The International Dimensions of the conflict in Sri Lanka

by Ana Pararajasingham
(The views expressed by the author are his own)

(September 09, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) In May 2009, the three decade long armed rebellion in Sri Lanka ended with the defeat of the Tamil Tiger forces. Beijing provided Colombo not only with military supplies but also diplomatic cover to prosecute the war. China, however, was not the only international actor whose support helped Colombo to vanquish the Tamil Tigers. It was also due to India’s logistical support to cut off Tigers’ weapons supply. Then there was Pakistan, Sri Lanka’s ally of several decades. Iran and Russia had entered the fray invited by Colombo at the behest of China to dilute Indian influence. India’s attempt to balance China was driven by the logic that it could not sit back and surrender Sri Lanka into China’s embrace. New Delhi wanted to ensure that Colombo stayed within its orbit.

In the early 1980’s when Sri Lanka under a pro-western Government began to look to the West in its war against the Tamil rebels, India acted quickly by arming and training the Tamils to exert pressure on Colombo. Consequently, New Delhi was able to persuade Colombo to sign the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord recognizing India’s pre-eminence as the regional power. As a result Colombo remained within India’s orbit despite the Northeast of the island coming under the control of the fiercely independent and single-minded Tamil Tigers.

This was largely true until the early years of the 21st century. But, by then the cold war was history and the US-led West had emerged more powerful than ever before. At the same time, the Indian Ocean had become strategically important due to the phenomenal growth of China and India. In this scenario, Sri Lanka due to its location in the Indian Ocean is a strategically significant state.

Beginning in 2002, the United States had enhanced its involvement in Sri Lanka by backing Norway which had initiated a process to broker peace between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan Government. The reasons for the ‘enhanced’ involvement by the US was attributed by US Ambassador Lunstead to the post-Sept. 11, 2001 atmosphere to confront terrorism, the presence of a pro-West Government in Colombo and the personal interest of then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Lunstead identified the first two as enabling factors and the third—the personal involvement of Deputy Secretary Armitage as the one that drove U.S. involvement. Armitage’s interest was summed up as one prompted by the desire to help a country torn by conflict, terrorism and human rights abuses. Lunstead was emphatic that this occurred despite the absence of significant U.S. strategic interests in Sri Lanka “contrary to the musings of various South Asian theorists”[1]

But such musings were not confined to South Asian theorists alone, it included others closely involved with the Cease Fire Agreement. Trond Furuhovde, a Norwegian Monitor appointed to oversee the Cease-Fire wrote in the Norwegian Daily, Adressa on 30 January 2006 that the role of the Americans was dictated by their new strategy based on their changed interests in Asia. China had increased its presence in these same oceans, as has India. The background for them all is the wish for control of the sea routes from the west, through the Malacca Strait into the South China Sea. In this picture Sri Lanka with its geographic location takes a central place. The east coast of the island with the harbour city of Trincomalee and the Batticaloa lagoon offers extremely important sea-strategic possibilities.

But with the election of the stridently anti-Western Mahinda Rajapaksa as President in 2005, the US and the Norwegians were sidelined. China was more than ready to help realizing the tremendous strategic advantage that laid in store should it manage to secure a role for itself as Sri Lanka’s main backer. It was successful in this bid. In return, China was permitted to build a port in Sri Lanka’s southern coast in Hambantota directly astride the main east-west shipping route across the Indian Ocean. In the process Hambantota became another pearl in China’s “String of Pearls” strategy, which has to date involved building ports through the littorals of the Straits of Malacca, Chittagong in Bangladesh; Laem Chabang in Myanmar; Sihanoukville in Thailand and Gwadar in Pakistan. As part of the Hambantota project several thousand Chinese laborers are now in Sri Lanka and Chinese have a visible presence in the island.

In 2009, China provided USD $1.2 billion to Sri Lanka investing in several projects. It is also rebuilding the main roads in the war-shattered Northeast. In 2010, following a three-day visit led by Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang to Colombo, as many as six agreements were signed. The agreements cover highways development, enhanced cooperation in information technology and communication, development of maritime ports and the second phase of the Hambontota Port Development Project.[2]

The US attempt to bring about a regime change by backing General Sarath Fonseka, the former army commander and US Green Card holder at the Presidential elections in January 2010 failed when Rajapakse was re-elected President by an overwhelming majority. The US strategy was doomed because of the strong anti-Western sentiments that had come to prevail during the war. These were fueled by criticism of the Sri Lankan Government’s conduct during the final phases of the war by several western governments, media and other agencies. In December 2008, the New York-based Genocide Prevention Project cited Sri Lanka as one of the eight "red alert" countries where genocide and other mass atrocities were underway or risk breaking out. In February 2009, the Boston Globe compared the ongoing massacre in Sri Lanka to the Bosnian Srebrenica genocide and pointed out that Sri Lanka's armed forces had in the previous month employed indiscriminate bombing and shelling to herd 350,000 Tamil civilians into a government-prescribed "safety zone," where, more than 1,000 were slaughtered and more than 2,500 injured. Several western governments called for investigations into war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government. The Sri Lankan ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva rejected these allegations as `outrageous` and likened it to asking the triumphant Allies of World War II to be tried for war crimes in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Sri Lanka`s minister of disaster management and human rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe declared that his government was `sick and tired` of what he called foreign meddling.[3]

It was in this atmosphere that Fonseka announced his candidature for Presidency immediately upon his return from a visit to the US after meeting with officials of US Department of State and Department of Homeland Security. Fonseka was thus seen as a candidate of the West notwithstanding his credentials as a ‘war hero’ and an ardent ultra-nationalist.[4]

Whilst China’s overwhelming presence in Sri Lanka is causing some angst amongst Indian political analysts, New Delhi appears to believe that its geographical proximity is sufficient to retain leverage with Sri Lanka. Underpinning this line of thinking is either a confident assumption that it can counter Chinese influence or the notion that it can balance China by assisting in development projects as it assisted during the war.

