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‘United we stand, divided we fall’

The ancient Greek storyteller Aesop told a tale in which a lion tried to attack four oxen, who would turn their tails to one another so that their horns faced the lion whichever way he approached them. However, the oxen quarrelled, and the lion attacked each separately in turn and overcame them.

At the end of each of his stories, Aesop would add an aphorism. In the case of 'The Four Oxen and the Lion', it was 'United we stand, divided we fall'. This ancient maxim holds true to this day.

It was to overcome the barrier of solidarity that Julius Caesar advocated the policy of 'divide et impera' - divide and rule - which has remained the guiding principle of imperialists up to modern times.

The imperialists of the 'Age of Imperialism' were superlative opportunists and improvisers, taking situations as they saw them and turning them to their advantage. The principle of divide and rule was applied using whatever human material came to hand, multiplying small irritations to create partitions in the colonised societies.

Conflicting populations

In Rwanda-Burundi, the Germans and their successors, the Belgians, elevated Tutsis above Hutus, creating caste conflict. In India, the British Raj put Muslim rulers over Hindu subjects and vice versa. In Nigeria, the British set the Ibos against the Hausas and in Sudan they created divisions between the Muslim North and the Christian South.

Where there was no dissension, the imperialists imported irritant populations - the prototype being Ireland, with 'plantations' of Scottish Protestants among the Roman Catholic population. The Boers were already in situ in South Africa - to be used against the Black and Coloured people. In North Africa the French settled 'Colons' from Metropolitan France among the Muslim population. In Uganda (the first 'promised land' of the Zionists led by Herzl) the British first toyed with the prospect of introducing Jews. However, Indian traders were found to fill the required niche quite well. In Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the West Indies, Indian Tamil indentured labourers were employed to divide the people at the lowest level.

Geneva resolution

The piece de resistance was in the Middle East, where the mainly Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were partitioned: first between the British and the French and then into conflicting populations. The French divided the Christians from the Muslims. The British introduced Jewish Colons into Palestine and created tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the other territories.

The results of these improvisations can be observed today in numerous wars and civil conflicts all over the Third World - which are somehow attributed, by the use of loaded adjectives (e.g. 'tribal') to visceral urges on the part of a primitive population. The victors in these situations are the neo-imperialists, who get easy access to minerals, petroleum or whatever commodity they require.

The latest version of this strategy was one which emerged about 2006 as part of the American 'roadmap' for a 'New Middle East', which envisaged the balkanisation of the region. A map drawn by US Lt-Col (Retd) Ralph Peters showed how to do it: Kurdistan was to be carved out of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey; the Shia parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia and the Arab parts of Iran were to be amalgamated; the area around Mecca was to be cut off to form a Muslim religious state - the areas North of which were to be affixed to a Greater Jordan; Syria's coast would be affixed to Lebanon and Pakistan would be carved up to augment Afghanistan and to create an independent Baluchistan.

If nothing else, this shows that the principal of 'divide et impera' is not far from the minds of neo-colonialist planners - which should be borne in mind when assessing the situation which emerged regarding the mosque at Dambulla. Outwardly, it appears simply as a Buddhist-Muslim conflict over a religious site. However, everything is in the timing: the concatenation of circumstances suggests otherwise.

The Geneva resolution on Sri Lanka was opposed by the Muslim Middle Eastern countries, even those widely deemed to be US allies. A conflict between Buddhists and Muslims would indicate to those countries that they were backing the wrong horse.

The incident received maximum publicity because the Indian Parliamentary delegation led by Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, was on a wide ranging tour of Sri Lanka at the time.

International influences

It may be no coincidence that on Wednesday the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Lok Sabha leader TR Baalu demanded that India get the United Nations to carve out a separate Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. He asserted that 'thousands of people have been kept behind barbed wire fences' and that the 'tyranny' of the 'Sinhalese government' persisted. His colleague R. Thamaraiselvan claimed that most of the houses built by India for displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka were under Sinhalese occupation.

Some publications have asserted that the Dambulla incident is indicative of the support of 'the regime' for 'Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian triumphalism'. The right-wing NGO Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which is associated with a network of Islamophobic and pro-Zionist foundations, has called upon 'the Sri Lankan government to protect against the threat posed by Sinhala Buddhist nationalists and safeguard Sri Lanka's religious pluralism'.

It is because of these circumstances that the government has said it will inquire into 'any attempts by extremist elements due to international influences or other reasons' at creating an unwanted state of affairs. It has emphasised that Sri Lanka is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country which provides for freedom of religion in its constitution, and that freedom of worship will not be denied.

As a Third World country, we need to maintain solidarity with our Middle-Eastern friends. As a multi-ethnic multi-religious country we need to preserve inter-faith amity. United we stand, divided we fall. It is essential for us all to heed the government's request to exercise patience until an amicable solution can be worked out to the Dambulla crisis.

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