Why the international interventionists failed in Sri Lanka

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By: H.L.D. Mahindapala

The various phases of the history of peace-making in Sri Lanka have consolidated collectively into an entirely separate segment in the chain of bloody events dragged on by the on-again-off-again war waged by the Tamil Tigers. For students of conflict resolution there are many Ph. Ds theses waiting to be teased out from the complex skeins of this peace process. The central issue of why the peace process has failed, despite the inter-actions of the many well-meaning and even sinister interventionists, can be turned into a profitable industry for academics and, of course, the hired NGOcoolies digging up dirt to throw at the Sri Lankan government.

The hidden side of the so-called peace process, not aired very much in public discourses, is the role of the key international players that rock the cradle and pinch the baby. India and the Co-chairs (representing the international community) have been two dominant actors who pretend to be the caring nannies to the Sri Lankan baby crying for help. But a close examination reveals their manipulative, self-serving, double-dealing hands have not stopped at merely pinching the baby. They have, in fact, injected into the body politic of the baby the deadly virus of terrorism, cultured and exported from the homelands of these two international interventionists.

The following three cases, picked at random, highlight the crisis exacerbated by these international interventionists:

Case 1: Staff reporter, Surya Bhattacharya of the Toronto Star (Dec. 6, 2006) reported: “Other than listing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a terrorist organization, the Canadian government has done little to curb fundraising by the banned group in Canada, Human Rights Watch says.

“Canada is home to the world's largest Tamil diaspora — an estimated 200,000, the majority of whom reside in the GTA….”Street level" fundraising for the terrorist organization continues, says Jo Becker, an advocate with the New York-based international rights monitor.”

Bhattacharya adds: “Following visits by two members who identified themselves as raising funds for the organization, Rajan Mahavalirajan called the police.

The men told Mahavalirajan, a business owner, that they were collecting money on behalf of the organization to buy surface-to-air missiles in Sri Lanka.”

Moral: It took years for Canada to ban the Tamil Tigers, despite the incontrovertible evidence produced by its own state Intelligence authorities and the prestigious Mackenzie Institute. Canada was a primary source of funding Tamil Tiger terror which targeted the dissident Tamils both in Canada and in Sri Lanka. Now the Canadians have smugly moved into a state of denial believing that they have done their duty by banning them without taking the follow-up action necessary to make the ban effective.

Case 2: Lord Naseby (speaking in the House of Lords): My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Tamil Tigers are still recruiting child soldiers in north-east Sri Lanka; that the suicide bomber was a pregnant young woman; and that the Tamil Tigers still proclaims that it wishes to have peace in that country? Meanwhile, the Minister says that proscription is tough on those proscribed. Is he aware, nevertheless, that there is continual money laundering in the United Kingdom; that illegal rallies take place under the flags of Tamil Eelam; that bogus charities are being set up; and that TTN is broadcasting Tamil Eelam propaganda in the UK? He may say that the issues are dealt with toughly and rest with other government bodies, but is he aware that the proscription is being flouted? Is it not the responsibility of the Home Office and the Government in general to make sure that proscription means what it is meant to mean and that it is not just flouted almost daily?

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is a lot of concern about the activities of this organisation (LTTE)? Is he aware—I am sure he is—that in the past 10 years there have been more suicide bombings in Sri Lanka, many of which are associated with this organisation, than anywhere else in the world? The number far exceeds that in the Israel/Palestine horror, for example. Is he also aware of the revolting practice of planting bombs on little children, giving them flowers to present to visiting politicians and dignitaries and then detonating the bomb so that it kills the child and the dignitary at once—the most sordid and sickening practice that one can possibly imagine? Will he therefore to take to heart the representations that he is hearing today that something very firm needs to be done to prevent these people pursuing their activities in this country or, indeed, anywhere else? (Lords Hansard, May 3, 2006)

In the House of Commons the following questions and answers were recorded:

Patrick Mercer: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what checks are in place of fundraising charities associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the United Kingdom; [99675] (2) which fundraising organisations in the United Kingdom have been identified as having links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. [99679]

Mr. McNulty (Tony McNulty MP is Minister of State for policing, security and community safety) replied:

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) were proscribed under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in March 2001. It is an offence to be a member of the LTTE, or provide or show support for it. (House of Common written answers for November 7, 2006)

Moral: Lord Naseby has put it succinctly: “the proscription is being flouted” and “is it not the responsibility of the Home Office and the Government in general to make sure that proscription means what it is meant to mean and that it is not just flouted almost daily?” Minister McNulty’s reply amounts to this: Yes, they were banned in March 2001. It is an offence to provide or show support for it. But we let them run their show flouting our law because we are more bothered about Islamic terrorists.

