Archives

by Jayadeva Uyangoda

With the negotiations between the Government and the LTTE in crisis, there are some who probably feel vindicated that their predictions of negotiation collapse, made at the very beginning of the peace process, might even be proved prophetic. Indeed, when the UNF-LTTE political engagement began in December 2001, there were very few analysts who could point to any significantly positive outcome.

This in a way demonstrates one of the unfortunate ironies inherent in the efforts towards settling protracted conflicts by non-military means. There is a greater likelihood of negative predictions concerning negotiation outcomes becoming a reality than would the possibilities for constructive conflict management through talks.

Section of the jaffna citizenry

Most of the negative-outcome analysis of UNF-LTTE talks has had a common thread: an overwhelming belief that the LTTE was not really interested in either a negotiated settlement or an alternative to its goal of a separate state. To the question why the LTTE has joined in negotiations with the Government, the answer provided by this perspective is a simple one: 'The LTTE's nature is exactly that. It negotiates when it is militarily weak and returns to war after re-grouping, re-training and re-arming.'

This is probably not an incorrect assessment of the LTTE's past negotiation behaviour. But it does not explain much about the structural dynamics as well as politics that may have also shaped the LTTE's decisions concerning both war and negotiation.

Nor does it explain why governments in Colombo have repeatedly initiated negotiations with the LTTE against a backdrop of previous experiences of costly negotiation failure. It is not enough to say that politicians in Colombo, when in power, are a na When we take a long-term view of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict, we may notice that war and negotiations have been the two main strategies that both sides, the State and the LTTE, have pursued with consequences that have been equally costly to both sides. Unlike the negotiation skeptics we would always want to emphasize, both sides have suffered in both war and talks.

Meanwhile, what appears to be quite interesting in this history of war and relative peace in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict is the fact that there have been two conjunctures in which possibilities for a negotiated political settlement through talks have had greater potential than the conflict ending through war. In other words, in these conjunctures, the balance of possibilities and trajectories has been in favour of a negotiated settlement. The moments of 1994-1995 and 2002-2003 constituted such conjunctures. The State and the LTTE irretrievably lost the moment of 1994-1995. There is still time for them not to lose the political moment of 2002-2003.

Analysis

Any government that decides to negotiate with the LTTE should have in its store of ideas some credible explanation as to why the rebel leaders have decided to pursue the option of political engagement while giving a respite to war. That explanation has to be a seriously analytical one, and not a conjecture guided by shallow rhetoric which we often find in media debates.

For example, the UNF Government should not strategize its negotiation options on the belief that the LTTE has come to talks to bargain the terms of its surrender. Nor should the Government view the LTTE's negotiation turn as one necessitated by the need for fresh recruitment and procuring of new weapons etc., in the interregnum of a ceasefire.

Moreover, no Government in Colombo should think that they could either deceive the LTTE at the negotiation table, or even achieve the same objectives through talks which they failed in war.

The LTTE needs to be understood as a counter-state politico-military entity that has been extremely serious about its goals, its methods and even its compromises.

An elementary lesson that has to be learned from Sri Lanka's previous negotiation experiences is that no government in Colombo should engage the LTTE politically if it is not serious about what it is willing and ready to offer to the LTTE in exchange of a possible commitment from the latter to a goal other than a separate state.

Negotiations with the LTTE, as it has already become evident during the UNF government's learning process, entails profoundly complex, and potentially unpopular, compromises, particularly in the short run. For some of them, it may even require re-alignment of political forces in the South. Offering a credible alternative to the goal of a separate Tamil state now is not as difficult as it was until late last year. By unilaterally opting for the notion of internal self-determination and for a federalist framework, the LTTE leadership has indeed simplified the matters for the UNF Government.

But now, the more complex issues are located in some of the immediate challenges and that is where the UNF Government will have to act fast, with both imagination and courage.

Challenges

Two such crucial challenges are linked to the LTTE's not-so-hidden expectation of consolidating its political-administrative control of Northern and Eastern provinces. The LTTE's demand for setting up of an interim administration is one. The other issue has not yet been clearly articulated in the debate, but any observer of LTTE politics would have identified it with relative ease.

It entails the LTTE's objective of returning to Jaffna, which they lost control during the Sri Lanka's Army's offensive in late 1995 and early 1996. Allowing the LTTE to return to Jaffna and re-establish its control over the civilian population there under conditions of peace talks is obviously a task more difficult than setting up of an LTTE-led interim administration in the North and East.

