War Crimes, Peace Crimes and Crimes

Against the country!:

Cracks are increasingly beginning to appear against the ‘Mr. Clean’s image, Gen. Fonseka has been projecting for himself under the glow of war heroism. In fact they are not cracks but rather chasms; and they have started to appear from all directions. It is not just about what has surfaced with regard to arms deals affected through the infamous ‘Hicorp’ agency in Oklahoma.

Hicorp affair, though documented and with potential legal implication, may seemed a trickle now, compared to all the information that have continued to glut, giving lurid details of Fonseka’s 40-year career in the Army that exemplifies his all important character.

The readiness with which these parties, mainly from the Army, appear to come forward to expose this ‘hero’ in the first place is some indication of the number of enemies Fonseka seemed to have made during his career. False allegations made for personal reasons however, are often ephemeral and will boomerang, but the types of allegations made against the General seemed to concur one another, thereby pointing to a consensus within the Army.

Of all the accounts of ‘Fonseka shenanigans’ in the Army, the one that is most convincing is the account released by the author of Jayagrahanaye Niyamuwo. He confesses that all that information was the result of a research he did on the lives of the five service commanders in order to collect material for his book and hence his findings were not the results of an exercise directed at embarrassing the Fonseka candidature.

In view of the unprintable and deprecating nature of the material unearthed the author had refrained from using all that in his book that was meant to be a tribute to the war heroes. However now that Fonseka is trying to project a ‘holier than the rest’ image staking claims for the office that demands the highest form of integrity, the author has decided to go public with his findings.

The account commences with G.S.C. Fonseka’s entry into the Army as a Cadet officer in 1970 under no.0/50536 after scoring merit marks to become the last in a trainee batch of 16 Second Lieutenants. From there onwards it is a case of unprintable details of his womanizing escapades and drinking orgies that have earned him notoriety in the Army.

It gives the names of all the women officers with whom he is said to have had sleazy relationships and the anomaly situations such relationships have led to. The account claims that the protagonist had been afflicted with social diseases nine times in his life as a result of his obsession with sex and cites instances where he had been found guilty and reprimanded by the Army discipline code. The account details all the names and ranks of persons involved in these events so that ‘those who question the disclosures could verify for themselves’.

These disclosures again are not quoted in this column with the view of denigrating the Fonseka candidature but rather with the intention of answering the inevitable question that such disclosures will give rise to in the minds of balanced thinking people. How did Fonseka survive in the Army with such a putrid record for 40 years and why did the Government make him the Army Commander at this crucial stage? It now looks as if the biggest war crime the present Government has committed is to appoint a man with such a questionable record as the Army Commander.

Well, for the past 35 years, the Sri Lanka Army went through the most extraordinary times for a Security Force having had to rise up to the most ruthless terror organisation in the world. In that milieu the employment in the Army became less attractive to the public and even those who had joined, faced an uncertain future with their very lives placed against tremendous odds.

Under such circumstances the emphasis in the Army would naturally have been more on bravery than on conduct. So many left the Army during this period due to their ‘faint hearts’ making an objective and ethical evaluation of the conduct of those who stayed behind and survived, ‘irrelevant’.

The Security Forces, in any case, are marinated to fight on a one-way command structure with their lot being ‘not to question why, but to do and die’.

Therefore what is called ‘discipline’ in the Army sense is not necessarily the type of discipline that is required in a civilian society.

This necessarily means that what is called ‘discipline’ in the Army, when applied to civil administration would be nothing but fascism in the political sense. Therefore the Army, being the fighting arm of the State is groomed and nurtured with codes of conduct to fight and not to administer a civil society in a democratic set up.

Fonseka has been smart enough to play his cards well in the Army and ‘obedience’ to senior officers had been his virtue right throughout. To his credit, it should be said that his co-operation was never found wanting at times of crisis in the Army, in which the Army found itself quite often, during the past 30 years.

JVP adopted a fiercely nationalist line during the 2004 election and Fonseka had been quite close to the JVP expressing his willingness to do all what is necessary to win the war at that time. Although he held out the guarantee of winning the war if he was made the Commander, Chandrika resisted it purely on the grounds of Fonseka’s questionable record of conduct in the Army.

What any head of state would look for in the Army Commander is trustworthiness even over and above his fighting capacity and hence an overview of Fonseka’s record revealed tantrums and excesses. Even though Fonseka did not become the Commander at that time he managed to maintain his pro-war attitude.

After the elections, he had even canvassed the support of ‘Hela Urumaya’ as a front-runner to take over the post of Army Commander. With all that, there is enough evidence to surmise that Fonseka, being an ambitious Army officer, always viewed the war, as an opportunity to earn public accolades and material benefits.

When Gotabhaya was appointed the Defence Secretary in December 2005, Shantha Kottegoda was the Army Commander and being Ranil’s nominee his attitude was more ‘political’ even in the face of unbridled aggression by the LTTE. Sarath Fonseka was the only officer who had a reputation for believing in the Sri Lankan Army’s capacity to defeat the LTTE.

Thus Gotabhaya, who was genuine in his desire to finish the war, opted for Fonseka disregarding the ‘other details’ and also the fact that he was only six days away from going on his retirement.

Even after the war broke out Fonseka fought with tenacity. The talk in the Army front line that time was that, “Issarahata giyoth Jonnie, pitipassata avoth Fonnie” (If you go forward, Jonnie will get you: and if you retreat Fonnie will get you). Fonseka however had a tinge of ruthlessness in his operation for he was said to always evaluate the success of an operation in view of the number of casualties and injuries to the forces in that operation.

When his Brigade Commanders said that ‘the resistance was tough’ he would not believe unless they gave him the number of dead and the disabled during the operations. Further it was Fonseka’s own obduracy that cost the Army 1,600 casualties at the Muhamalai Operation when he insisted that the Army was capable of overcoming the Muhamalai LTTE defence line on its own with no assistance from the Air Force.

War is an aberration and hence more often than not you have to face the war with characters that are aberrations in themselves. Sarath Fonseka was good for the war and hence even at this stage if we understand the difference between, Army and war vis a vis civil society and peace, we will not question the government’s wisdom in appointing Fonseka as the Army Commander that time.

Prabhakaran was the most ruthless terror leader who wanted to reign by sheer strength of his terror and hence the Government had to have an equally ruthless and ambitious man to fight him.

Therefore the government has not made a mistake when they made Fonseka the Army Commander. It is those bankrupt politicians, who could not face the government by themselves, who has committed the most heinous crime against the entire Sri Lankan society by sponsoring Fonseka, who was only good to fight, to be the President of the country.