In a an attempt to retrieve some grounds lost to the Chinese, India has offered to install a 500MW thermal power plant at Trincomalee; construct a rail link between Talaimannar and Madhu; reconstruct the Palaly Airport and re-develop the harbour at Kankesanthurai.[5] Significantly all these projects are in the Northeast of the island- a region overwhelmingly Tamil and referred to as “areas of historical habitation of Sri Lankan Tamil speaking peoples” in the now defunct Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. Behind India’s belated attempt is perhaps the motive to build a strategic presence in a region populated by a people who have been regarded by many an Indian analyst as ‘India’s natural allies’ and thus ‘balance’ China’s influence. This is a weak strategy in the absence of a countervailing force that can contain Colombo. .

In any case New Delhi attempts to gain a foothold in the pre-dominantly Tamil Northeast, are undermined by rapid changes to the demography of this region modeled on Chinese actions in Tibet. These attempts can result in a Northeast that is no more Tamil dominated and thus remove the rationale for the strategic space that New Delhi seeks to create. Ramu Manivannan, Associate Professor, with the Department of Politics & Public Administration at the University of Madras in Tamil Nadu has written of historical shifts taking place with profound implications for the future.[6]

Consequently, it is becoming increasingly clear that, the state of Sri Lanka is on its way to be becoming a powerful base from which China contains India on its southern flank, while escalating its incursions into Arunachal Pradesh (‘Southern Tibet” in its parlance) from the North. Nor can one discount China’s recent deployment of troops into Pakistan -controlled Kashmir which it had provocatively referred to as Northern Pakistan.[7]

The West having been forced to forfeit the strategically significant state of Sri Lanka has done little to check Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, Beijing has demonstrated its aggressive trait by deciding to enforce its claim to almost the entire South China Sea as its "historical waters," identifying this as a "core interest" on a par with Taiwan and Tibet.[8] To-date the Obama administration’s response to this development has been muted. Earlier, notwithstanding an assessment by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair of China as one of the foremost threats to the United States, the administration decided to downgrade China from "Priority 1" status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to "Priority 2”.[9] Whilst this has been interpreted as part of the Obama administration's larger effort to develop a more cooperative relationship with Beijing[10] , its critics have tended to describe Obama administration’s approach as ‘appeasement’[11]

While New Delhi seeks to ‘balance’ and Washington to ‘appease’, China can only become even more aggressive. in establishing itself as the Asian power. This is in direct contrast to India’s position which has been to accept Chinese presence in South Asia as inevitable and accommodate itself to this reality.[12]

It was on Sri Lanka’s beach front battlefields that China’s “peaceful rise” was completed”.[13] Indeed it was in Sri Lanka that China crossed the Rubicon by abandoning its policy of peaceful rise to one of calculated aggression by demonstrating its strategic effectiveness in a region traditionally outside its orbit[14]. More to the point what does this mean in the context of the ‘great game’ of this century being played out on the waters of the Indian Ocean.


[1]Lunstead J in “ The United State’s role in Sri Lanka’s Peace Process 2002-2006” originally published by The Asia Foundation in 2007 and included in the CJPD’s Publication ‘International Dimensions of the Conflict in Sri Lanka”, 2008.

[2] Das R N. “China’s Foray into Sri Lanka and India’s Response” http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ChinasForayintoSriLankaandIndiasResponse_rndas_050810

viewed on 18 august 2010 (website of the Indian Institute for Defence studies and Analysis (IDSA).

[3]Reuters, “UN rights body backs Sri Lankan resolution on war”, 27 May 2009, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LR170562.htm Viewed on 21 August 2010

[4] Rajasingham AT , “Shocking revelation of what Fonseka did in U S”, Asian Tribune ,14 February 2010 http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ChinasForayintoSriLankaandIndiasResponse_rndas_050810 Viewed on 18 august 2010 “http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2010/02/14/shocking-revelation-what-fonseka-did-u-s-asian-tribune

[5] Das R N. “China’s Foray into Sri Lanka and India’s Response” http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ChinasForayintoSriLankaandIndiasResponse_rndas_050810

viewed on 18 august 2010 (website of the Indian Institute for Defence studies and Analysis (IDSA).

[6] Ramu Manivannan, “Historical Shift - India, Sri Lanka and the Tamils” 7 June 2010 http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers39/paper3847.html (website of the South Asia Analysis Group). Viewed on 22 August 2010

[7] Saibal Das Gupta “China calls PoK 'northern Pakistan', J&K is 'India-controlled Kashmir'” Times of India 2 September 2010.

[8]” Wall Street Journal Asian Edition “The Chinese Military Challenge” 18 August 2010

[9] Bill Gertz,“China removed as top priority for spies”, Washington Times 20 August 2010

[10] ibid

[11] William R. Hawkins,” Why Did U.S. Kowtow to Chinese Naval Ambitions?”, Accuracy in Media, 27 July 2010 http://www.aim.org/guest-column/why-did-u-s-kowtow-to-chinese-naval-ambitions/ Viewed on 20 August 2010

[12] Jacques M, “When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World “Allen Lane, Uk 2009, ,p340

[13] Wen Liao , “China Crosses the Rubicon”, Financial Review, 23 June 2009

[14] ibid