More crisis after the crisis is over!

The International Crisis Group with its latest initiation to investigate into the alleged atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan Army in the last stages of the Sri Lankan conflict is threatening to open up healing wounds in Sri Lanka.

Nick Gowing of the BBC interviewed Louise Arbour, the Chairman of the ICG Committee and Dr Palitha Kohona, the Sri Lanka representative in the UN on Wednesday May 19 on this issue.

Arbour accused the Sri Lankan Government of committing war crimes ‘deliberately’ against civilians in the ‘No Fire Zone’ and responding to the charge Dr Kohona maintained that the ‘No Fire Zone’ was declared by the Government to hem the civilians away from the LTTE clutches and hence it is puerile for international bodies to hold Sri Lanka against violating of humanitarian laws when the purpose of all that strategy was to protect the civilians.

Arbour however appears to be determined to pursue a case against Sri Lanka calling ‘both parties are responsible for violations’ and hence the signs are that with such international meddling, the Sri Lankan people may not be able to devote their energies to develop their country devastated by a 34 years conflict.

Second World War

The paradox here is that the World Bodies did not hold Winston Churchill equally responsible as Adolf Hitler was for the casualties inflicted against the German civilians. Worst still, they never mulled about putting America on the dock for killing 280,000 Japanese civilians deliberately, by targeting the two populated towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the nuclear bombs, ‘Little boy’ and ‘Fat man’ ending the Second World War.

Instead they elected these victorious powers to the veto wielding Security Council of the UN thereby cementing their place as world powers in the post World war period.

Look at the larger picture of the Sri Lankan conflict. We had this crisis in this country for the past 34 years. People were bombed while attending to their daily chores and some in their sleep or while travelling in public conveyances.

The country’s economic epicenters, including its Central Bank and the only International Airport were bombed by the LTTE and the country went into a minus economic growth. Sri Lanka was on the verge of being declared a ‘failed state’ and its democratically inclined 20 million population were about to be devoured by the Tigers.

The country looked askance for international help but all what they received was arms embargos, withdrawal of trade concessions and withholding of loan facilities from the ‘International community’. Of course we received some free advice and that was to negotiate with the LTTE, the most cruel terror outfit known to the world!

Unarmed troops

We did negotiate, five high profile rounds with confidence building concessions to the boot, only to realize that the LTTE emerged more powerful after every round of ‘Talks’than it was before.

We negotiated with the LTTE in sheer desperation while they, openly refused to accept the country’s sovereignty, brazenly assassinated our Ministers including the Foreign Minister, murdered civilians with impunity, killed and attempted to kill thousands of unarmed troops on their R&R leave.

Thus it became plain that the negotiations were only strengthening the LTTE and making the situation worse. But still the Western countries told us that negotiations were the ‘only way acceptable to them’.

Amidst this un-empathetic attitude towards Sri Lanka by the West, the LTTE was churning out its propaganda, collecting its funds, indulging in criminal activities and purchasing armaments, in those very Western countries.

They did ban the LTTE after the 9/11 attack in the US but the banning was more of a facile exercise as the LTTE continued to collect funds and continued its full compliment of activities as before through their ‘front’ organisations.

At the end, despite this Western stand of patronization of the terror organisation and attrition towards the legitimately elected Government of Sri Lanka, the country was able to overcome the LTTE bringing to an end a drawn out conflict that cost the country 100,000 lives and more than US$ 20 billion worth collateral.

By this defeat it became very clear that the LTTE was not the invincible military machine it was considered to be but rather an organisation dependent on support from the West exploiting even the West’s new fangled universal paradigms for its own survival.

Colonial forces

The International Crisis Group will do well to remember that the crisis in Sri Lanka was not the ‘alleged killings of civilians towards the final stage of the war’ but rather the continuous loss of life and property over a period of 34 years bringing untold misery to the people in this country.

The fact that the ICG has ‘come alive’ only after the crisis is over may suggest that the ICG is more interested in the continuation of the crisis than in ending it.

In the end this may go to prove that the crisis in Sri Lanka was not the making of the LTTE. It was spawned by colonial forces who were desirous in destabilizing the South Asia to thwart its progress and the LTTE too, was only a victim of those forces.

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