The war and politics

By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

‘It’s fine. It is not "terrible" at all. It is anything but "terrible." ’- Mao Ze Dong (1927)

(May 19, Singapore City, Sri Lanka Guardian) The hot war on Lankan soil is over; the Cold War against Sri Lanka continues. The International Crisis Group (ICG) report calling for an international investigation into so-called ‘atrocities’ committed in the main by Sri Lankan armed forces in the last phase of the conflict by allegedly killing tens of thousands of civilians through shelling and bombing, is an onslaught in that Cold war. It is also an escalation of the worldwide ‘battle of interpretations’ on the war we won a year ago. Inasmuch as it is an occasion for propaganda and demonstrations externally against Sri Lanka, our armed forces and the sentiments of the vast majority of Sri Lankan citizens, a demonstrative signal must be given by a resounding national endorsement of the victory. It is a pity that such a unified, bi-partisan national signal is weakened both by an entrenched, unpatriotic Opposition leadership and the authorities’ grotesque, counterproductive ‘overkill’ in the handling of contradictions with the former Army commander.

Mao’s early, career-launching essay investigating the peasant movement in the Hunan, has a segment with the intriguing subheading "It’s Fine or It’s Terrible". He meant that opinion was divided between those who thought the violent peasant uprising in the Hunan was ‘a fine thing’ and those who thought it was ‘terrible’ or ‘went too far’. (Mao emphasised that all progressives should be of the view that it was fine). On V Day, Sri Lankan and world opinion is divided between those who think that the Final War and its outcome - especially the climactic last battle at Nandikadal — was "fine" and those who think it was "terrible". I think it was "fine".

The event we seek to celebrate restored the basic sense of safety, security, and it must be said, self –respect, of the vast majority of Sri Lankan citizens of all ethnicities and religions.

Does the possibility or even likelihood that horrors took place in the prosecution of a just war, alter the fundamentally just character of that war? Not unless the firebombing of Dresden and the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki make the Allied campaign for the elimination of the fascist Axis powers, an unjust war. Of course, the just character of the war does not make these attacks less morally abhorrent.

The end of the conflict was bloody, but what did one expect? With their obduracy and exaggerated sense of influence in the outside world, the Tigers did not surrender or let their people go. With the widely advertised prospect of their external support and chances for external re-grouping, they had to be uprooted. With their accumulated crimes and atrocities, the sword of justice and retribution had to complete its downward swing and heavy fall. Those who sought to obstruct it were guilty of seeking unwittingly to prolong the conflict.

External pressure to terminate the conflict short of victory, leaving the enemy leadership intact, in fact drove a determined state and nation to end the conflict decisively by terminating the enemy. The state had to balance between outrunning interference and intervention on the part of those who sought to use Sri Lanka as a test case for elastic versions of the ‘protection doctrine’ and the need to reduce intensity of operations due to electoral compulsions next door. The specific timing and intensity of the final surge was of course due to external determinants, given that a window could have begun to close if an election in the neighbourhood had gone differently. It was a risk that could not be taken.

Could the war have ended differently? Yes, but the difference could have been for better or worse. An external intervention to prevent final victory would have led to carnage as the Indian intervention of 1987 brought in its wake, not only the laudable Indo Lanka accord with its enlightened Preamble, but also boosted a simmering Southern insurgency into a civil war which left tens of thousands dead.

Does the rather dismal aftermath of the war validate the antiwar camp or those who wanted a ‘diplomatic endgame’? Not unless the onset of the Cold War, in the aftermath of WWII, renders the strategy of broad alliance against Nazi fascism and total war against it, wrong.

Are these analogies false because what we had here was a civil war and should eschew all celebration, adopting instead an air of collective mourning because all who died were our citizens? Not if one is aware that in December 1865, the Union armies staged a massive parade with the Capitol as a backdrop, in commemoration of the first anniversary of victory in the US Civil War against the Secessionist confederacy; a celebration billed as an effort to ‘raise the morale of a war-weary nation’. It would not have warmed the hearts of the populace in the Southern states through which the Union armies marched to the sea, adopting scorched earth tactics on the way.

Thus the war was inevitable, defensive, waged by a legitimate authority (a recognised state, with an elected government) against an illegal and illegitimate enemy which had repeatedly returned to war despite the availability of space for negotiations and reforms, of alternatives to war. In short, it was a just war in its essential character (Augustine), though perhaps not entirely in its methods (Aquinas) of occasional ‘Battle of Algiers’ urban counterterrorism.

