Trapped between two ‘humanitarian’ forces!

By Gamini Weerakoon

(May 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Everyone loves the sound of their own music. We mean people around the world — not only Sri Lankans — love to tell others, loud and clear, on vital issues, their opinion on what’s going wrong and what’s going right, not giving a damn to others’ views. They love to preach to the convinced and are overjoyed by appreciations and cheers.

That’s perhaps the answer to the query that keeps popping up often these days: ‘How did this ‘war’ go on for a quarter century?’

They kept preaching assuming that they were some kind of divine oracle and didn’t give two hoots to dissenting opinion. This of course applied to those from both sides of Elephant Pass and the ‘international community’ as well. And it is continuing even now which bodes ill for the future.

Humanitarian operations

Take this humanitarian cry about the plight of civilians trapped between the LTTE and security forces. President Mahinda Rajapakse during recent weeks has changed his tune. The security forces are now engaged in ‘humanitarian operations,’ he says, implying that they are not engaged in military offensives.

Whether this is correct or not, does he or his cheering squad pause to consider that Tamil civilians will be having grave doubts about this change over to ‘humanitarianism’? Do they sincerely believe that after long years of military operations against the LTTE, the government has now suddenly switched on to humanitarian operations?

Tamil opinion has been silent on this issue even though state propagandists through TV and the press show government military personnel engaged in relief work.

Humanitarianism from the West

Similarly, Western leaders — Hilary Clinton, George Brown and EU leaders — are raising a hue and cry over the humanitarian situation and the suffering caused to civilians held hostage by the LTTE and threatened by military operations of the government forces. Western governments with their widespread intelligence services cannot be so naïve to believe that Sri Lankans are convinced about their humanitarian concerns.

Today, the-man-on the-street and villagers in kopi kades, are well informed on world affairs. They ask: What’s happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan? Aren’t they bombing Pakistani and Afghan civilians in the hope of killing al Qaeda terrorists? Where is the American humanitarianism displayed in those countries?

Sri Lankans by and large believe that Western leaders have something up their sleeve and that transcends the professed concern for Tamil civilians.

Apparently Western leaders too don’t give two hoots about Sri Lankans being convinced or not. That was why the British and French Foreign Ministers David Milliband and Bernard Kouchner flew into Sri Lanka knowing well the reception awaiting them but hoping to frogmarch President Rajapakse!

All this hullabaloo leaves the 50,000 and more hapless civilians in the same pitiable plight. They are out in the open without a roof over their heads, between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The paradox

The paradox of it all is that hapless civilians are caught in a severe humanitarian crisis between two mighty forces fighting for humanitarianism! And nothing is happening.

Do Western leaders who keep repeatedly appealing for a ceasefire and for negotiations with the LTTE really believe that their appeals will be entertained? They surely would have been living in cuckooland — President Mahinda Rajapakse’s entire political agenda being based on a successful battle against LTTE terrorism.

Now on the verge of victory, do they expect him to call a truce and negotiate with a party that had rejected all negotiated solutions for over 25 years? Rightly or wrongly, Rajapakse is planning his next presidential election campaign on victories won against terrorism, Sri Lankan political analysts say. The more Rajapakse resists Western pressures, greater will his stature be in the country!

On the other hand does Rajapakse want to lock horns with the Western world? He had already done so. Does he hope to go it only with China, Ahmedinejad’s Iran and Gaddafi’s Libya in the future? Sirima Bandaranaike attempted to take on the West

with the backing of the Non Aligned Movement and the Soviet bloc but failed miserably. Does Rajapakse want a repeat performance?

What would happen, we will not hazard a guess.

Great debating

Those who have gone long in the tooth and grey in the beard during this 25 year conflict will realise that this raging debate of humanitarians is similar to the continuing debate: political solution or military solution. In the ’80s when Pirapaharans, Uma Maheswarans, Kuttimanis and others were taking pot shots at policemen and soldiers, the government of the day had no other option but to retaliate.

This was interpreted as the government seeking a military solution and soon the typewriter strategists in Colombo (computers had yet to arrive) commenced displaying their limited erudition on guerrilla warfare from books of Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Ming. ‘There is no military solution to a guerrilla war,’ they claimed relying on hackneyed comments on the Vietnam War.

The Tamil militants were ‘freedom fighters’ unlike government troops who had been unemployed and were fighting for their ‘buth packets,’ the great pundits on guerrilla war held. Nonetheless, battles raged on for 25 years while the two sides kept repeating the same thing and we have reached the present situation. Like old school masters ‘though vanquished’ in debate they will keep arguing still.

In conclusion we utter our mea culpa. We too had been a part of the cacophony and still are.

Meanwhile the ‘humanitarian’ debate is likely to continue. For how long we do not know. We are a nation of great debaters not to be outdone by Clintons, Browns, Ban Ki-Moons and the like.

-Sri Lanka Guardian