment to the ‘Mahinda Chintanaya’ (ideology) as proclaimed in his election manifesto. It appeared to carry sufficient weight to preserve (despite increasing stresses and strains) the alliance with the JVP and the JHU, and to attract into the ranks of the government the CWC (plantation Tamils) and the SLMC (Muslims, mainly of the ‘south-east’) both of which had supported Wickremesinghe at the presidential election. Indeed, as matters stood up to about April 2006, within the political mainstreams, it was only from the United National Party (UNP) reeling from the effects of successive electoral defeats, and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) the LTTE proxies in parliament, that the president faced perfunctory and petulant opposition which, of course, he could afford to ignore. Apart from this ‘internal’ consolidation, Rajapaksa appeared to be gaining increasing endorsement and support from those of the ‘international community’ proactive in Sri Lankan affairs, who at the time of the presidential election had left hardly any room to doubt that Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP was the man they preferred. On 10 April 2006 the new Conservative Party government of Canada added the LTTE to its list of 38 outlawed terrorist organisations, and followed the ban with raids on the offices of the ‘World Tamil Movement’ (an LTTE ‘front’ outfit) in Montreal, Scarborough and Toronto. About a month later the European Union adopted a resolution recommending the conscription of the LTTE in its member countries. Meanwhile, in the United States, the FBI foiled a large-scale clandestine transaction of arms attempted on behalf of the LTTE, arresting and incarcerating several Tiger agents involved in the deal.
Tiger Offensive and Retaliatory Action
President Rajapaksa’s progress served as a constant reminder of the tactical blunder of the LTTE demigod Prabhakaran who, by preventing the voters of the north and parts of the east from participating at the presidential polls, is likely to have contributed to Rajapaksa’s victory. The LTTE strategy, it may be recalled, was based upon the premise that Wickremesinghe, hailed internationally as the ‘peace candidate’, if elected, would place in serious jeopardy the secessionist cause with his offer of federalism ("Who on earth asked for federalism?", as the LTTE theoretician Balasingham was to soon argue), and thus make it difficult to sustain its ‘liberation struggle’. Its expectation was that Rajapaksa, if elected, will jettison the existing ceasefire agreement and evict the "White Tigers" (Norwegians) from their role of facilitator of the peace efforts. This, the LTTE leadership believed, would pave the way for a resumption of the military campaign in earnest, backed by vastly enhanced international sympathy and support for their cause. All indications up to this time, however, were that President Rajapaksa’s performance would blast that hope. He and his allies remained conscious that nothing could be gained by negotiating with the Tigers. But they were equally aware that everything could be lost by anything less than a total commitment to the pursuit of peace through negotiation.
To Be Continued…
(G H Peiris ,Professor Emeritus, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka)
.
![](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2008/03/british-attempt-to-rescue-ltte.html&media=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTtZC4UPQPDmlqhiXIWKSfCeohSF71DRTHYNjtwIsO4cvBtOps37gr6wJDemX8_prKk_MJzzG-8cVTq8iRUp2iGF_R-DhHawMwik03bWvE83RKvsppN34Ye9HPdXQmexjFslnOJpgpOec/s72-c/mr_121407_01.jpg&description="President Rajapaksa’s progress served as a constant reminder of the tactical blunder of the LTTE demigod Prabhakaran who, by preventin...){kind=link}
Post a Comment