A Sunday columnist, a Trotskyite professor who claims that "actually [Gen Vo Nguyen] Giap did not win a single major battle against a vastly superior enemy" – thus exhibiting his awesome ignorance of the historic triumph over French colonialism at Dien Bien Phu in ’54, which set the stage for Bandung — raises the question as to "where Vellupillai Prabaharan stands as a military-political leader on the world stage" if one used the criteria of Sun Tzu! Prabhakaran’s standing "on the world stage", as distinct from the South Asian region, is not as a politico-military leader but as a terrorist: the man who ordered the assassination of Nehru’s grandson; was responsible for the murder of leaders of two countries; pioneered the suicide vest; fielded more suicide bombers than all Islamist groups put together and was named in the special Millennium magazine supplement of The Times (UK) devoted to the theme of Death, as the man personally responsible for the most number of violent deaths on the planet. As for "military–political leadership on the world stage", he could neither retain Jaffna in 1995 nor re-take it in 2000, let alone liberate the North and East of a small island after over quarter century in combat, while in slightly less time Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance had forced the Israelis out twice. Of course Giap had beaten the Japanese, French, and Americans in thirty years, Mao had liberated the world’s most populous nation in twenty, and Fidel had liberated his long large island in roughly two.

Why then did it take so long to finish Prabhakaran off? I would submit it was because of the politico-strategic failures of successive Sri Lankan leaderships in wartime, up until Mahinda Rajapaksa got the fundamentals right. All previous political leaders fought hard enough to successfully deny victory to Prabhakaran, but they never retained the strategic initiative — and thus let him dominate and determine the course of events.

Had JR Jayewardene used his unprecedented 5/6ths majority in parliament and his executive powers as president to fulfil his election pledge, summon an all party roundtable conference and resolve the Tamil grievances he had identified in his winning manifesto of 1977, and had his party barons not turned the 1981 DDC elections in Jaffna into a violent farce, the urban guerrilla war would not have gathered ground and momentum. Had Cabinet Minister Cyril Mathew been prohibited from widely disseminating racist literature through official channels and make inflammatory speeches thereby contributing to the outbreak of anti-Tamil riots of July 1983, had these riots not taken place or had JR cracked down on it sooner and harder (which he was arguably unable to do, owing to the mono-ethnic nature of the army), the Tigers would not have emerged dominant among the Tamils, a great many of whom were looking for a military instrument of revenge for the humiliation they had unjustly suffered.

Had JR Jayewardene not wrecked his country’s nonaligned foreign policy and friendship with India, the Sri Lankan army would not have been prevented by India from prosecuting the offensive on Jaffna (Operation Liberation) in 1987, and the war would have been won.

Had JRJ not shut off the safety valves by holding a referendum instead of the scheduled parliamentary elections, and had he not unjustly banned the JVP on trumped up charges of participating in the July 1983 anti-Tamil attacks, he would not have had a second southern insurrection at the time of the indo-Lanka accord, thwarting or retarding the implementation of devolution. In that event, with devolution implemented to the agreed extent and on schedule, the IPKF could have gone flat out, and won the war.

Had Premadasa followed up his twin achievements in overcoming JRJ’s legacy — defeating the JVP insurrection (which was already taking targets in the city while shutting it down repeatedly) and restoring sovereignty by sending off 70,000 Indian troops from Sri Lankan soil — with a third achievement, bringing his forceful personality and management skills to bear as Commander-in-Chief in full support of his appointees Generals Kobbekaduwe and Wimalaratne in a determined quest to win, instead of attempting to be ‘non interfering’, ‘above the fray’ and ‘letting the professionals handle it’ while hoping for the Tigers to negotiate or implode, he and we would be living today in a more developed, modern, egalitarian, pluralist Sri Lanka as full partner of the Asian economic miracle.

Had DB Wijetunga agreed to the military’s plan articulated by ‘Lucky’ Algama, of a Jaffna offensive, instead of inquiring whether it will cause casualties, the war could have been shortened.

