The changing nature of conflicts
Our respected local think tank, the Marga Institute,
headed by Chairman Emeritus Dr. Godfrey Gunatilleke, has made a
comprehensive and insightful assessment of the controversial
Darusman Report on Sri Lanka, which, everyone interested in the
issues growing out of the last stages of our conflict, ought to
read. Titled ‘An Analysis and Evaluation of The Report of the
Advisory Panel to the UNSG on the Final Stages of the War in Sri
Lanka’, it came out a couple of months or so back and was
discussed at a seminar subsequently, which, in turn, proved
important in promoting an understanding among sections of the
public of the fundamental flaws in the Darusman Report.
An important issue raised by the Marga report is the
applicability of the conventional rules of war to extreme and
complex armed conflicts presented by the world today. This is
indeed a question of the greatest significance. For, it is plain
to see that we cannot understand bloody armed rebellions
launched against lawfully constituted, democratic states in very
simplistic, ‘black and white’ terms any more.
For instance, the view that held over the decades on
intra-state conflicts that featured armed non-state actors and
states was that the non-state actors were motivated by
grievances that have their roots in deprivations of numerous
kinds and in socio-economic injustices. These theoretical
formulations on anti-state rebellions tended to lend some
legitimacy to these armed uprisings and helped in projecting a
highly romantic image of the militants concerned.
However, a close study of the armed uprisings in particularly
our part of the world over the past 20 or 30 years reveals a
starkly different situation to that just mentioned. It could be
observed that rather than these uprisings having their roots in
widely and keenly felt socio-economic grievances among the
people, they were really the outcome of efforts by armed groups
to create non-existent grievances among social groups. Thus, a
preoccupation of the LTTE over the years was to launch terror
attacks against civilian targets in the South and on villages in
the North-East with a Sinhala majority, with the aim of forcing
the armed forces into retaliating strongly against the LTTE and
North-East civilians. It also expected to trigger communalism on
a mass scale through these acts of savagery.
The LTTE was finally proved absolutely wrong when Northern
citizens in their tens of thousands flocked to state-controlled
areas in the North, seeking the succour of the Armed Forces, in
the final stages of the humanitarian operation. The sinister
ploy of the Tigers to sow the seeds of communal hatred really
backfired through this show of faith in the state Forces by the
Northern citizenry. However, what is of particular significance
from the point of view of our subject today is that the Tigers’
efforts to create mass-scale incendiary grievances among the
Northern people came to nothing because the Tamil people did not
lose their confidence in the state.
An interesting parallel could be drawn between the LTTE and
the Sikh militants of India’s Punjab state of the mid-eighties,
who too proved that they were menacingly intent on creating
mostly non-existent grievances among the Sikh masses. Punjab was
the ‘Bread Bowl’ of India but the extremist terror outfit led by
Bhindranwale was intent on breaking Punjab away from the Indian
Union because it felt that Punjab was prosperous enough to go it
alone. The Punjab blood-letting was essentially a product of the
‘Revolution of Rising Expectations’ and not an outcome of mass
oppression.
Both, the LTTE and the Sikh extremists, to take just two
examples, spilt innocent blood unconscionable and limitlessly
and could in no way claim that they were powered by mass
grievances or keenly experienced widespread oppression. However,
the states concerned could not stand idly by when these
atrocities were thus unleashed and had to reestablish law and
order. This was a duty they could not evade. They had to
exercise their sovereign right of keeping their countries
intact.
It is plain, therefore, that these conflicts could not be
viewed through conventional theoretical lenses. Their complex
nature calls for new conceptual tools of comprehension. The
international community cannot allow itself to be guided by
‘conventional wisdom’ on these questions. The time is ripe to
unravel the multi-dimensional realities of today’s conflicts. |