The British politics of writing a law into it statute books and turning the other way when the law is flouted is typical of the Western attitude towards terrorism in Sri Lanka. For years the British hypocrisy refused to ban the LTTE saying that they had not violated any British law. Now, after banning it in March 2001, they are turning a Nelsonian eye towards the Tigers while cracking down heavily on suspected Islamic terrorists.

Case 3: TIME magazine in its first ever cover story on Sri Lankan exposed in detail the Indian RAW operations to destabilize its “friendly neighbour”. Since then research scholars have documented how India trained, armed, financed Tamil terrorist groups to destabilize Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government pointed out the other day that the Tamil Tigers are ferrying explosives and ammunition using the S. Indian coastline. Recent Indian press reports too have highlighted the Tigers using India as a base to smuggle arms.

Moral: Blaming Pakistan for exporting terrorism to Kashmir without taking any responsibility for exporting it deliberately and openly to Sri Lanka is the giddy limit in India’s sanctimonious humbuggery. India had no compunction in waging a proxy war in Sri Lanka to keep it under its heel. More than any other interventionist it is India’s responsibility to kill the virus it exported to its “friendly neigbhour”, as it keeps telling over and over again. As usual, Indian policy is either dithering between keeping a distance or interfering on behalf of the Tamil terrorists in the name of protecting the Tamil minority. When India send its so-called Peace-keeping force the South Bloc and RAW let their jawans rape, plunder, kill and persecute the same minority which it claims to protect now.

In summary, these three cases highlight (1) the Indian origins, (2) the Western sources of funding and the purchasing and exporting of arms under the very noses of the global coalition of fighting terrorism and (3) the abandonment of the responsibilities of these two interventionists to a democratically elected government threatened by one of the deadliest terrorist groups in the world. Though these countries are signatories to UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which categorically bans any financing of terrorist activities in their respective countries, the three cases highlighted here establish that they prefer to play the sanctimonious role of Pontius Pilate blaming Sri Lanka.

The available evidence, going even beyond these three cases, establishes that the international community’s complicity with the evil of terrorism is inexcusable and unacceptable. Washington Times (December 17, 2006) hit the nail on the head when it wrote: “A successful peace accord cannot be reached in Sri Lanka until the financial support for the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam can be altogether strangled.”

Washington Times concluded by saying: “To bring the Tamil Tigers into meaningful and lasting cease-fire agreement, and stop the violence that is besieging the small nation, it's fund-raising activities in the West will need to be stopped. As long as the Tamil Tigers have the support of funds flowing in from outside Sri Lanka, the group will be undeterred from pursuing its political agenda through violent methods.”

This squarely and fairly places the onus of ending terrorism in Sri Lanka on the international interventionists. But like all big powers, they dodge their moral and legal responsibilities. They take the easy way out by insisting on Sri Lanka adhering to the laws which they refuse to honour in their own homelands. Though they avoid their basic responsibilities to international law, and their own national laws, they have no qualms in demanding that Sri Lanka should behave according to what they say and not what they do.

If, for instance, a Sri Lankan Air Force bombs target a military training camp of the Tamil Tigers packed with adolescent students recruited from schools in the Vanni the Western and Indian diplomats march into the Foreign Office to lodge their protests, with Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, trailing her moralistic saree behind her. But who is there to tell the Western diplomats that their states, acting collectively as Allies in World War II, violated humanitarian laws on an unprecedented scale when they dropped 80 million incendiary bombs to blast Hitler’s Germany out of the face of this earth? (Source: The Fire, The bombing of Germany, 1940 =- 1945, Jorg Friedrich, Columbia University Press, 2006).

Leaving aside Vietnam, consider the example of the American Civil War. America’s greatest human sacrifice – outside the decimation of the indigenous people – was in the separatist war launched by the southerners. It is estimated nearly 550,000 Americans, from the north and the south died, in their historic battles to keep America united.

These interventionists never hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction without any inhibitions when the necessity arises to defend their states against internal or eternal enemies threatening their sovereignty or borders. In recent times the Western “coalition of the willing” collectively used the UN to impose economic sanctions against Saddam’s one-man regime in Iraq and starved 600,000 children to deaths caused by malnutrition and related illnesses, according to internal UN reports. (Will Ms. Coomaraswamy send her rock- ‘n- rolling ambassadors to investigate this horrendous crime against children?).

Yet in the recent shortages of food in Jaffna the Sri Lankan government was blamed for sending food through the sea and not through the land route controlled by the Tigers. The UN-sanctioned naval blockade prevented food and essential items going to the children of Iraq. But Sri Lanka is blamed for sending food in ships escorted by its navy to the starving people of Jaffna. While the courageous Sri Lanka naval forces dared to challenge the Tigers the big brother in India was playing it safe not daring to test the waters with it mighty navy to feed the starving Tamil community.

Of course, they have not stopped at just moralizing and using the big stick of aid to force Sri Lanka to be more ethical than what they have been throughout their history. These interventionists have gone as far as writing/dictating prescriptions for the Sri Lankan crisis. The irony is that they can’t solve their own problems – particularly of dealing with their own minorities or separatist movements -- but they have the gall to tell Sri Lanka how to solve its problems with only one armed minority group who have thrived on the funding and political backing given by these interventionists. India is a notable example. It had no compunction in using brute force to wipe out Sikh Khalistanis or Kashmiri separatists, violating all UN resolutions. But Sri Lanka, which is emerging as a classic model in combating terrorism, is told to behave like angels disregarding the fact that they behave like devils. That is Indian morality for you!

Big powers are, of course, born with a genetic condition that prevents them from deriving any intelligent conclusions from their failed experiments in the past. Their vaunted think-tanks are hardly superior to a tank full of stunned mullets or smug frogs. These interventionists have failed in the past and they have not paused to ponder why their prescriptions have failed in Sri Lanka.

Nor will they concede that one of the primary causes is the terrorist virus cultured in their own backyard and exported to Sri Lanka. Their standard response is to place all the responsibility on the shoulders of Sri Lanka as if they have nothing to do with the culture of terrorism that has been growing under their patronage in their holier-than-thou jurisdictions.

Their tendency to scapegoat the Sri Lankan government is like Hitler blaming the Jews for the ills of Germany. The international community stood in queues to appease Hitler despite warnings of those who knew of the evil that was dehumanizing Germany. Each time they came out with a piece of paper from Berlin they hailed it as a triumph for their diplomatic skills.

They repeat the same mistake in Sri Lanka. Even though the international interventionists are aware that the so-called “sole representatives of the Tamils” survive on inhuman force they are happy to deal with them like the way they dealt with Hitler’s Germany in the misguided belief that they could change his ways. Drifting into a state of denial they willingly accepted the manipulated and enforced Hitlerite jingoism as the will of the German people. Eventually, they had to manufacture, airlift and drop 80 million bombs over Germany for not reading accurately the evil signs of the times staring in their faces.

The Tamil Tigers got Loganathan Kethiswaran, the deputy head of the Peace Secretariat, in Colombo only on the second attack. The first attack was made in Oslo, Norway on October 15, 1989. Five EPRLF Tamils, including Loganathan, had gathered at No: 17, Kringsja Studentby in Oslo despite warnings issued by Tamil Tigers not to attend the meeting, according to Einar Hagvaag who reported the details in Dagbladet (October 16, 1989).

It was meant to be an information meeting for Tamil refugees in Norway. Among the attendees was Tamil MP, Kandiah Premachandra, EPRLF MP, who was in Norway to attend a seminar at Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) "on peaceful solutions to the civil war in Sri Lanka."

"Suddenly," wrote Hagvaag, "between forty and fifty people came into the room and shouted slogans supporting the Tigers. Then they went on the attack." They were attacked with table-legs, chairs, chilli and fists by the Tigers.

Loganthan, who was warded in Oslo Casualty Clinic with bandages round his head, told Hagvaag:" "I took the blow to the head and fell to the floor. They went on hitting me while I lay here. They kicked me and hit me in the ribs and in the head. Afterwards I sat down in a sofa holding my head in my hands. Then I felt my eyes burning. It was chilli pepper."

Hagvaag report adds: "He had to have ten stitches in his head. One of his ribs had punctured lung."

Why was he attacked? He was the spokesman for the EPRLF in Norway.

Kandiah Premachandran, said: “This is the first time in my political career anything like this happened to me."

Hagvaag reported: "He had several stitches on his head and his dark suit was stained with chilli. The Tigers hate other Tamil political groups, including the EPRLF. In the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka between the two ethnic groups the Tamil and the Sinhalese, the Tigers have also turned their weapons on rival Tamils."

Visiting Tamil MPs and Norway's own Tamil citizens are beaten up or persecuted by agents of Tamil Tigers in broad daylight in Oslo – the land of the peacemakers of Sri Lanka. The irony is that Loganthan Ketheeswaran was in Oslo as a guest researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO). Consider the reverse for a moment. If the head of a Tamil MP was cracked in Colombo or a peace researcher was beaten within an inch of life the TNA MPs, NGOs, Churches, SLMM and the Norwegian diplomats would ask how the “para-miltiaries” could get away with such atrocities under the watchful eyes of the security forces guarding the city, implying that the government is behind it. But in Oslo the Tamils can be persecuted, beaten, vilified with impunity, if not with a benign nudge-and-a-wink by the Norwegian state (which is now supported by card-carrying members of the Tamil Tigers’ terrorist movement) without anyone asking a single question.