Meanwhile, the LTTE's demand for de-militarization of Jaffna peninsula can be seen as directly linked to its objective of returning to Jaffna.

These two issues, taken together, represent the short-term political outcome that the LTTE would have expected from their political engagement with the UNF Government. Given the utter complexity of these two possibilities, the UNF Government, particularly in the absence of a political consensus in the South, may feel unable to engage the LTTE to negotiate a road map to effect a 'transfer' of administrative control of the two provinces. Quite paradoxically, the LTTE is also in a difficult situation in this regard.

Having already announced, unilaterally and without a equivalent quid pro quo from Colombo, their partial renouncement of the goal of a separate state, the LTTE's agenda of returning to Jaffna may seem in the public eye an unfair extraction of a unilateral and asymmetrical concession from a weak government running out of options.

Incidentally, one way of explaining, partially though, the LTTE's resorting to hard bargaining tactics after mid-April is perhaps the realization that it has not got anything substantial from the UNF Government in exchange of compromising the secessionist goal.

Limited options

Hard bargaining from either side is not likely to help the negotiation process at present. To restore the partnership with the UNF Government, the LTTE too will have to work hard towards a win-win outcome.

If the LTTE continues to put pressure on the Government for concessions on the interim administration issue outside the negotiation table, the fragile peace process will be at risk of losing its momentum as well as legitimacy.

But, the LTTE's present dilemma lies precisely in the absence of a gain that will have an adequate weight with the suspension of its negotiation boycott.

To return to the issue of the prospect of the LTTE's establishing politico-administrative control over the Northern and Eastern provinces along with its returning to Jaffna, the Government in Colombo will have hardly any options to prevent that eventuality without putting the negotiation process in jeopardy.

While the LTTE is unlikely to resort to military action to regain Jaffna, they may, in the worse case scenario, not find any useful purpose in the continuing political engagement with the Government either.

This may lead to a fairly long period of negotiation stalemate, with recurring incidents of ceasefire violations in the Jaffna city combined with mass mobilization by the LTTE aimed at de-militarizing the Jaffna peninsula. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Government as well as the international custodians of the island's peace will also be hard pressed to sustain the ceasefire process in a context of increasing uncertainty that will provide a great deal of space for spoiler interventions. Actually, the restoration of the negotiation track is the best way to ensure the political interests of both the Government and the LTTE.

Fresh approach

This calls for a fresh approach to the strategy of negotiation. If the UNF and LTTE leaders are seriously committed to a process of conflict settlement through the de-escalation of war, neither party should engage in tactics that endanger the peace process and bring back the threat of war.

One option available to the leaders of the two sides is the opening up of a new, second, negotiation front that can complement the formal talks between the two delegations. Initiation of direct political talks between Messrs Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran at times of negotiation crisis can be an immensely useful problem-solving alternative. Now is the time for such a courageous move, because the negotiation process, having exhausted all the potentialities of its Phase I is struggling to enter Phase II without a clear road map.

While re-launching the negotiation initiative with the LTTE, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe might want to seriously reflect on the agenda for Phase II of the process.

There is no way for him to avoid in the coming phase of negotiations the substantial issue of sharing of Sri Lanka's state power with the LTTE through institutionalizing an interim process.

Institution building for transition of political-administrative power in the North and East and eventual democratization of political process there should not be delayed, if the two sides are committed to a political settlement based on power-sharing. Actually, both the UNF and the LTTE should be blamed for avoiding the issue of interim administration during the Phase I of talks.

The greatest failure of that phase of talks is the inability, as well as unwillingness, of the two sides to build political institutions for transition to power-sharing in the North and East.

Institution building for transition to power-sharing entails a complex road map that should deal with a host of hard issues that would actually constitute the core issues of negotiation. Resolving the High Security Zone issue, de-militarization of Jaffna, addressing Sinhalese and Muslim fears about LTTE rule in the Eastern province while allowing the LTTE to take control of the administrative functions in the two provinces, setting up of mechanisms for political and administrative accountability and defining the relationship between the emerging institutions in the North and East and the Sri Lankan State will be at the centre of negotiation agenda in the coming phase.

There is no way to avoid these issues during the Phase II of negotiations.

www.crescat.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager