by Izeth Hussain
In the Oxford contretemps the Tamil diaspora showed an unexpected strength. Furthermore, the demonstrations against the President’s visit showed a very indulgent attitude indeed on the part of the British authorities towards the nominally proscribed LTTE. We have to infer considerable British displeasure over the way the Government is handling the ethnic problem in the aftermath of last year’s military victory. We must note also that the Indian Foreign Minister’s recent visit made it clear that India continues to insist on a political solution on the basis of devolution, more specifically on the basis of 13A, and the Joint Communiqué issued at the conclusion of the visit indicated that our Government is not in agreement with that position. Our Government favours a home-grown solution, for which indeed there might be a great deal to be said. The problem, however, is that for something to grow seeds have to be sown, and the fact is that since the military victory of over one and a half years ago not one single seed has been sown.
We have to recognize the fundamental factors behind India’s interest in our Tamil ethnic problem. In the world as a whole majorities rule and minorities could sometimes, perhaps often, have a tough time. In such cases considerable sympathy and support for minorities is evinced in the Western countries where human rights have become a significant factor in international relations. But should minority claims go beyond a certain point and become separatist all that sympathy and support can be lost. Chechnya provides a convincing illustration of what I have in mind. At the time I left Moscow in 1998 the Russian Government had clearly decided to allow Chechnya to become independent within a couple of years, but certain factors intervened – which need not be detailed here – and the rest of the world, including the Muslim part of it, acquiesced in Putin’s brutal subjugation of Chechnya. The most important underlying reason for that acquiescence I believe is that if separatist movements are encouraged it will become impossible to work out a new world order. Consequently if the SL Muslims strike out for a separate state they will loose the sympathy of the wider Islamic world, and the majority Sinhalese will be free to whack them mercilessly and with total impunity. The case is otherwise with our Tamils, obviously because of the Tamil Nadu factor. What happens to the Tamils here can cause a fall-out in Tamil Nadu, and that is not something that Delhi can afford to ignore. The global power configuration is changing, and more than one power can come to have an interest in breaking up India. It has to be expected, therefore, that India will do everything possible at this juncture to see that Sri Lanka proceeds after its splendid military victory towards a splendid political solution.
It has to be expected also that India’s main support for its insistence on a political solution based on devolution will come from the West. Normally – in terms of the argument advanced in the preceding paragraph – in the aftermath of the military victory, the West would have acquiesced in our Government doing whatever it pleases with our Tamils. Right through history the victor in an armed conflict has had certain privileges. But India’s insistence on a political solution puts our Tamils in a special category – and that really is the reason why the West has always had an ambivalent attitude towards the LTTE. On the one hand the Western countries were ready enough to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organization, while on the other much latitude has been allowed to the LTTE to carry on with its activities regardless of the proscription. The reason for that latitude, I believe, is the Western concern for human rights and the drive to build a new world order in which democracy and human rights are given a central place. That means that there is a conjunction of interest over the Tamil ethnic problem between India and the West.
That conjunction of interest will not go away as long as the Tamil ethnic problem remains unsolved, and that means that we must give some priority to repairing our relations with the West which are clearly in a very unsatisfactory state. What was unnerving about the EU decision against extending GSP+ was not the decision itself but the conditions laid down which were clearly meant to be humiliating to Sri Lanka, in a contemptuous exertion of raw economic power. And now comes the humiliating Oxford contretemps. It is time to shed the notion that the West is chagrined over its failure to bring about the break-up of Sri Lanka, for which there is not one shred of evidence. The failure to come up with a political solution is certainly the primary reason, but there could be other reasons as well. For instance the detail that the President was accompanied by an almost hundred strong delegation which stayed at state expense at the Dorchester Hotel could well provoke contempt. We must scrutinize possible failures on both sides in our relationship with the Western countries.
