The Ban Ki-moon conspiracy

by Izeth Hussain

(May 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Normally the use of the term "conspiracy" denotes that a writer has a penchant for the sensational and that he cannot be taken without reservations as a serious political analyst. But the plain truth is that conspiracies abound in the world of politics, and they certainly feature in international relations as well. The Ban Ki-Moon affair is pre-eminently one of which we can scarcely make sense except on the hypothesis of a conspiracy. The man was a bureaucrat for decades, and like outstandingly successful bureaucrats all over the world he had to be a conformist, an adept at toeing the line, incapable of thinking outside the box, and with inordinate respect for power and hierarchy. Furthermore, he was a South Korean diplomat for decades, which means that he would always have had to bear in mind that going up the ladder would have required that Washington had nothing against him. We must also bear in mind that after Boutros-Ghali the US resolved that no one would be tolerable as UN Secretary General unless he could be trusted to show respect for the power of the big big powers of the world, notably the US.

Ban Ki-Moon antics

How, then, has it come about that this little man has engaged in antics that have deeply upset us in Sri Lanka for several weeks? He may have been within his rights in appointing a three-member panel to advise him on alleged war crimes committed in Sri Lanka. But it is questionable whether he can go further, for which he has no UN mandate. Obviously, powerful forces are arrayed behind him, one of which is certainly the US as suggested by some seeming coincidences. Another is Britain, because it is known that where the American juggernaut goes, the British poodle follows. They are the forces in the conspiracy behind the Ban Ki-Moon antics, about which I believe there will be widespread agreement both within and outside Sri Lanka. But I want to go much further and suggest, heretically, that the other power involved in the conspiracy is India.

"  There are some things that we must bear in mind in relation to the Tamil Nadu factor in Delhi’s politics. India is not the conventional nation state which coheres for the most part around a major ethnic group. It consists of a huge multiplicity of ethnic groups, languages, religions, regional cultures etc, far more than in the case of Switzerland or any other country, so that Indian unity seems an anomaly. It has been plagued by what Indians used to call "  fissiparous tendencies"   right from the inception".

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At this point, I must state that no responsible Sri Lankan should do anything, particularly at this juncture, that could conceivably provoke anti-Indian hysteria in Sri Lanka. But, a realistic approach to the Ban Ki-Moon affair requires that India be regarded as a member of the conspiracy, at the very least as a possibility. We can take it that India has far more accurate and reliable information about what transpired in the final phases of the war than any other power. How, then, explain the thunderous silence over a long period from our most sympathetic, most reliable, and most powerful ally? The conclusion seems inescapable that India had found it politic to maintain that thunderous silence for reasons that it has chosen not to avow. I believe further that when those reasons are avowed, or they come to be understood, the international community as a whole – most certainly the Western powers – will regard the conspiracy as a benign one, with India’s role having behind it benign intentions towards Sri Lanka and the rest of the world.

The important point about the hypothesised partners to the conspiracy is that there is a convergence of interests that brings them together. All three are front-rank players in the new world order that is taking shape, together with Russia, China, Japan, Western Europe, and others such as notably Brazil to follow. Broadly speaking the new world order is to be established on democracy as the ideal form of governance, with a special focus on human rights. The problem about the new world order is that it has as its obverse side the new imperialism, a case which I have been arguing in earlier articles and which I cannot fully address here. In addition to being a front-rank player in shaping the new world order together with the US and Britain, India has a very special interest: it is to establish a stable and abiding political solution to Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic problem on the basis of devolution. We can take it that the US and Britain, as well as Western Europe, are deeply sympathetic towards that objective because it would be fully consistent with the new world order, while the others are probably ambivalent about it.

Human rights

I will now try to make sense of the Ban Ki-Moon affair in terms of the paradigm that I have very briefly sketched out above. The Westerners, who have been the most in earnest in improving human rights standards, have had much difficulty in utilising the UN for that and allied purposes, being sometimes forced to intervene in other countries without UN sanction. Russia and China can use their vetoes in the Security Council. Both countries have unsavoury human rights records, and both have serious minorities’ problems, Russia in particular having a grotesque record in Chechnya. In the Human Rights Council in Geneva also effective action can often be blocked by third world countries with unsavoury human rights records and which are not famous for fair and equal treatment of the minorities.

