India Struggles to Find a Coherent Policy on Sri Lanka

by Jo Johnson, Financial Times, August 25, 2006

As fighting lares, New Delhi's failure to act leaves it exposed in its own back yard

There is a sound that forever haunts the Indian diplomatic establishment: the plaintive notes of "Auld Lang Syne" mockingly played by a Sri Lankan military band as a humiliated Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) leaving at the request of the government in Colombo, set sail from Trincomalee in March 1990. And there is an image: the funeral pyre of Rajiv Gandhi, the youthful and handsome Indian prime minister who took on the thankless task of mediation in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict and paid for it with his life the next year. [1991]

Today, India is still scarred by this early attempt to project power in the region. Some compare the psychological effect on New Delhi to that of the US pull-out from Vietnam. Analysts say India, which lost more than 1,200 soldiers in Sri Lanka, has developed a kind of "Somalia complex" that has left it opposed to direct intervention in the affairs of one of its closest neighbours and insecure about its ability to influence events in its own back yard.

Yet as an aspiring regional and flobal power, with ambitions to join the UN Secuirty Council, India is increasingly concerned at the collapse of the ceasefire in Sri Lanka. The four-year-old agreement, brokered by Norway, which oversees it along with the US, Japan and EU, the three other peace process "co-chairs," is now in tatters following the return to war in all but name between government forces and Tamil separatists.

War brings the pospect of another failed or failing state on India's already fragile borders.

In a meeting on Monday with Mahinda Rajapakse, Sri Lanka's newly elected president, the co-chairs once again urged the hard-line Sinhalese nationalist to commit to an immediate cease-fire. But violence continued in Sri Lanka's north and east yesterday during the fourth week of the worst fighting since 2002 and showed no sign of stopping. Thousands have fled their homes, many taking refuge in churches or camps. Hundreds have fled to India by boat. Aid workers say 160,000 people have been displaced [214,000 is the current figure]. All sides estimate the fighting has killed hundreds.

"We're an impotent regional power and have abdicated our responsibilities is Sri Lanka," says Major General Ashok K. Mehta, a commentator on strategic affairs who served as a divisional commander in the IPKF in 1988-1990.

India, he argues, has failed to pursue a coherent foreign policy in Sri Lanka because of the dictates of coalition politics.

Both the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance colition and its BJP-led predecessor have depended on powerful Tamil regional parties for their majorities in parliament.

With more than 50m indigenous Tamils in southern India, and 75,000 refugees from Sri Lanka living in camps there, instability in the Jaffna peninsula is felt in India.

As a result, politicians from the state of Tamil Nadu, where militants have over the years procured arms, cash and training, have an effective veto on Indian policy. Although India has banned the Tamil Tigers and refuses to countenance the partition of the island, it also denies the Sri Lankan army supplies of weapons and has prevaricated for years over a defence pact.

"Delhi has got stuck without a policy and is simply reacting to events," says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo. Both sides are suspicious of Big Brother. India's concerns for Tamil "aspirations" and calls for a "fair" negotiated settlement needle Colombo. At the same time, New Delhi's fundamental opposition to the creation of a separate Tamil homeland - because of the boost that would give to separatist groups in India's north-east - is incompatible with the Tamil Tigers' one-point political programme. [What do the Tamils want??...]

But both the rebels and the government also see India as the only guarantor of an eventual peace deal and have called for greater involvement.

Indian diplomats say they are working with the co-chairs on an acceptable "political package". Meanwhile, India sees an outright military victory for either side as disastrous. If the Tigers win new territory, India might have to intervene to prevent de facto partition. If the government pushes into the Tamil northeast, India fears a "burnt earth policy comparable to East Timor". Continued stalemenat may be the least bad outcome.

This is not enough for most commentators. "India must urgently wake up to the neighbourhood, for the good of its own population and its sense of self-worth as it seeks 'great power' status," writes Kanak Mani Dixit, eidtor of Himal Southasia, a Kathmandu-based magazine.

"How can you aspire for a seat at the Security Council when you are so insecure in your own region? Just as the Indian super elite cannot escape the poverty of the people at large, neither can India de-link from the rest of the region."

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