How the EU Produced a War in Sri Lanka

by J.T. Janani, Tamil Guardian, July 12, 2006

The peace process in Sri Lanka is one of the world’s most internationalized. The self-styled Co-Chairs of the donor community – namely Oslo, Japan, the United States and the European Union (EU) – make up almost all the major actors – save India – who are involved in Sri Lanka. But a constant refrain we hear is that it is up to the parties to the conflict, the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), to come up with a solution. The Co-Chairs, naturally, are prepared to help.

But this is a duplicitous claim. The Co-Chairs + India exert enormous influence on the conflict and its resolution. Indeed, some would argue, it is international actors’ pursuit of their own preferred outcomes that perpetuate the conflict. The point is brought into focus by examining the conduct of the EU in the recent past.

Major donor

The EU is a major donor to Sri Lanka, as are the US and Japan (the largest). It is also a key trading partner, with a complex set of de-facto subsidies and tax exemptions which are crucial to Sri Lanka’s export driven economy. Some countries are key providers of military support, including Britain and the Czech Republic (the latter has, in the past few years, supplied 24 MBRLs, like those that destroyed Chavakachcheri, to the Sri Lanka Army).

Without international support and financing, Sri Lanka would have been bankrupt some years ago. A state propped up by international aid, at the very least Sri Lanka’s economic future depends largely on the goodwill of the EU and its allies.

Before going further, it is worth considering the strategic goals of the state and the Tamils. The entire purpose of the war, from Sri Lanka’s perspective, is to regain and ensure control over a unitary state. This is one route to political stability, albeit one which preserves the constitutional status quo and keeps the Tamils under central control.

The Tamils, on the other hand, want – in order of priority – physical security (now and for the future), equality and a guarantee of fundamental and community rights, and, like all other world communities, opportunities to pursue their economic prosperity. They believe this can be achieved in an independent state.

Backing Sri Lanka

What is interesting when examining events this year is that the international community, particularly the EU, have done much to bolster Sri Lanka’s position. The EU has not only proscribed the LTTE – based, its officials say, on a small handful of violent incidents selected from the past two decades of violent conflict, in which most casualties have been Tamil civilians killed by Sri Lankan forces. It has also continued to support the Sri Lankan export economy.

Yet consider Sri Lanka’s conduct: It is well known that amongst key destabilising factors in the peace process are: the government’s continuing support for anti-LTTE paramilitary organisations (in contravention of the internationally monitored cease fire agreement), the disappearances and extrajudcial killings of Tamil civilians by the Army, the wholesale punitive bombing of Tamil villages in retaliation for LTTE attacks – for which the organisation was banned by the EU.

Given that, although the EU does have powerful leverage, these de-stabilising activities have been increasing, one could reasonably conclude that the EU does not wish to exercise its power against the Sri Lankan state.

Desperate needs

As for the Tamils and the LTTE, a number of forms of leverage were available. The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said, in a report last week, that the international community has ‘far more’ leverage with the Sri Lankan government than with the LTTE. This is not entirely true.

The EU and its allies have two things the Tamils and the LTTE have desperately sought in the past few years: financial assistance and political recognition. It should be remembered that the ultimate guarantee of Sri Lanka’s unitary status is the international community’s ability to deny recognition of a Tamil state.

No help

In theory, the EU could provide even limited humanitarian aid to the Tamils, particularly in the wake of the devastating December 2004 tsunami, the brunt of which was borne by the island’s eastern coast where it had a disproportionately huge impact.

But having characterised the LTTE as a terrorist group even before the formal ban, the EU does not give aid to the LTTE administration nor have other dealings with the organisation. There is no leverage now, because the EU has preferred to allow the sufferings of over 800,000 internally displaced people to continue, rather than breach this self-imposed rule on ‘terrorism’ – which has been observed during 4 years of a peace process.

The much-vaunted tsunami aid sharing package, the PTOMS was never implemented. Oddly enough, it was the EU, above all other actors, that raised expectations amongst the desperate Tamils to such heights. The EU’s silence as it handed over aid to Sri Lanka, even though PTOMS was tossed aside after being signed, deepened Tamil despair even before the EU proscription.

