by Adrian Wijemanne, June 11, 2004
1. This is the infelicitous phrase to describe the peace talks used by Foreign Minister Kadiragamar in his recent address at a meeting in Washington D.C. convened by the Brookings Institution. There is a combative fervour about the phrase, as if the conference table were another battlefield. Memories of the disastrous military defeats of the last five years of the war seem to have been expunged altogether. There seems to be little or no understanding that the losses on the battlefield cannot be recovered at the conference table. Kadirgamar went on to add that “no sovereign state could accept the ISGA proposal of the LTTE” as it could lead to eventual separation into two sovereign states on the island. But how “sovereign” is the present state of Sri Lanka? It has failed utterly to subdue an armed challenger to its authority after 18 years of effort. Its writ no longer runs in the large area under the control and administration of the LTTE. The LTTE has open and direct relations with several foreign governments, which treat it on an equal footing with the government of Sri Lanka. It has access to financial resources from the large, and increasingly prosperous, Tamil diaspora whose per capita income is at least twenty five times that of the Sri Lankan population, on whose taxes and savings the Sri Lankan government runs. The Foreign Minister seems, somehow, to have escaped from these realities and to inhabit a universe of legalistic verities which have not the slightest relevance to the impending peace negotiations.
2. During his visit in Washington, the US government urged the LTTE to disarm and enter the peace negotiations. This exhortation was not driven home by making it a condition of the LTTE’s admission to the peace negotiations. One of the best known impossibilities of modern times is that of securing the voluntary disarmament of national liberation forces. With all the influence that the US government exerts over the IRA in Northern Ireland, it has failed to secure its disarmament. The US government has no leverage of any kind over the LTTE, so its call for the LTTE to disarm voluntarily is purely an exercise in futility and will demonstrate the limits of its power. It is well to recall that it was after the US government imposed its ban on the LTTE in August 1977 that the LTTE won its greatest military victories over the forces of the Sri Lankan government. Mr.Kadiragamar may think the US government’s insistence on disarmament by the LTTE will soften the latter’s stand . It is much more likely to have the opposite effect.
3. The tragedy of these well publicised delusions of the Foreign Minister is that they induce the Sinhala public to believe that the Sri Lankan government enters the peace talks from a position of superior strength. No one considers what next if the talks fail on account of the unrealistic assumptions of the Sri Lankan side. No one takes seriously the LTTE’s oft-repeated assertion that, if a settlement fails, they will be forced to go for total separation. Sheer ignorance and the failure to engage with manifest realities could produce the very result which we have feared so desperarely.
4. The simplest and most elementary factor in the situation in Sri Lanka is that the Sri Lankan government has no bargaining leverage against the LTTE. A return to war, even in the last extremity, is out of the question for the Sri Lankan army is woefully ill-trained and motivated and its flabby officer corps led by 13 corpulent Major Generals is just an hotbed of nepotism and featherbedding. Every promise these people have made to the government has been proved wildly unattainable. The pursuance of the war on the basis of such myths has bankrupted the country’s exchequer to the point that the servicing costs of the public debt now exceed by quite some margin the total annual revenue of the country. Contrariwise, the LTTE has not incurred a single cent of debt to win its tremendous military victories over the government’s armed forces. Thus, it is manifestly clear that the LTTE has the upper hand vis-à-vis the government in the military sphere. The LTTE knows this only too well and so does the government, despite its assiduous attempts to shield its people from this very unpalatable reality.
5. Furthermore, the government is now caught up in a serious financial predicament. The life-sustaining flow of foreign financial aid has dried up as such aid is now tied to measurable progress in peace negotiations with the LTTE. The government is in a political alliance with a Marxist political party which has never displayed the slightest awareness of these dire realities, but wants only populist policies for vote-getting purposes. Its only policy for the LTTE problem is a Sinhala nationalistic hardline against the LTTE. It has never betrayed any awareness of ,or concern with, the country’s dire financial plight. Micawber-like it just hopes that something will turn up to save the situation!
6. With every passing day the situation worsens and it simply cannot be left to continue unattended. The President has just got to cut the Gordian Knot, regardless of the consequences for her government. An alliance with a political party with such supine indifference to the grave realities facing the country and its people must necessarily be short-lived. It outlived its usefulness when it failed to deliver a comfortable majority for the new government and hobbled the President with an hung Parliament in which, far from engaging in legislation, only outright thuggery has prevailed. Such shenanigans do not produce the wherewithal for governance nor the climate for a rational peace process.
7. The President must, even at this late hour, stop listening to absurd soothsayers and engage with reality, take her people into her confidence, explaining to them in the most unvarnished terms where they and their country stand.. The settlement with the LTTE must necessarily be far from what was promised as possible. Those myths of sovereign competence need to be swept away and what is possible must be settled for. Thereafter, when the flow of foreign aid resumes, the strictest measures of economy in government and open accountability to our foreign partners must be introduced and ruthlessly enforced in order to commence the long journey to national salvation. This is not a matter of choice anymore; it is urgent necessity.
Cambridge, UK