When I met Erik Solheim, the peace facilitator, in the foreign Office in Oslo he was quite vociferous in blaming the Sri Lankan government for not taking appropriate action against the "para-militaries" (read Tamils opposed to the Tigers) who were a thorn in the flesh of "the sole representatives of the Tamils." It was a tactical move made by the Tigers to consolidate their position with Solheim-Wickremesinghe Oslo Accord stipulating that the Government of Sri Lanka should disarm the "para-militaries" (Tamil rivals) so as to crown the Tigers as "the sole representative of the Tamils".

Eliminating Tamil rivals of the Tigers on the basis that they were "the sole representative of the Tamils" was a theoretical line plugged by Anton Balasingham and accepted uncritically and willingly by Solheim and Wickremesinghe. This theoretical construction was a peak point in the mono-ethnic extremism that refused to tolerate opposition even within the ranks of the Tamils.

Like all other myths of Jaffna Tamil politics this was another fiction fabricated to justify tier superior exclusiveness and extremism. It served as a theoretical justification for the exclusion or elimination of those who stood in the way of the authoritatarian regime of Prabhakaran.

There is no known theory in pluralistic democracy which has accepted a single individual or party as the "sole representative" of any community. Solheim showed an extraordinary inclination to go along with this wild fantasy of Balasingham. He too was operating on two-party negotiations between the Government and the Tigers brushing aside the need to conduct multi-party negotiations, including the Muslims and even the dissident Tamils like Karuna representing the Tamils of the east. Balasingham's bogus theory of the Tigers being "the sole representatives of the Tamils" was acceptable to Solheim because he could ignore the swelling pressures of ground realities. It was tantamount to appeasing only armed group to impose a solution dictated by the gun and not on the aspirations of all communities. Solheim was going nowhere with his partisan theories and politics. Nevertheless, he persisted in going down this failed track with the full knowledge that Prabhkaran's intransigent politics would not rescue him or the peace process.

Disarming the Tamil rivals to empower the Tigers was a total disaster. It is the fore behind this theory that led to the liquidations of the Tamils rivals, from Amirthalingam to Neelan Tiruchelvam.

But Solheim didn't have to go that far back in history to find out the grim realities of the theories, slogans and justifications that came out of the mono-ethnic extremism of the north. What happened to Kethiswaran in Oslo and subsequently in Colombo would have been sufficient for him to open his eyes and consider sympathetically the plight of the Tamils opposed to his Tiger friends. So what is inihibitingSolheim and his Norwegian government from recognizing the plight to the Tamil rivals of the Tigers in Norway? What is preventing him and his government from providing adequate protection administered by his state to the Tamil rivals? it can't be ignorance, surely. So is it incompetence? Or is is it blindness caused by wearing blinkers?

Besides, Norway is not like Sri Lanka where organized "para-militaries" have intricate networks of safe havens in urban and jungle hideouts. If a first world country, possessing all the paraphernalia needed to enforce its commitments to rule of law and international humanitarian laws, cannot deal with Tiger "paramilitaries" beating up or persecuting its own citizens and invitees attending courses conducted by the Norwegian institutions how can Solheim expect the under-resourced Sri Lankan authorities, battling on all fronts, to disarm "para-militaries?"

Leaders of Tamil rival parties in Oslo told me that they, their families in Norway and in Sri Lanka are persecuted by the Tigers. They are vilified in the radio programmes run with the funding given by the Norway government. They and their families face death threats daily. What is more, they have complained to the Norwegian government and Police who have not taken any action on their behalf.

They see Erik Solheim as a Tiger sympathizer who wouldn’t even respond to their calls. I must admit that Solheim did give an appointment to one of the Norwegian Tamil leaders after I made representations to him. But I was told later than nothing had changed. The Norwegian politicians and authorities continue to ignore the grievances of its Tamil citizens threatened by the Tiger agents hoping it would go away in time. But it hasn’t. Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Foreign office and the Norwegian government are fully aware of the plight of the dissident Tamils in Norway and in Sri Lanka. They have no excuse to let the Tiger agents to get away with impunity.

The Sri Lankan Diaspora in Norway told me that Solheim is like an open book: it’s easy to read his political sympathies by the way he treats the Sinhalese and the dissident Tamils. When he meets these two groups at public functions he freezes like an iceberg drifting in one of the Norwegian fjords. But he is all smiles, embraces and kisses when he meets his favorites in the Tiger camp.