I must now clear up one point on which there has been much confusion before proceeding further. The global power configuration is changing, India, China, and some other countries will emerge as great powers, and the West will undoubtedly lose the pre-eminent position that it has had for centuries. But that has not yet happened, and the EU, the US, and their allies continue to command enormous economic, political, and military clout. I will provide an instance of what that could mean in practice. According to one of Kishore Mahbubani’s books a brilliant Permanent Representative of Brazil at the UN, who was making things difficult for the US, was suddenly removed without explanation from that post and was sent to the far less important one in Geneva. It later transpired that that was done on the diktat of the US, which had threatened in the alternative to block an IMF loan to Brazil. I am aware that one of our politically appointed Ambassadors was very outspokenly critical of Israel, over which the Israeli Government was very unhappy with him. Taking into account the peculiar importance the US attaches to the Yanko-Zionist alliance, the question arises whether the US demanded the unceremonious dismissal of that Ambassador, threatening to block an IMF loan. I don’t know, but what I do know is that the West acting in concert with India on the ethnic problem can be very dangerous for us.
I come now to the question of what practical action should be taken to repair our relations with the West A whole range of issues has to be examined in that connection, but as I cannot deal with all that in this brief article I will refer only to the root cause of our problems with the West: the failure to come up with a political solution. If the Government is allergic to the idea of a devolutionary solution on the basis of 13A, other devolutionary options could be feasible. Alternatively, we could think of a solution on the basis of a liberal model in which the individual, irrespective of his ethnic or any other group identity, has an unmediated relationship with the State. That could require measures such as an Equal Opportunities Bill. We can think of such options, and go on thinking about them, but there will inevitably come a time when India and the West get the impression of vacillation and prevarication on the part of the Government. We must bear in mind that there have been recent reports that India is concerned about a possible resurgence of the LTTE. It does seem that the Government must now start making meaningful moves towards a political solution.
In conclusion I must say that there is something peculiar in the way we Sri Lankans relate to the outside world. That was shown by the way J.R.Jayewardena managed to isolate Sri Lanka and made it totally vulnerable to India. It was shown by our uniquely condemning Norway’s role in the peace process, whereas every other country including India commended it. It is now shown in the hysterical reactions to US Ambassador Butenis’ leaked cable, which in terms of the norms of diplomatic practice has to be regarded as unexceptionable. I will make some comments on it to show what I have in mind.
It is normal, and not at all morally reprehensible, for an Ambassador to say one thing to his government and something else to the government to which he is accredited, and his right to do so is ensured by the fact that the diplomatic bag is immune from inspection by the host government. He lies abroad for the good of his country. His government expects him to report on developments in the host country accurately, knowledgeably, without bias, and any consistent show of bias will certainly adversely affect his career prospects. I see no anti-Sri Lanka bias in the Butenis cable. She wrote that there is no case of a government undertaking wholesale investigations into alleged war crimes committed by its troops and senior officials. That purports to be a factual statement, which I believe cannot be challenged. No bias there. She referred to "the fact" that responsibility for many of the alleged war crimes rests with the senior civil and military leadership, including the President, his brothers, and General Fonseka. Most Sri Lankans will find that very upsetting, of course, but the important point is that she was not trying to establish a case against the President etc in a biased way, but was merely referring to what her government believed to be a fact. Upsetting, but no bias there again.
Most impressive for showing that Butenis was not biased was the way she dealt with the problem of alleged war crimes. Her emphasis was heavily on the fact that with just one singular exception all the Tamil parties and politicians contacted were against investigations at that stage. True, Butenis did not explicitly support that position, but that was probably because as a practiced hand at diplomacy she knew that her government in deciding its position would take into account various factors that were beyond her ken. But we cannot doubt that she was against investigations at that stage – that is in the pre-Presidential elections period. The case against holding investigations just now has become much stronger. Our first need now, the most imperative one, is to heal the wounds of protracted ethnic conflict and to go towards national reconciliation. That, everyone in his right mind will agree, would be unthinkable if concurrently there are investigations into alleged war crimes. But the problem of investigations is not going to go away. We should think therefore of a compromise formula under which we agree to hold investigations sometime in the indeterminate future, if the case for it is really established. Perhaps that will not be possible. It remains, however, that we can think of a compromise only if we approach a problem without losing our balance, without striking ultra-nationalist postures and becoming hysterical. That seems to me the first essential in repairing relations with the West.
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