Edifice of Retrogression
By: Rajeev Sreetharan
"There will be a political vacuum in the ethnic relations of this
country as long as devolution is a non-starter, a mere word in the
south. Despite the balance of forces, the cease-fire cannot survive
for long in this political vacuum."- Dharmeratnam Sivaram,
25.8.2004,
ISGA Bashing: Much Ado about Nothing
Almost three years later, all's manifest. Optics vis-Ã -vis the
humanitarian dimension, are nothing short of egregious. The 2002 cease-
fire agreement, as legit today as Eelam IV is undeclared, has taken
shrapnel in every clause but 4.4, as the SLA pushes North, violence of
the Tigers remaining silent, docile, implying guerilla strategy,
weakness, or both.
In the contemporary context, there's no trust between the parties or
mutually recognized platform for talks, thus no framework for peace.
Whether or not opprobrium apropos human rights is sustainable, as long
as the ground-based international dimension is impotent and
multilateral military aid continues to flow, so will the war,
regardless of how many devolution proposals collect atop an APRC table
more likely to make excuses than move mountains.
Atavistically regressing into 'no war no peace', an overarching 'no
trust no talks' endgame emerges, where escalation of the former
perpetuates and ossifies the latter, typecasting war, the solitary
exit strategy. Developments over the past months, on and off the
battlefield portray a near diametric politico-military polarization
between the South and North. This has passed a point-of-no-return
whereby demonstrable leadership of one is increasingly liberated by
its unpopularity in the other, as formally recognized structural
constraints to an escalatory conflict cycle become more nebulous,
cosmetic, per diem.
No simple reversal of fortune exists to return to a negotiating table
based on a different military balance of power, negative peace
dividend, vision of Lanka's future. Collapse of the peace process, has
in tandem constructed an edifice of retrogression, upon which the
daily, dogmatic compulsion for war will make it increasingly harder to
return to peace without passing through a 'war for peace' first.
The edifice of retrogression is defined politically by the SLFP
devolution proposals which demarcated a new era of Eelam IV,
militarily by the image and ground realities of SLA's offensive
dominance, and internationally, by the GoSL-LTTE relative symmetry of
Western isolation.
First, in a broader context, from the 2005 Presidential elections
through the de-merger ruling through Vakarai to the 2007 SLFP
proposals to the June eviction of Tamils from Colombo to the recent
banning of Tamilnet, upon a backdrop of human rights intransigence,
there has been a linear trend of polarization and conflict escalation
driven predominantly by the Rajapaksa Administration. In this context,
the SLFP proposals were perfect, not for conflict resolution but for
the contemporary historical moment, demarcating a more confrontational
phase within Eelam IV, showing the international community a titular
recommitment to a defunct peace process, playing to the Sinhala
electorate, both necessary illusions for the administration's
presiding illusion of necessity, the military option.
Despite the hyperatomism and conditional autonomy put forth in the
proposals which theoretically would make devolved regions
conditionally non-autonomous, the proposal was aligned with the 2005
Presidential election manifesto's raison d'etre, creating more space
to prosecute war. The demonstration effect has buffered international
actors under the aegis of the COI/APRC/IIGEP platform, bolstered
internal support by stoking the same waves of JVP-JHU MoU dependencies
and Southern populism which the SLFP rode to election.
This makes the SLFP proposals at this juncture, the Mahinda
Chintanaya's reincarnation, the SLFP Chintanaya, resonating dualities
of Kumaratunga's 1995 devolution package, presently, demarcating
Rajapaksa's end of the beginning a la the East, beginning of the end a
la the North.
Secondly, when conquest comes easy, arguments for preventive/
preemptive war carry more weight. SLA military advantage in the East,
despite determinants of LTTE regional strength/weakness and pre-
existing presence, 'strategic exfiltration', an amorphous and
ambiguous Karuna-Pillaiyan variable, in the media has been
monolithically compressed into the moniker of SLA offensive dominance.
This may prove costly as it obscures balance of forces with balance of
de facto territorial sovereignty inter alia the strategic value and
cost of holding non-governed spaces in the Northeastern theatre, while
also distorting balance of threat vis-a-vis the guerilla dimension.
Furthermore, the perception of SLA offensive dominance is self-
reinforcing, semiaxiomatic of structural asymmetries inherent in the
South-heavy media complex afflicted by censorship, the opacity as well
as the infrastructural and institutional deficits of the Northeast.
Offensive dominance is also known to intensify arms racing, which has
been conducted and supported openly in Lanka despite opprobrium:
America, China, Pakistan, India.
However, there are downsides. As the SLA pushes North, supply lines
will lengthen, increasing challenges and costs, given the
vulnerabilities inherent in the terrain. Also, populations cannot be
mobilized indefinitely if the civilian economy is to continue to
function and Donor dependencies to be mitigated. The thinking and
actions of the current dispensation in the military sphere, will
ultimately expand the Northeastern theatre of war southward, and the
assumption of pan-regional LTTE weakness, including the guerilla
dimension, may prove dangerous.
Thirdly, the GoSL-LTTE symmetry of relative Western isolation has
leveled, due to GoSL opprobrium for human rights and LTTE withdrawal/
defeat on the military front, in concert creating a climate conducive
to open criticism of the GoSL and measured tolerance of the LTTE, a
new strategic equilibrium arising largely from an 11-month post-Mavil
Aru period driven predominantly by the army. The catalogue of
humanitarian woes committed by both parties, GoSL's ineffective
diplomatic campaigns abroad to manage tension on the human rights
front, and the LTTE reaching saturation point inter alia isolation
last summer, following EU/Canadian bans, reinforce this shift to
symmetry.
If the SLA's offensive dominance is not as strong as advertised and
the structural impediments to ensuring security across the island are
still vulnerable to the guerilla attack, the symmetry of relative
isolation creates an environment where just as the international
community has turned a blind eye towards the escalation driven by the
current dispensation, it may in measured form do the same for the
LTTE.