Key letdown

The PTOMS was an opportunity to create leverage on both sides to stay jointly in the peace process, to engage in rehabilitation work in the war- and tsunami- ravaged areas of the island, to work together despite themselves. But the EU cast the agreement aside without the slightest effort at defence or revival. Perhaps it was not that important, after all.

The LTTE is clearly not dependent on the EU or its allies for military assistance. But it has not even been assisted in its basic administrative efforts, unlike the corrupt and racially-motivated Sri Lankan state.

Now to the present crisis. The LTTE has plausibly argued that it is the sustained escalation of a violent campaign against its members and supporters by Army-backed paramilitaries, including a group led by one of its renegade commanders, that is to blame for the present ‘low-intensity’ war.

Given that the EU clearly had leverage over at least one of the parties involved in the cycle of escalation - namely the Colombo government – it is surprising that things have gotten so bad.

One can only conclude that the EU, along other international actors, have thought a divide and rule strategy was an appropriate way to deal with the Tamils. Some stability might be sacrificed in the short term due to Tamil infighting, but the long term benefits of denying the Tamils a unified negotiating position outweighed the costs – most of which would have been borne by the LTTE and the Tamils anyway.

Meanwhile, by tacitly accepting the recent military atrocities in the Army-occupied parts of the Northeast and by failing to use its substantial leverage to curb these abuses, the EU has revealed the hollowness of its principled defences of human rights. Despite the rhetoric, rights are not that big a deal.

Sweden and Norway

The EU has repeatedly been advised that by banning the EU it would be seen by Tamils and Sinhalese – and the LTTE and the Sri Lanka government – as taking a moral stance and thus a side on the conflict. The EU was also aware its monitors could not continue as they would no longer be neutral. Yet it didn’t care, imposing the ban on the LTTE in May.

Now it is the LTTE that is being accused of disrupting the monitoring. Note, by way of comparison, how Sinhala protests over Norway heading the monitoring as well as the peace facilitation resulted in a Swedish officer, rather than a Norwegian, being put in charge in March. Tamil sensitivities to neutrality are clearly not as important as those of the Sinhalese.

Earlier it was argued that the primary concern for Tamils was physical security, followed by equality. The EU’s involvement in the monitoring, combined with its clout made it a credible underwriter of human rights in the Northeast. Yet it is was amid escalating atrocities by the military that the EU decided to assist the Sri Lankan state by criminalizing its primary adversary, the LTTE.

Reverse Impact

And this has had exactly the reverse impact in the attitudes of the Tamils and the Diaspora than the stated goal of the EU. The international community will make promises about rights, justice and equality and break them by endorsing and supporting the racist Sinhala-dominated state. The international NGOs will come and go, occasionally doing some limited work. But the LTTE, which emerged in the Northeast, will always be there as a military counter to the Sri Lankan military’s threat. The LTTE civil administration will remain, doing the best it can to alleviate the suffering of the Northeast Tamils.

Ironically, the EU ban was intended to thwart fundraising by the LTTE. Not only is aid being withheld, the Tamils of Europe are forbidden to assist the humanitarian work that the LTTE administration and Tamil charities are undertaking.

2nd class citizens

The latter raises an interesting point. Several European countries are home to large concentrations of Tamils. Rather than meeting with them and understanding why so many feel compelled to give money to the LTTE or to humanitarian projects in LTTE-controlled areas, the EU government’s have opted to simply forbid them from doing so.

I return again to that basic point; the Tamils’ desire for equality and fundamental rights. Amid much hand wringing about its ethnic minorities being unfathomable, the EU’s actions suggest something else: an unreflective contempt for the views of their Tamil citizens.

It is this sense, reinforced by the series of EU actions outlined above, that is going to have the most profound impact in the coming period on Sri Lanka’s conflict and efforts to resolve it. It is the EU’s repeated failure over the last two years to take a firm stance on professed principles, including equality of communities, fundamental and community rights, the rule of law, etc. that has done the most to leave the Tamils isolated, perplexed, resentful and angry. And apathy is not, as the past few decades have vividly demonstrated, a Tamil trait.

• View a printer-friendly version of this article