I had written the following article on how India had handled Sri Lanka issue during the Eelam War IV in February 2009 even as the Sri Lanka security forces were on way to Puthukkudiyiruppu after driving the Tamil Tigers out of their strongholds in Elephant Pass-Paranthan-Kilinochchi defence complex.
I am reproducing it here as the appears very much relevant as the political rhetoric on Sri Lanka exchanged between parties contesting the parliamentary election now in progress appear mere words and nothing more.
The article may not be reproduced as its copyright rests with GFiles which published it in their March 2009 issue.
Point of Catharsis
India may lose its strategic edge in the island nation as its government stands poised for victory
The Sri Lanka security forces are poised to end the military capability of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the dreaded Tamil insurgent group that had been ruling its own de facto state within the nation. The LTTE is fighting for survival in the last foothold of its domain that has dramatically shrunk from 11 districts in 2002 to virtually 200 square km now. The offensive going on since 2006 is the fourth episode in the Eelam Wars the two forces have been fighting since the LTTE refused to accept the India-Sri Lanka Agreement in 1987. It felt the Agreement was detrimental to its goal of carving out an independent Tamil Eelam nation in Sri Lanka.
Considered one of the most powerful insurgent bodies in the world, the LTTE under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran had also refined the use of terrorism as a force multiplier in operations. Though Prabhakaran has bounced back stronger from battlefield setbacks in earlier Eelam wars, this time the Sri Lankans appear to have practically neutralized his conventional military capability.
Sri Lanka’s success against the LTTE is due to the singular focus of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in eliminating the war that had hobbled the country’s development.In the past, military operations had swung between well meaning peace initiatives and war due to lack of national consensus on handling the issue of devolution of powers to the Tamil community, which forms a fourth of the population. Rajapaksa got elected as President with a promise to end the Norwegian mediated peace process that limped through from 2002 to 2006. He identified military defeat of the LTTE as the key to resolving the issue and found an effective military chief in the army commander, Lt-Gen Sarath Fonseka, to achieve his ends.
Taking up the military option also ended Sri Lanka’s readiness to evolve a peaceful solution to the Tamil question within a federal framework that formed the basis of the Oslo peace accord. Over 48 countries and UN bodies under the leadership of four co-chairs – the European Union, Japan, Norway and the US – had underwritten the peace process. President Rajapaksa had leveraged the antipathy of Sinhala rightwing politicians and sections of the more conservative Southern Sinhala population to a federal solution to get elected.
His power projection on coming to office has caused widespread concern among civil society, the four co-chairs, and India. His political methods have been questionable. He installed his three brothers in key positions in the political and bureaucratic decision-making process. He has split almost all political parties to his advantage. Corruption and absence of rule of law have become endemic in the country. Human rights have been trampled upon, encouraging mindless enforcement of draconian laws with the security apparatus resulting in disregard for rule of law. This has left the Tamil community with a feeling of insecurity and uncertainty about their future.
This feeling has been enhanced by the strong rightwing Sinhala nationalist stance of Lt-Gen Fonseka who is riding the crest of military success. The increase of the armed forces to over 150,000 in the last 15 years came about as a result of the Eelam wars. The disproportionately large military strength in such a small nation has introduced an unpredictable element in Sri Lanka’s power structure. Sri Lanka is well known for manipulative politics and, even if the armed forces remain aloof from politics, their kinetic power could be exploited by politicians. Thus armed forces would appear to be a new factor influencing Sri Lanka’s policies for some years to come.
India always sympathized with the Sri Lanka Tamil struggle for equity even while it stood for a united Sri Lanka. No doubt this was largely influenced by the strong sentiments on the issue among the 60-million Tamil population living in India. The Tamil issue became a hardy perennial affecting India’s relations with Sri Lanka since the anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo in 1983. It culminated in the signing of the India-Sri Lanka Agreement in 1987 between the two countries. However, the Agreement floundered due to objections both at home and abroad as it lacked transparency.
India’s military intervention in 1987 to implement the agreement was a fiasco as its objective became skewed when it ended up fighting the LTTE for three years. Political changes both at home and abroad saw the return of the Indian force in 1991, creating only bitterness among all stakeholders.
Since then, India-Sri Lanka relations have focused on common interests in trade and commerce rather than the issue of equity for the Tamil minority. So India played the role of passive spectator during the Oslo peace process in 2002, giving a strategic foothold to external powers at our doorstep without gaining any advantage. India has been a low-profile contributor of mostly non-lethal weapons and services to the expansion of the Sri Lanka armed forces due to the strong objections from India’s Tamil population to any military aid. This has paved the way for China and Pakistan to increase their strategic influence as suppliers of military hardware to Sri Lanka, the strategic vanguard of India in the Indian Ocean.
Overall, India appears to have conducted its affairs in Sri Lanka without adequate attention to its strategic interests over the long term. Its Sri Lanka policy had been reactive at best. Delhi’s coalition political compulsion due to Tamil Nadu’s strong public objections to the suffering of the war-affected Tamil population in Sri Lanka has now become an important factor governing it. However, India finds that it can do little as it had sacrificed its strategic leverage due to external powers in Sri Lanka. This amply demonstrates the lack of a national strategic vision. The time has come to correct the drift in strategic policy in Sri Lanka with a well-integrated political, diplomatic and development initiative.
© GFiles India
http://gfilesindia.com/readmoresubtitle.aspx?subtitle_id=129
No comments:
Post a Comment