The background to Indian intervention

Politics & People by Dr. Rajiva Wijesingha

INTERVENTION: In discussing the current Indian attitude towards continuing problems in Sri Lanka, I made the point that a repetition of what occurred in 1987 is unlikely.

Though some commentators predict increasing hostility, as happened then, the situation is very different now. With regard to the primary motivation for Indian intervention, made clear by what it got the Sri Lankan Government to agree to in the Accord, there is nothing comparable given that the Cold War has concluded, and Indian primacy in the region is pretty much generally recognised.

There was however another reason for Indian intervention, and it still continues. This is the perception that Tamils in Sri Lanka have, while this alone may rouse Indian feeling, that will be exacerbated when politicians in Tamil Nadu take up the cry.

The LTTE has therefore been insistent in claiming persecution of Tamil civilians, and its surrogates, the TNA, have managed even to bring this formally to the attention of the Indian Prime Minister.

Motivations in this respect are particularly important, because they are perceived as having governed the Indian actions in 1987.

My argument however is that that was part of the very sensible tactics the Indians adopted, to mitigate what was essentially intervention with regard to issues of national sovereignty. In this respect we should look in general at the tactics the Indians employed, since they succeeded thoroughly in convincing the world of the altruistic nature of their actions, while achieving their own national goals through the appendix to the Accord.

Intervention

The pretext for Indian intervention had been the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka, and this had also provided them with the tools, the terrorist groups they encouraged, that had helped to weaken the Sri Lankan Government.

But it was not any action of the terrorists that made Jayewardene finally submit, but rather active Indian intervention, in the form initially of the dropping of food parcels over Jaffna. Of course it was not the food that was the issue, but the manner in which India in effect violated Sri Lankan air space.

What was remarkable is that this happened without any danger to India of international condemnation. There may have been some criticism in Western newspapers, but this was not taken further by governments that were hostile to India and friendly to Sri Lanka in the Cold War context.

The reason was that India had carefully prepared the way beforehand, by drawing international attention to lapses on the part of the Sri Lankan Government in dealing with its own internal problems.

There are after all three obvious reasons that could justify international intervention. One is humanitarian, when it is clear that a government is incapable of fulfilling the basic needs of the people in its care.

Another is actual abuse, when a government obviously persecutes some particular segment of the people it governs. Finally, and often resulting from either or both of these, is the proliferation of refugees, which can lead not only to internationally agreed intervention, but even intervention with relative impunity of the state particularly affected by such refugees.

India had taken full advantage of all these factors when it intervened in East Pakistan in 1971, and the almost total absence of condemnation, nay the general approbation it received, confirmed the limitations of theories of State sovereignty. Of course the situation in Sri Lanka was different, but that does not necessarily govern international perceptions.

Open Indian intervention had been conceivable since 1981, when there were attacks on Tamils all over the country. These had been encouraged, it seemed, by media reports (almost the entire media was then in government hands) that characterised Tamils in general as terrorists.

This had in turn been spurred by a government motion in parliament of No-Confidence in the leader of the opposition, Appapillai Amirthalingam.

Little sympathy

Amirthalingam as leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front had asked for a mandate in the 1977 parliamentary election to establish a separate state in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

Though the TULF won a majority of seats in these Provinces, they had not expected to achieve their stated goal, and had instead negotiated for limited devolution through what were termed District Development Councils. The chief executive of the Districts was a Minister appointed by the President from within Parliament, which made clear the limits of the powers that would be available to the elected Councils.

This was not to the liking of the various militant groups that had sprung up around the demands of the TULF, and the most extreme of these, the Tigers, asked the TULF to repudiate the agreement and boycott the DDC election, scheduled for June 1981. At that stage however, the TULF had been happily able to ignore the Tigers, who had little sympathy amongst the population.

However, when the government sent Minister, Cyril Mathew, to lead its campaign for the election, and when in the run up to the election his storm troops attacked the MP for Jaffna and burnt the Jaffna Public Library, the mood changed. The Tigers were able to claim that the TULF strategy had led to further oppression, and sympathy for their own more violent approach increased.

Amirthalingam's attempt to move a motion of No-Confidence in Mathew was disallowed. Instead Mathew, and some of his supporters, turned on him and on Tamils in general, suggesting they were all terrorists, which was followed by violence against Tamils all over the country (though not in Colombo).

This was stopped only after the Indian government indicated that it might be compelled to intervene, and the government then turned on the MP who had moved the actual motion of No-Confidence - though Mathew was not affected.

The whole episode meant that the gloves were off. India may well have been training terrorist groups previously, but there was now much more reason to see them as the representatives of the Tamil people. By the following year, when the TULF wanted to contest local elections, the Tiger demand for a boycott had to be followed.

And then, in July 1983, the government launched even more violent attacks on Tamils, even in Colombo. On this occasion, indeed, Foreign Minister Hameed was dispatched to the West to ask for assistance in the event of Indian intervention, but the answer was a definite negative - even though Mrs Thatcher reportedly was inclined to agree, given Sri Lanka's support for Britain over the Falklands War.

1983 saw India actively engaged in what would now be termed conflict resolution, having been asked to do so by the TULF MPs who had almost all sought refuge in India.