This is a damning indictment of Norway as a peace facilitator. Their partisanship is quite transparent. When the agents of Tigers use Norwegian resources, soil and political patronage to turn against their Tamil rivals it is obvious that they have compromised their neutrality and forfeited their right to be impartial facilitators of peace. They have, in short, become key operators acting as the proxies of the Tigers in the international theatre.

Karuna’s allegations of the corrupt practices of Solheim do not seem to be far-fetched at all. Political corruption takes on many shapes at different levels. Isn't it coruption of the most nefarious kind when the Norwegians have opened their territory for the Tigers to raise funds, beat up their rivals, run websites (nitharsanam.com) by Tamil messengers of deaths, which, incidentally, forecast the death of Lakshman Kadirgamar, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, fund Tiger terrorism through INGOs like Red Bana, appoint ambassadors to cover-up Tiger atrocities, manage truce monitors who rush to condemn Sri Lankan government but find it very difficult to move when the Tigers are caught red handed etc? What chances are there for peace to progress on a level playing field if Norway has been turned into the seed bed for the killing fields of the Tigers?

Looking back, it is all to clear now that the peace process was doomed from the day Norway stepped in as a peace "facilitator." As stated by Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, the head of Indian Janata Party and visiting lecturer at Harvard University, "the Norwegians do not have a clue about the Sri Lankan situation." As admitted by Jon Hanssen-Bauer and Solheim, they learnt what they know about the Sri Lankan crisis only at the feet of Anton Balasingham who mixed their drinks with a cocktail of half-baked theories, fictions anufactured in the late forties and fifties and his own spin. They have accepted, unquestioningly, the political mythology of the Jaffna Tamil political class – the most privileged community in Sri Lanka – when they cry out loud about "discrimination," "liberation movement," "sole representative of the Tamils," "Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism," "federalism," "Eelam" etc.

Besides, no peace facilitator can afford to lose the confidence of one or the other party. For the Norwegians to play the role of the honest peace-broker they have to win the confidence of both parties. Anything short of that is to sink all hopes even before they could sail out of the harbor on the long and arduous voyage of bringing back the Golden Fleece of peace to the war-weary people of Sri Lanka.

Last but not the least, the Sri Lankan delegations at the Geneva I and Geneva II were taken aback by the patent bias of Solheim in siding with Balasingham, his boozing buddy. It was just not the first name terms with which they addressed each other at these meetings that displayed their personal and political alliances but the naked manner in which Solheim did not hesitate to take the side of Balasingham. Vidar Helgessen, the Deputy Foreign Minister, went as far as addressing Balasingham as "Your Excellency" in Thailand. Every word and move exhibited their uninhibited partisanship. In their eulogies at the funeral Solheim and Jon Hanssen Bauer openly admitted how they acquired their knowledge of Sri Lankan politics at the feet of their guru, Anton Balasingham in London.

Not everybody in Norway either was enamoured of Slehim's skills in handling complex issues abroad. Morten Hoglund, a leading member of the Norwegian opposition, was very cynical about Solheim’s role. He told Ranjith Soysa of the World Alliance for Peace and me, when we met him in the lobby of the Nowegian Parliament, that Solheim was not a trained diplomat but a politician who had parachuted from the skies into the world of international relations. His lack of skill and finesse in handling complex issues was demonstrated by his partisan role. The first lesson in facilitating peace among parties at loggerheads is to win the confidence of both. The facilitator is doomed from the word go if he thinks he can win by siding one party or the other.

Besides, Solheim relied too much on Balasingham without realizing that he was merely his master’s voice -- ironically a position confirmed when Balsingham honored him with the title of the Voice of the Nation.. Solheim came a cropper with his Ceasefire Agreement – his only claim to fame (or is it ill-fame?) – because he relied excessively on the word of Balasingham who gave a devious “Yes” in Oslo knowing that his master, whom he knows better than anyone else, would say “No” in Vanni. This confirms amply that Solheim has failed, as stated by Dr. Subramanian Swamy, to grasp even the fundamentals operative in the peace process.

Tragically, it is the war-weary people of Sri Lanka who have to pay for the mistakes of Solheim. He has not only betrayed the trust placed in him as a neutral “facilitator” but his bias, his ignorance, his incompetence, his standard excuse of blaming only the Sri Lankan government are some of the factors that have led the peace process to a dead-end. If the Tamils persecuted by the Tiger agents can't find peace in Norway, the land of the peace facilitator, how can they or anyone else expect to find peace in Sri Lanka?