By: Maj. Gen. Ashok K Mehta (Rtd)
(March 18, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Precisely 20 years after the Indian Peace-Keeping Force left Sri Lanka, Indian soldiers from a military field hospital re-entered the country low profile in civilian clothes last week. It has sparked a minor controversy with some Sri Lankans depicting it as an invasion. Just how fragile is India’s neighbourhood diplomacy and diminishing clout, especially in the last five years, while chasing the chimera of big power status, is evident from New Delhi’s futile attempts to end the war and humanitarian tragedy in North-East Sri Lanka.
None of the neighbours listens to India. In Maldives, where our Special Forces pre-empted a coup d’etat in 1988, the Government has been more amenable to China and the West than to India. We’ve been at war with Pakistan since 1947, unable to stop cross-border terrorism despite a decisive military victory in 1971.
India has invested billions in Nepal, introduced democracy twice and helped the Maoists to join the political mainstream and win elections. Yet anti-India feelings are the highest ever and the Maoist Government most hostile — both in words and deeds. As for relations with Bangladesh where 3,000 soldiers were martyred during the Liberation War of 1971, the less said the better.
As many as 1,300 soldiers sacrificed their lives for preserving Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet the IPKF was unceremoniously evicted and two decades later, while New Delhi is still committed to safeguarding Sri Lanka’s well-being, Colombo has not moved an inch in meeting Tamil political grievances. Instead, it has de-merged the North-East and created a situation where majority of Tamils are now housed outside the region or in closed camps.
When ‘Eelam IV’ picked up after the liberation of the east by security forces in 2007, the story goes that Tamils in Jaffna would look up to the sky for Indian help, reminiscent of Operation Poomaalai, the bread-bombing in 1987 which ended the war and led to the India-Sri Lanka Accord. Unfortunately, the IPKF was withdrawn prematurely.
What followed was a long period of India’s ‘sulk diplomacy’. In 2000, when the Tamil Tigers all but defeated the security forces after the fall of Elephant Pass, Sri Lanka requested for India’s help in evacuating the Jaffna garrison. This would have meant another expeditionary force interposed between the warring factions.
New Delhi offered financial assistance but declined any military involvement. A tested friend, Pakistan, came to Sri Lanka’s rescue by supplying crucial Multi-Barrel Rocket Launchers which helped to hold back the Tigers. Indian leaders at the time remarked that the heavens would not fall if the LTTE were to reoccupy Jaffna.
India-Sri Lanka relations are characterised by different IPKF placards carried by Buddhist monks in Colombo. In 1987, it was “IPKF Get Out”; in 2000, “IPKF Come Back”; and, in 2008, “IPKF Keep Out”. Hence, the description of the arrival of the Army Medical Team at Pulmoddai, north of Trincomalee Harbour, as an ‘invasion’.
All through 2007, when President Mahinda Rajapaksa had embarked on a military solution with assistance from China and Pakistan, financial aid from Saudi Arabia and Iran, and moral and material help from the West, periodically New Delhi, under pressure from Tamil Nadu, would urge Colombo to end the war with homilies like ‘no military solution’ and ‘only a negotiated settlement will bear fruit’, etc. These prescriptions were water off a duck’s back, especially after a military victory appeared within grasp. Mr Rajapaksa did not budge. After all, India was supporting the war.
Just as Sri Lanka shifted the spotlight from an ethnic war to one against terrorism, towards end-2008 /early-2009, India and the international community were able to shift focus to the humanitarian disaster stemming from the war. The plight of Tamils trapped in the war took centre-stage.
Despite the mounting unrest in Tamil Nadu, charges of genocide against Colombo and sustained calls for ceasefire by Tamil Nadu politicians, at no time did India expressly ask for a ceasefire. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, “Government has no instrumentality under which it can force a sovereign Government to take a particular action.” Yet, slipped into President Pratibha Patil’s address to Parliament was a call for a ceasefire and talks with the LTTE.
Within sniffing distance of victory, Sri Lanka ignored National Security Adviser MK Narayanan’s demarché of not seeking military hardware from China and Pakistan. The collective urgings of the President, Foreign Minister and Home Minister of India and leaders of Tamil Nadu for a ceasefire to end the tragic plight of Tamils went unheeded. Mr Rajapaksa’s Government had promised India zero tolerance of civilian casualties. According to a UN report, 40 civilians are being killed in the war zone every day.
Last week, a UN report by Human Rights High Commissioner cited 2,800 people being killed and 7,000 injured since January 20 in the war zone and described some actions by the Army and Tigers as constituting war crimes. Charges of genocide and calls for ceasefire have echoed in the Canadian Parliament as also R2P (Right to Protect).