In that context, the Advisory Panel’s Report can be seen as a brilliantly successful outcome of a strategy aimed at circumventing the UN, at least to an important extent. True, the Report does not have a UN mandate behind it, but it is in the public domain and Sri Lanka has been effectively put in the dock. Other countries can make up their minds about the validity or otherwise of the supposed findings in the Report, taking into account of course the response of the SL Government. It is not clear what kind of action could follow. What is clear, however, is that it would be foolish to underestimate the power that can be deployed by the rich and powerful countries of the world, bearing in mind the economic and other vulnerability of many of the Third World countries, and bearing in mind also that Russia and China have to give priority to their own interests which may sometimes require compromises with the West. It does not seem excessive therefore to say that an eagle is poised over Sri Lanka prepared to swoop and strike.

International community

I come now to India’s very special interest to which I alluded above. It arises out of the fact that what happens to the Tamils in Sri Lanka – what happens in a negative sense – causes a fall-out in Tamil Nadu. It can cause restiveness there, or go further to the making of demands that Delhi intervene to safeguard the legitimate interests of the SL Tamils. It can go even further than that and theoretically lead to demands for a separate Tamil Nadu state, or - according to a recent statement by an influential Tamil Nadu politician – to the demand that India take action to break up Sri Lanka as happened to Pakistan. India can, therefore, claim a legitimate interest in what happens to the SL Tamils. Most Sri Lankans would refuse to recognise that claim, but evidently the international community accepts it as shown for instance by the fact that the 1987 air-drop did not lead to condemnation of India for violation of international law and aggression against Sri Lanka. Only Japan made a mild demur by stating that India had ‘transgressed’ international law. A recent development should illuminate us about the legitimacy of the Indian claim: as a consequence of the earthquakes in Japan we are now concerned that nuclear reactors in South India can leak with terrible fall-out in Sri Lanka. We, therefore, could have a legitimate interest in a development within India. Likewise, we should accept that India could have a legitimate interest in what happens within Sri Lanka.

Some Sri Lankans have in recent times come to believe that the Tamil Nadu economy is booming so gloriously that most of the people there have lost all interest in what happens to the Tamils here. It may well be so, but sometimes what counts is not what the people want but what the politicians want. At the moment Jayalalitha, Karunanidhi, and other TN politicians are making escalating statements against Sri Lanka with the polls in mind. What really matters however is that Delhi has perforce to engage in futurological exercises to guess what could happen if Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem remains politically unsolved. It is normal in futurological exercises to extrapolate past and present trends into the future, which is recognised as a legitimate procedure because usually what has been happening continues to happen. But sometimes the totally unexpected erupts with terrifying force. The best example is of course that of the collapse of Soviet and East European communism, and the break-up of the Soviet Union. All the experts were confounded, except for just two who – as far as I know – correctly forecast what was going to happen – Patrick Moynihan in the US and Emmanuel Todd in France.

There are some things that we must bear in mind in relation to the Tamil Nadu factor in Delhi’s politics. India is not the conventional nation state which coheres for the most part around a major ethnic group. It consists of a huge multiplicity of ethnic groups, languages, religions, regional cultures etc, far more than in the case of Switzerland or any other country, so that Indian unity seems an anomaly. It has been plagued by what Indians used to call "fissiparous tendencies" right from the inception. The Kashmir problem and the separatist struggles in the North East have persisted for decades. Obviously, Pakistan would like to see the break-up of India, and so may other powers in time to come. It has to be expected therefore that any sense of alienation in Tamil Nadu over the treatment of SL Tamils, and the perception that India is not responding adequately, is not something that Delhi can ever afford to ignore. We must face up to two facts. India has a legitimate interest in how Tamils are treated in Sri Lanka, which I believe is recognised by the international community as a whole – though of course that legitimate interest can morph into bullying and unwarranted interference. The second fact is that it is not just any legitimate interest that we are concerned with here, but – since it concerns India’s survival as a unity – a vital and primordial interest.