So, with clear evidence of assaults on a minority, with many of these suffering in refugee camps within Sri Lanka and requiring humanitarian assistance, with a great influx of refugees to other countries, including - in greatest numbers and from the most vulnerable groups - to India, the Indian government had every excuse to intervene.

Negotiations

Nevertheless, overt intervention at least was minimal, consisting of the regular dispatch of special emissaries who encouraged negotiations. Perhaps assuming that this would be all, the Sri Lankan Government, with Jayewardene still defiant and insisting that he could not go beyond District Councils initially, seemed to be digging in its heels.

This resulted in a massive increase in terrorist activity, which was generally assumed to have been encouraged by India. Significantly, the most active groups at this stage seemed to be those closest to the Indians, initially TELO and then EROS.

Meanwhile the Tigers took advantage of the negotiations India was encouraging, and in particular its insistence on the various terrorist groups working together, to destroy their rivals.

TELO and EPRLF were effectively destroyed in the North, which may have been why India turned more to EROS. But while incidents such as the bomb at the Pettah bus stand may have wrung concessions from the government, increasingly it was the response of the Tigers that had to be considered, and on them India had less influence than on the others.

Thus, when Jayewardene was finally persuaded to offer first Provincial Councils and then, not a merger of the North and East, but institutionalised coordination, though the Indians thought this a good basis for negotiation, Prabhakaran, the Tiger Leader, insisted that this was no substitute for the Eelam for which he had fought.

So there were no further negotiations during 1987, while the Indian High Commissioner increasingly adopted an aggressive stance. Internationally meanwhile India was finding it easier to isolate Sri Lanka.

On March 12 a motion critical of Sri Lanka was passed at the United Nations Human Rights Commission at Geneva, contradicting Jayawardene's assertion after the terrorist violence of 1986 that international perceptions of the crisis had shifted, and were no longer critical of the Sri Lankan Government as they had been after July 1983.

The motion was passed by consensus after Sri Lanka realised that it could not be defeated. It drew attention to reports highly critical of the Sri Lankan Government, on torture and on enforced or involuntary disappearances.

The government was invited to intensify co-operation with the International Committee of the Red Cross in 'the field of dissemination and promotion of international humanitarian law'; and also to take up the offer of its services to 'fulfill its functions of protection of humanitarian standards'.

Meanwhile India conveyed to Sri Lanka that it should provide assistance and relief on humanitarian grounds to the suffering people of Jaffna. On the very next day the Sri Lankan Government announced that it would review the fuel embargo, which had caused much anguish, and soon fuel was allowed into Jaffna on ration.

Despite these indications of what was brewing, there were still those who thought a military solution was possible.

After further terrorist provocation, including a massive explosion in Colombo on April 21st, the government started bombing what it claimed were terrorist outposts in the North, which led to cash relief from the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, given direct to the Tigers.

This may have strengthened the hardliners in the Cabinet, and towards the end of May the Minister of National Security launched an attack on Vadamaarachchi, the heartland of the Tigers.

Suffering

It was then that India, stressing both the problem of the refugees who were fleeing to India, and the humanitarian suffering of Tamils in the Jaffna Peninsula, offered food aid and, when this was refused, sent its airforce to drop food. The message was clear to the Sri Lankan Government (or, at least, to Jayewardene and the less aggressive members of his Cabinet) and within a couple of months the Peace Accord was signed.

I have argued earlier that the security reasons for India wanting the Accord are no longer conceivable, with the end of the Cold War. My point here is that the other, apparently altruistic, reasons for the Accord, the sufferings of Tamils, are nothing like they were in the eighties, and have not been recorded as such internationally.

At its simplest successive Sri Lankan Governments since Jayewardene's are much more careful about ensuring that the factors noted above do not recur.

The overt racism of the 1981 and 1983 attacks on Tamils is inconceivable now, not only because governments have more sense than when Cyril Mathew was given his head, but also because they know it is essential to stamp down hard on any unofficial racist assaults, even after what is claimed to be grave provocation.

Secondly, the Armed Forces are instructed in the need to maintain discipline, unlike in the eighties when attacks on civilians were rife.

The argument that all this is in theory, and that the Armed Forces are no different from the days in which they were described as the most indisciplined in the world is untenable, in view of the records maintained by the Scandinavian monitors of the current Ceasefire, who recorded nearly 4000 violations by the LTTE and less than a tenth as many by the Sri Lankan Government.

This needs to be considered in a context in which the monitors are considered partial to the Tigers, and also one in which the LTTE propaganda machine has been extremely efficient at drawing attention to any breaches. Indeed the fact that detailed rebuttals could be furnished of almost all the grave allegations highlighted during 2006 by LTTE websites indicates that Sri Lanka will not fall easily into the mess it did in 1987.

This does not mean that humanitarian concerns are not a problem, and that there are no refugees. But unlike in the eighties the government is aware of its obligation to minimise these. The contrast between its efforts to deal with such problems, efforts that are well publicised, and the general neglect of these and their victims two decades ago makes clear that the lessons of the past have to some extent at least been learnt.

I will return to my claim that in fact Indian and Sri Lankan interests are congruent now, and therefore an acceptable solution to the ethnic problem will be easier than it was in 1987.

What I hope I have shown - though commentators who predict doom will continue to do so, and hope that their prophecies are fulfilled - is that the factors that made Indian intervention almost inevitable twenty years ago are no longer applicable.