Former US Deputy Assistant Attorney Bruce Fein has called for genocide charges to be slapped against Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse and security forces. The US Senate Foreign Relations hearings last month noted that Sri Lanka’s war on terror had a connection with the ethnic conflict and the LTTE with Tamil grievances. Although the ICRC, the only neutral body in the conflict, has forecast a humanitarian catastrophe, the international community is helpless.
The Government denies any problem exists though at least 150,000 civilians are caught in the crossfire. Last month Sri Lanka’s Donor Co-Chair — US, Norway, Japan and EU — evolved a US-led humanitarian intervention operation by 3 Marine Evacuation Brigade to extricate civilians trapped in the war. The US has always sought a strategic foothold in the North-East of Sri Lanka, close to the crown jewel, Trincomalee harbour.
A Washington-Colombo-Delhi dialogue on the launch of Operation Rescue was apparently rejected by India and which Sri Lanka also did not favour. The ICRC has discussed these plans with both Indians and Americans in Colombo. Operation Rescue is on hold but Delhi has managed to locate a 50-bed field hospital as a beach head for any contingency project to end the war. This is a concession to New Delhi for letting Colombo have its way in the fight to finish the Tigers regardless of the humanitarian costs.
By allowing Mr Rajapaksa a free hand in defeating the Tigers without any move on the political front, India has further shrunk its political and strategic space in Sri Lanka. Colombo, like Kathmandu, wants to look beyond New Delhi.
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It is precisely because of the stupid advise of people like Metha that India is where it is. Metha's analysis does not even mention that India's problem here is NOT Sri lanka, but how to contain Tamil Nadu. Metha says 40 civilians a day killed. How does he distinguish civilians from fighters, in a war where the LTTE has inducted even ordinary people to brandish weapons? He does not understand that the problem is the LTTE. He forgets that India created the LTTE. India can have a lot of clout with Sri lanka if it works WITH Sri Lanka to defeat the Tigers. That is the way to save the tamils from the current humanitarian probelm. I am a Tamil who lives in Mt Lavinia. Although my grand parents lived in Mavattipuram, I have no wish to go back there, and I don't buy the "Tamil Homeland" concept where Tamils should live in ethnic enclaves in the North and the East. I personally feel that once the Tigers are eliminated, the problems will disappear in a generation, especially when the old ex-patriate Tamils die off and stop meddling with Sri Lanla.
Mehta has highlighted the bankruptcy of Indian foreign policy without any admission of guilt. India's so called benevolent attempts to help neighboring countries have been undisguised attempts destabilize its neighbours and assert Indian control. It is no wonder that India's neighbors treat India at arms lenghth.
So what the writer is trying to tell is that India should be the ruling power of South Asia, and every other country in the region should follow its 'advices' be it for the good or worse.
Please remember that when you are talking about civilian causalities here, you are citing a source which primarily uses LTTE-based and supporting organizations for data. (A good example would be the fact that, they refused to check with the MoH about the letter which was allegedly sent to the Ministry informing of the deaths of people due to starvation and lack of medications, where it is clearly seen that it was indeed a forgery, albeit a very bad one.)
And also remember that India never negotiated with terrorists and used only military methods to solve such problems. I ask you, why do Indians love hypocrisy ? LTTE is a much bigger fish than the small time rag-tag bands you deal with in your country and I would hard pressed to call the LTTE anything but terrorists, where as you want to view them as freedom fighters.(true in a way if you take the literal meaning, which is that they fight freedom).
Countries have governments for a reason, and that reason is not listening to every crap the big neighbour says and following it. People have voted, and we need this decades old war finished, without the next generations being forced to bare it. So before you tell a democratically elected government what to do, force the LTTE to let go of the human shield, lay down their arms and surrender.
People in South Asia will never trust India and her government for generations to come after what you've done to their countries, and you better accept that. Therefore the effort of Colombo to distance herself from the jealous big brother is entirely justified.
P.S.
As for -
"the story goes that Tamils in Jaffna would look up to the sky for Indian help, reminiscent of Operation Poomaalai,"
We both know that is just plain fantasy. Jaffna tamils hated the IPKF more than us, why in the world would they want them back ?
Is this author really from India? His understanding of the problem indicates that he has been living in a different planet till recently.
The number of factual errors found in this short piece of essay is a testimoney to Gen Metha's understanding and knowledge.
