Vikram Singh was nearly convincing, but not fully

Dr Kamal WICKREMASINGHE

Now that the fact finding mission of the agents of the empire has ended, it is time that all Sri Lankans examined who these people are and what business they had in Sri Lanka.

Contrary to the description by some media as a ‘high level’ delegation, the three officials who graced us with their visit are decidedly ‘low level’ officials in the US bureaucracy: James Moore, Vikram Singh and Jane B. Zimmerman are ‘deputy assistant secretaries’, the lowest level in the bewilderingly hierarchical executive level structure of the US Public Service made up of Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, Executive Secretaries, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries, in that descending order.

Yet the three managed to ‘punch above their weight’ in our little country, securing ministerial and secretary level meetings, wrapped up with a media conference.

The mission had no purpose

While looking to justify the visit during the media conference, James Moore inadvertently revealed its totally contrived nature. Moore had to rely on platitudes to explain why they were here. “Three of us are here because we care, the United States cares, very much about Sri Lanka, about our relationship, our bilateral relationship, about the ways that we can work together in the future in the region. This is a long standing friendship, a long standing relationship”, he said.

It is a pity that no one in the media posse pointed out that in these days of modern communications, they could have shown their intense love for Sri Lanka from their offices in Washington!

Let us not mince words here. The visit was basically a ‘junket’ that reveals a few other aspects of the inner workings of the US defence and foreign policy bureaucracy, especially at the middle and junior executive levels.

The nature of the visit and its objectives can be discerned by looking at the career history of the three visitors: while James Moore and Jane Zimmermann conform to the usual ‘chosen’ people category that dominates the US academic, government and political spheres, the Indian-born and Californian-raised Vikram Singh is a ‘bought asset’, another widely deployed neocon modus operandi.

Moore and Zimmermann are typical of the careerists in the US bureaucracy

John F. Kennedy	George W. Bush	Hillary Clinton

The career histories of James Moore and Jane Zimmerman are typical of the neocon hordes and their lackeys who have taken control of the US departments of state and defence. They normally hold a degree or two from places like the Georgetown University and such other places. Upon joining the state department they routinely secure a number of diplomatic postings and become aggressive advocates of the neocon philosophy of ‘US can save the world by projecting its military strength’.

James Moore, in addition to being in diplomatic posts in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Egypt and the UAE, as is well known, was the deputy director of the Office of Career Development and Assignments in the Bureau of Human Resources. There he was in Colombo, asking us to do various things ranging from enjoying equal rights and dignity to sharing in a future that is secure and prosperous – just words and words alone. In American lingo, this James boy is truly ‘going places’!

Jane B. Zimmerman, like all good neocons, has done her bit for the Zion by focusing on Israel - Jordan negotiations, and by serving as ‘country officer’ for Iran, Israel and the Gaza Strip, Tunisia, and Mali between 1994 and 2000. No prizes for guessing what she was doing in Iran.

Vikram Singh is special

From 2008-2011, Zimmerman has had a stint with USAID, ‘detailed’ from the state department, as they say, no doubt gaining valuable experience on the ground. She currently looks after democracy, human rights, religious freedom and labour, being ‘responsible’ for South and Central Asia. A hefty responsibility indeed; She seems to be carrying the world on her broad shoulders!

Then we have the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, Vikram Singh. First thing to note is that Mr Singh, as his name might suggest, does not come from the turban wearing Sikh or Punjabi ethnic group: he is of southern Indian origin of some sort.

To the extent it is important in tracing Singh’s background, his parents have migrated to America where his father made it good as “the business intelligence program manager” at a semiconductor manufacturing firm, Lam Research in Fremont, California. Relevant breeding and upbringing one might say.

The earliest recorded “work” assignment of Singh must have made him somewhat of an expert on Sri Lanka: from 1999 to 2001 during the peak of the war he lived in Sri Lanka, at International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, running a Ford Foundation project on minority rights and conflict in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Good cover indeed.

In his spare time Vikram Singh has reported on the war for the Voice of America. He was awarded a 2002 Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship and the Superior Honour Award from the US Department of State for his troubles. There are rewards for good, loyal servility, and his best rewards were yet to come.

Singh got a job in the Department of Defence in 2003, and until 2007 he worked on defence policy issues including programs to train and equip foreign military forces; counter-insurgency and irregular warfare capabilities; stability operations; disaster response and humanitarian assistance. Fruits of training in Sri Lanka!