Had Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga viewed her electoral victory accurately as not solely a massive mandate for peace but also the result of the LTTE’s serial decapitation of the UNP; had she prudently picked the 13th amendment (which as India Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao just recently reiterated, is the ‘fulcrum’ of provincial autonomy) or the Mangala Moonesinghe proposals (which Madam Bandaranaike had signed off on) as the start-line, and not overshot the mark and wasted time and political capital on a federalising ‘union of regions’ package; had she presented the more moderate August 2000 draft in 1995; had she settled upon Devananda and Siddharthan as her Tamil political partners instead of pursuing the mirage of a negotiated peace with the Tigers right through to 2005; had she as commander-in-chief, ordered the Tigers to be encircled and destroyed in the liberation of Jaffna (Operation Riviresa) instead of letting them escape with the civilians into the Wanni; had she used her courageous cousin Anuruddha Ratwatte in the role President Rajapaksa deployed his brother Gotabhaya; had she not patronised and encouraged the Sudu Nelum antiwar movement which conducted pacifist propaganda in the Sinhala areas while the war was raging – thereby hampering morale and military recruitment; had she given full command and free rein to the best professionals such as Sandhurst-trained General Gerry de Silva instead of the mediocre General Daluwatte; had she not squandered the opportunity of rousing global sympathy for Sri Lanka’s war and against the Tigers immediately after their suicide attack which blinded her in one eye and instead switched on the Norwegian peace track; had she not picked Norway, with its obvious Tamil Diaspora instead of Japan (which neither a Tamil lobby nor granted the state any military aid); had she not wasted the opportunity for a full on counter-offensive with the rapid induction of airpower, presented by her own sterling defence of Jaffna in 2000 after the fall of Elephant Pass; had she not delayed in authorising the LRRP deep penetration raids on the Tiger command structure until after the Katunayake attack; had she not turned her back on the possibilities opened up by the US ‘global war on terror’ by making key speeches in London and Delhi proclaiming that ‘terrorism cannot be defeated by military means’ (which Mahinda Rajapakse has given the lie to); had she not sabotaged the Karuna rebellion by permitting the LTTE to pass through the Sri Lankan naval cordon and land in the rear of the Karuna rebel forces; had she not marginalised Lakshman Kadirgamar and negotiated a post tsunami joint mechanism with the LRRP/DPU and tsunami-weakened LTTE which gave them equal representation with the legitimate state in its top tier and a 5:3 advantage in its vital middle tier, with a headquarters located in the Tiger controlled Wanni – then she could have won the war, implemented a reasonable autonomy arrangement and constructed a progressive pluralist society.

Had Ranil Wickremesinghe not abjectly signed an asymmetrical CFA which did not reflect the actual balance of power between the Sri Lankan state and an LTTE which had begun to be weakened by the first LRRP hits on its command structure (‘Lt Col’ Shanker being killed in Sept 2001); had he not agreed to disarm the anti-Tiger Tamil groups without mentioning the issue of decommissioning under international auspices of Tiger weapons; had he not been a model of supine appeasement and responded resolutely to Tiger abductions and killings of Police and army personnel even in the city and suburbs of Colombo; had he not undermined the morale of his military by the Athurugiriya DMI ‘safe house’ raid and the ensuing interrogations, the dispute with the Jaffna army chief over the HSZs, the intervention in which a Tiger ship was allowed to go unscathed from a Sri Lankan navy ambush; had he not allowed free passage for sophisticated electronic communications equipment for the Tigers, not to mention the broadcast of Prabhakaran’s warmongering ‘Mahaveera’ speeches through the Rupavahini; had he used his ‘American connection’ to present Sri Lanka as a frontline in the global war on terror instead of providing an excuse for the Tigers in Washington to the effect that military means should be used against ‘international terrorists’ and not the Tigers (who were manifestly no longer ‘national’ when they blew up Rajiv Gandhi); had he used his supposed international connections to strengthen the Sri Lankan military or secured a public Western commitment so that either could have served as a deterrent to the Tigers – then perhaps the inflation of Tiger territory, power and ego would not have taken place to the extent that they planned and for and publicly proclaimed the imminence of ‘The Final War’ (HRW Dec 2005).

Sinhala nationalism with its fundamentalist fringe, was the default option of the majority of citizens in the face of the combination of (a) the existential threat posed by Tiger dominance and aggression and (b) the vacuum created by the irresponsibility, failure or incomplete and inadequate success of more pluralist, moderate leaderships in the core tasks of liberating the citizenry from terrorism and unifying the island under the standard of a single, sovereign State. Does the absence or delay of a just peace retrospectively delegitimize a just war, and does a just war preclude the prospective struggle for a just peace? I think not.