Towards zero

Cumulative effect of the LTTE’s terrorism:

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha
 

Being a Professor of English may not seem the best training available for heading a Peace Secretariat, but it has certainly proved invaluable in trying to understand the way people function. Unfortunately I have generally had to have recourse not to the more sophisticated literature I have taught, but rather to fairly simple works.

Thus I could not initially understand why so many statements by those who purport to be well wishers of the Sri Lankan people so sedulously avoid mention of the LTTE. The ICRC recently managed to complain about ambulances not being allowed to evacuate patients from the Vanni, in a manner that suggested it did not know who was responsible, which meant that this was immediately taken up by various news agencies so as to cast blame on the government. Ironically this occurred on the very day that the LTTE suddenly refused permission (including for two foreign UN employees) to leave the Vanni, even though it had indicated earlier that this would be allowed.

Towards humanity Picture by Thilak Perera

This followed hard on a statement by the UN Secretary General, which failed to indicate who precisely was responsible for holding thousands of civilians in danger areas. That statement too did not mention the LTTE at all, again allowing news agencies yet another opportunity to blame the government. Given that two UN agencies had just previously categorically requested the LTTE to let the civilians leave, it was clear that the Secretary General could not be ignorant of the actual situation. Why then had he, like the ICRC, failed to name names?

What, after all, would the cumulative effect be of relentless criticism of what was happening in Mullaitivu, drawing attention to the danger the displaced Sri Lankans there were facing, as though this were largely the fault of the government?

The naive assumption would have been that those who expressed worry about these people were actually concerned about them. But, in that case, surely they would have intervened earlier, and have categorically asked the LTTE to let them leave. This had not happened, instead they had issued half hearted statements, which included critiques of the arrangements the Sri Lankan government had made for the displaced. These had been highlighted and, in the storms that rose, institutions like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International using phrases such as ‘internment’, people seemed to lose sight of the fact that the LTTE was driving people into smaller and smaller areas.

Were the people who ignored all this, while wearing bleeding hearts on their sleeve about everything else, simply blind to reality? Did they not realize - what was obvious to the Sri Lankans who really cared - that the LTTE was firstly trying to create a humanitarian crisis, secondly intending to use these people as human shields, and thirdly hoping that they might suffer in the fighting so that it could then be claimed that the Sri Lankan forces were targeting civilians?

The International NGOs, who had turned a blind eye to forced recruitment while they claimed that they were all that stood between the people of the Vanni and untold horrors (untold by them, as it turned out), declared that their workers had not been given passes to leave the Vanni, but refrained from public condemnation of this, claiming that they were worried for the safety of their workers.

The UN did the same, hoping they claimed that this sort of appeasement would encourage the LTTE to let those people go, a hope that collapsed last week when the LTTE, having led them on, gave a categorical refusal - so that even the two heroic foreigners who went back with these victims had finally to abandon them last week.

Thus, while now there are all sorts of calls about not breaching international humanitarian law, while there are endless declarations of the need for proportionality (a concept to which the Israeli Prime Minister gave short shrift recently), there was absolutely no recognition of the fact that the Sri Lankan armed forces had been scrupulous about observing high standards throughout its offensives. Indeed there were hardly any allegations even of breaches by the Sri Lankan forces for much of the current offensive.

What was the reason for all this? So much strange behaviour deserved much application of little grey cells, supported quite readily as I found by specific precedents from the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. A little thought made it clear that the main purpose of all these interventions was to impose a halt on the operations of the security forces.

Unlike in her novel ‘Towards Zero’ however, where the aim of all the wicked deeds was similarly the condemnation of an innocent person for crimes she had never committed, this particular Operation Zero was not being perpetrated by a single person. Rather, it was an extended operation, with many of those participating in it doubtless not being quite aware of what their combined efforts would produce, thinking they were simply moved by humanitarian considerations.

After all, if you arrive in Sri Lanka towards the end of your career, there is not much hope of fulfilling your childhood dream of making a difference in the world through your work. So, as in that brilliant cameo by Ingrid Bergman in ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, you express tearful sympathy for little brown babies, and hope that your interlocutors will take you seriously.

But, as Hercules Poirot put it, that performance was too preposterous to take anyone in. So we need to be aware of possibly a more sinister purpose, albeit one full of moral self righteousness.

In short, what is planned is the imposition of a halt on the operations of our forces, which will have the inevitable consequence of giving the Tigers a new lease of life, just as happened nineteen years ago.