First of in Sri Lankan never asked India to send the IPKF. The whole Indu-Lankan accord process was forced upon Sri Lanka using the so called supper power status of India.
Then when Jaffna was under the threat of LTTE, we never asked Indian army to help us to evacuate our forces from Jaffna. We asked Indian government to help us to fight back and hold the territory. It's the hypocritical Indian government that responded with the evacuation.
Then only Pakistan and Chec Republic supplied MBRLs to Sri Lankan forces to fight back. Not only they send us the hardware, they send us the technical crews down to help us operating the machines and train our own crews.
The big brother Indian was just siting and waiting because of her eternal fear of not being able to contain it's Southern political leadership.
Maj. Gen. Ashok K Mehta, I'm glad you are now retired so Indians are pretty safe now without your active role in Indian military.
As a senior retired military officer, I'm sure he knows where the Indian boarders end. Sri Lanka is not Indian colony to MK Narayanan tell Sri Lankan where to shop for weapons. In fact, after funding terrors for years, leading huge amount of blood shedding, India has no moral right to advice Sri Lankan on how to fight terrorism.
I sincerely hope the current Indian military leadership is at least a few steps ahead of in their thinking than Gen Metha's thinking. Otherwise , there is nothing to prevent Indian becoming the biggest hypnotically nation on earth because of its double standards when it come to issues of her neighbors.
>>As many as 1,300 soldiers sacrificed their lives for preserving Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet the IPKF was unceremoniously evicted and two decades later, while New Delhi is still committed to safeguarding Sri Lanka’s well-being, >>
They were send back by the Srilankan people/Govt in the (Very good ) manner. How could Indian Big boss forget the slaps by a lefthand rat.
Metha does nt mention that it was india that created LTTE and India did sri lanka what Pakistan doing to India; use terrorism as a tool to contro sri lanka.
People like him are the biggest problem to India, they never guide indian leaders to do right things.
every sri lankans know what India did to sri lanka and they, sinhalese and tamils equally, will never forgive india.
we sri lankans are real ass holes.we should behave like pakinstan as enemy of India, but our leaders still toeing indians foot.
I was waiting patiently, very patiently to hear a view expressed by a person of the commentator Nadesan's kind.It is the expression of truthful views such as these and truthful acknowledgement by the Sinhalese of the fact that we must at any cost create a better legal framework for establishing equality among all the peoples of Sri Lanka and giving expression to such acknowledgement, that will achieve real and lasting peace.It is really time now for the government to speed up the undertaking to set up the constitutional and supportive legal structures to perpetuate lasting peace through consultative legal reforms within a clearly defined period.People need to hear more about the actual plan for peace before the voice for peace is drowned out and smothered again by the vicious propaganda machine of the terrorist backing Tamil diaspora to keep their cash-cow alive for another 30 years so that they may live in luxury in the west and feed their progeny off the blood money earned through the barrels of the LTTE guns.It is time for the sounds of drums of peace to drown the thunder of the guns in the north.The war will be won but the opportunities for peace might not be around if we wait too long.
Seems General Metha's comments are apologetic & sympathetic towards India to cover India's poor tactics over the years with her neighbors coupled with multiple internal Indian interests, clueless but with duplicity.Certainly all her neighbors look beyond India as India cannot prove herself to be the guardian as well as the friend in need.In decades long blood shedding with the brutal demise over 80,000 innocents in SL, India directly responsible for nuturing poor Tamil boys with gun culture which boomeranged on her for many generations to come too.As a result when SL villages & capital buldosed by LTTE with aeroplanes, than helping SL, she needs SL to buy Radar based on her wishes.Most crucially when she cannot defend herself on the perils of terrorism directly exposed at her own home , how could she advise & dictate terms to her neighbors. Even at this moment is India acting with honesty? Analyse the proposed Sethusamuduram sea mining project & it's associated hazards on SL soli.Being the biggest democratic power in Asia but when her chief minister Karunanidhi demanding her to invade SL,MPs Vaiko accepting meeting Tiger supremos in Vanni several times violating SL immigration laws what transparant, logical action India is capable of exercising? thats why SL & all her neighbors bent on China, Russia & others which from India's point of view is suspious for her but not for neighbors.For me as a Sinhalese i cannot forget my respect to Russia & China when India & the treacherous West show their back on us, coming forward & defending us at UN level.If India is truely interested on her kith & kin(Jaffan Tamils & Estate Tamils) she sholud co-operate with SL govt, to find a solution to what ever problem within a SL perspective not within an Indian color & creed.India should know that SL is neither her obedient servant nor a mini Tamil Nadu in the Indian Ocean.
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