Conspiracy

According to the argument that I have been developing above it would be mistaken to give primary importance to Ban Ki-Moon, a dancing puppet, rather than to those who could be manipulating the strings. I have hypothesised a conspiracy in which the actors are the US, Britain, and India. The US has been known to be supportive of the Ban Ki-Moon Panel for several weeks, and according to The Island reports of yesterday and today, April 29, the US and Britain assert the identical position that accountability and ethnic reconciliation have to go together and that action should be taken in pursuance of the Report. Most important of all is the Delhi Foreign Ministry statement (The Island of April 28) which included the following, "The issues raised in the report need to be studied carefully. As a first step, we intend to engage with the government of Sri Lanka on the issues contained in the report." Russia has declared that it would use the veto should it become necessary, but apart from that there appear to have been no international governmental reactions to the Report.

It would be to labour the obvious to say that we should now move seriously towards a political solution of the ethnic problem, with the concurrence of India – something which has to be handled diplomatically to avoid rousing anti-Indian hysteria. The 13th Amendment still seems to be valid under international law. In any case India wants a solution on the basis of devolution, and that seems to be the problem because the Government has given the impression that it has developed an allergy to devolution. Modifications of 13A may be possible, and so might other options. But it is not necessary to discuss them here because what is crucial now is to establish that the Government is really serious about reaching a political solution. This is crucial because the Government has also given the impression of prevaricating by talking for two years about a home-grown solution without doing anything about it. Such a solution – or at least a basis for talks – is already available in the form of the year 2000 devolution proposal which got the concurrence of the major parties. That provides the basis for a home-grown solution because it was not formulated under pressure from India or anyone else.

Charges and recriminations

If the reading provided in this article is correct, we can expect the pressure for an international inquiry – or indeed for any serious inquiry – to ease or cease altogether once the Government establishes its credibility about really moving towards a political solution. There are two major reasons for this. One arises from the fact that any serious enquiry necessarily has to be a very protracted one, leading to charges and counter-charges and recriminations, and possibly rousing undying hatreds. All that will necessarily mean that a political solution and ethnic reconciliation will have to go into abeyance for many years. Can anyone in his right mind be really confident about the eventual outcome? It could well be a further bout of war. Does the international community, by which I mean the UN membership as a whole, really want that for Sri Lanka, a small country that is incapable of harming any one but itself? It would surely make better sense to go for a political solution now, and some measure of ethnic reconciliation before holding a serious enquiry.

The second reason why we could expect an easing of pressure if we are seen to be moving seriously towards a political solution is that while the Ban Ki-Moon conspiracy can be seen positively in the context of moves to promote a New World Order, it can also be seen negatively as an exercise in the New Imperialism. The Sri Lankan media and the public have been relentlessly making charges of double standards, and there has been no reply at all. The ugly truth is that there is one law for the rich and powerful, and another for the poor and weak, and that surely is at the foundation of all imperialism past and present. It cannot be at the foundation of a New World Order worth the name. So, while the rich and powerful can very effectively deploy their power against small vulnerable countries such as Sri Lanka, they cannot do so with an easy conscience, at least not in the present case.

In the present case, it is crucial to draw a distinction between two categories of war crimes and human rights violations. One consists of what was done in Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, where they were of so outrageous an order that no one with an average moral sense could object to international preventive and punitive action. The other consists of war crimes and human rights violations that take place inevitably in every large scale war. We should bear in mind what the greatest authority on war, Clausewitz, has to say on war in general: "Philanthropic people can easily imagine that there is a way of contriving to disarm and defeat the adversary without shedding too much blood. … It is an error which should be eliminated … We cannot introduce a principle of moderation into the realm of war without committing an absurdity. War is an act of violence and there is no limit to the manifestation of that violence." Jean Bacon, in a brilliant book the title of which I am not competent enough to translate accurately, provides that quotation from Clausewitz and adds about the rules of war, "In the course of the last two world wars, every solemn undertaking given by the great powers has been violated, without exception." So, let not the great powers of today be overly censorious about alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. Let them be content if Sri Lanka now moves seriously towards a political solution.