Lanka’s lesson for the World

By Dayan Jayatilleka

(November 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The second part of this paper is devoted to the Sri Lankan experience of, and further prospects for, conflict resolution in my country. It is subdivided into two parts. The first part deals with Sri Lanka’s experiences in conflict resolution, and the second part with the future prospects. I offer Sri Lanka’s experiences not because I am unmindful that the thrust of this conference and the expectation from my paper is a forward looking one, but because I think that Sri Lanka’s conflict was so high profile and complex that our experience could, if correctly comprehended, impact upon other states in South Asia, in the twin senses that a repetition of our errors could retard prospects for conflict resolution, while the adoption of our successes – if only where relevant and adaptable – could enhance and accelerate prospects for resolving and transforming conflicts.


The Sri Lankan effort at conflict resolution involved successive administrations of varying ideological persuasions, centre-right and centre-left. It also involved at various times, a major regional player, India and a European small power, Norway. (Both attempts failed due to perceptions of partiality, and should be closely scrutinized as case-studies so as to enhance the theory and practice of third party efforts at conflict resolution). Sri Lanka’s conflict entailed policies ranging from a pure military approach to a ceasefire and extensive concessions, through various mixes which gave predominance to either the military or the political. Finally the conflict in its armed form was terminated by classical military means. However, the underlying ethno-regional tensions and contradictions remain, unaddressed in some parts, heightened in others, and modified by the war in still other parts of the problem. This can lead to the recrudescence of the conflict, not so much in its armed form, which can be easily handled by the Sri Lankan armed forces whatever its intensity, but by civic conflict, which cannot be handled by such means without risk of permanent strife. This is not to dilute the enormous achievement of the Sri Lankan state, society and armed forces in crushing a terrorist armed force which was one of the best known brand names in the business. What is required is, among other things, an understanding of the specificity of the Sri Lankan achievement and the limits of its relevance and possible application. Its adoption will require considerable local adaptation.

When the insurgency was at the stage that it might have been split and undermined by reforms, the obduracy of political parties and leaders claiming to speak for the Sinhala majority, forestalled such reform. At a subsequent stage, the insurgency had grown to the point that it was dominated and then violently monopolized by the most extremist and fanatical organization. This became the main factor that precluded any serious reform, though by then the state was “walking on two legs” as Chairman Mao would have it, striving to combine political reform with military offensives. In the third stage, the administration adopted a policy of unilateral concessions which its opponents within the State and without, denounced as a policy of appeasement. Even such a policy failed to thaw the insurgent movement, which was unwilling to settle for anything less than de-facto separation and that too as a halfway house to de jure independence, openly proclaiming and inwardly believing that it could beat the state forces in any confrontation while deterring any significant external support for the state. In its final phase, the separatist insurgency having grown to the level of a contending armed force but without the undergirding, organic support structures necessary for a guerrilla force to move to stage three of the Mao-Giap schema. This provided the Sri Lankan state with the opportunity of a full-on multi-front military offensive and to defeat the Tigers in a classic denouement.

The main lessons then are, in the form of thirteen theses, the following:

Thesis I Early reforms may undercut the momentum of an insurgency; delayed ones will not.

Thesis II The success of efforts at conflict resolution depends crucially on the intrinsic character of the armed non-state actor in question. One size does not fit all.

Thesis III Distinctions must be drawn between terrorist movements and armed resistance movements as well as between rational albeit extremist/radical organizations and non-rational, fanatical or fundamentalist ones.

Thesis IV Further differentiations must be made with regard to the stage of growth of the armed struggle and the character of the organization that exercises fluid or entrenched hegemony or monopoly within that struggle.

Thesis V Military action must not be the first resort or the main aspect of policy in the first instance, though a security component may be needed to effect and safeguard reforms.

Thesis VI However, if the armed struggle is monopolized by a fanatical organization which violates humanitarian norms and resorts persistently to terrorism (defined as the intentional or witting targeting of noncombatants), then the military factor in the state’s response must perforce acquire greater importance.

Thesis VII The political, social and military tracks of a multi-track strategy must not undermine each other; they must demonstrate policy coherence and converge on a clear strategic goal.

Thesis VIII In the case of an armed struggle that has grown to the point of large unit conventional or semi-conventional combat, it must be recognized as a war and must be fought as such.

Thesis IX The objective of such a war could either be the defeat of the enemy or driving it to a negotiated settlement that is balanced, mutual, reciprocal and verifiable, rather than a breathing space for rearming, regrouping and renewal of the insurgency.

Thesis X Third party efforts at conflict resolution must not depend solely or primarily on those states which have ethnic constituencies, indigenous or immigrant, drawn from only one of the belligerents. Though such states may be the ones to be automatically drawn in, and therefore most strongly motivated to play a role with its attendant risks, such embedded lobbies of co-ethnics in a zero sum situation will vitiate attempts at conflict resolution because the intermediary will not be perceived as a neutral umpire, and there will be a backlash. Ideally the mediating/intervening state should have, in its make-up, no correlative reflecting the conflict, or should fairly evenly represent all the belligerent communities, or should be a regional coalition which collectively neutralizes the profile of unevenness in the composition of any one state.

Thesis XI In the extreme case of an insurgency that is dominated or monopolized by a terrorist and or fanatical organization and has grown to the level of a war, the objective of state policy must, indeed can, be nothing other than the military defeat of the enemy, the destruction of its military apparatus, the neutralization of its leadership and the recovery of all terrain lost to it, in short “the annihilation of the living forces of the enemy” as the world’s greatest living strategist, Vietnam’s General Vo Nguyen Giap, put it.

Thesis XII Such a war must not be punctuated by ceasefires and negotiations which debilitate the morale of the armed forces.

Thesis XIII In the case of an outcome of the decisive military defeat of the enemy, socio-political reforms could parallel but must at least follow the military victory and do so swiftly. If not there could either be a reactivation of the insurgency or the permanent alienation of a section of the citizenry which either supported or came under the influence of the armed struggle or belong to the same social constituency from which it sprang and share the insurgents’ sense of collective grievance.

Prospects

The most intense and high profile aspect of the Sri Lankan conflict has just been resolved: the deadly conflict; the mid-intensity war. What remains is the postwar crisis, the delay or inability to reap the peace dividend by making the transition to a stable and just framework for durable peace and successful nation building.

Sri Lanka now has a second chance. It is as if we have obtained a second Independence, when we were ahead of the game in the rest of Asia but we then blew it. Let’s hope we do not blow it yet again.

(Concluded)

[“Will Sri Lanka win the peace?” was a question posed by Singapore’s Minister of Law, K Chanmugam, opening the 5th International Conference on South Asia organized by the Institute for South Asian Studies (ISAS) of the National University of Singapore last week. The President of Singapore, SR Nathan closed the proceedings, launching South Asia Link, a hub for networking the 30 million strong worldwide South Asian Diaspora. Paper presenters included Sartaj Aziz former Finance Minister and Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, and Mani Shanker Iyer former Minister of Rural Local Self-Government of India. The paper on Prospects for Conflict Resolutions in South Asia was presented by Dr Dayan Jayatilleka. What follows is a brief extract from that 10,000 word paper which covered contemporary India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.]

-Sri Lanka Guardian