Singh left Defence, securing a two year Fellowship at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS),another Washington thinktank, founded in 2007 by one of his bosses, former Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell: CNAS is that describes its mission as “to develop strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defence policies”. The CNAS board of directors include Madeleine Albright who advised America and its allies during the campaign for Iraqi invasion that killing half a million children was ‘worth it’, also the Chair of her private consultancy The Albright Stonebridge Group, and Richard Armitage, President of his consultancy, Armitage International.

By 2009 however, Campbell, the founder of CNAS, went back to bureaucracy as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

After the further grooming he received at the CNAS, Singh also moved from the Pentagon to the State department as a deputy special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, serving under ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Marc Grossman. This was the biggest ‘career break’ for Singh, in their terms and context.

Singh’s benefactor Richard Hollbrook, known as “a bull in search of a china shop”

The late Richard Holbrooke, under whose tutelage Vikram Singh has earned his wings, was known in US foreign policy and defence circles as the “bulldozer”: he was a raving neocon and a major contributor to the decline of America’s image in the world by staging disastrous and murderous bombing campaigns around the world.

Holbrooke had always tied himself to power, since the time of John F. Kennedy to the reign of the Clintons. He spent six years in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, working for USAID, seeking the allegiance of the civilian population there.

Holbrooke was the prime mover of the Balkans war, finally pushing and shoving the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia into accepting the Dayton settlement. He is known to have threatened the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that the awesome American power would be on him if he balked, and true to his word, he got the US and NATO to bomb Belgrade.

During the George W. Bush years, out of active ‘diplomacy’,Holbrooke made millions as an investment banker on Wall Street. At different times he was managing director of Lehman Brothers, vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston and a director of the American International Group.

Holbrook would have been secretary of state if Hillary Clinton ever became president, but President Obama is known to have disliked his arrogant operating style and kept him away from senior foreign policy positions. Frustrated by inability to yield power, in 2009, Holbrooke took a relatively junior job as President Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The State department professionals refused to work with him and he was forced to occupy an office away from the central areas. Naturally, he took our friend Vikram Singh under his wings!

Well known for his zeal to restructure the world, including the UN, to suit neocon needs, Holbrook attempted to press Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to ‘confront’ corruption in his regime. As a result, Karzai refused to see him. But Holbrooke, famous for gate crashing meetings within the State department, was undeterred. Obama White House also had to rein him in from appearing in TV talk shows, assuming more power than the president was willing to hand over.

In December 2010, Holbrooke collapsed with a ruptured aorta at a meeting in Hillary Clinton’s State department office and died three days later at George Washington University Hospital.

As Holbrooke went under sedation for unsuccessful emergency surgery, his last words to the Pakistani surgeon were: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan." Holbrook was replaced as Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan by Marc Grossman, another neocon and long term ‘diplomat’ who was granted the highest rank of Career Ambassador in 2004.

He serves as Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group. http://www.cohengroup.net/expertise/index.cfm Grossman resigned in December 2012, and took up a position at Yale University as a Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Johnson Centre for the Study of American Diplomacy.

Vikram Singh's personal life and career merged in 2012

In September 2012, Vikram Singh married Ashley Faye Bommer, 34, ex-colleague and consultant on foreign policy and social issues in Washington.

Previously she was the communications director and special adviser for the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State department in Washington.

Since April 2012 Singh has been given the responsibility for developing defence policy for South and Southeast Asia, including key relationships with Allies, strategic partners such as India and Singapore and defence engagement with multilateral institutions in the Asia-Pacific region. Singh has already been to the last year's ASEAN defence senior officials meeting in Cambodia.

Singh's appointment to manage US defence designs for south and southeast Asia is a cynical attempt to 'soften' the US image in the region as a precursor to pushing ahead with the new defence doctrine of Asian Pivot designed to 'pick a quarrel' with China.

They had no business here

The announcement by the three officials that the US will bring a resolution before the UN Human Rights Council is designed to pressure Sri Lanka to 'beg' them to desist from bringing in the resolution.

This is part of their strategy to get countries of the region 'on side'. Neocons are not to be trusted and Sri Lanka needs to ignore this move.

These three junior officials had no business in checking the progress of the implementation of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission recommendations, the National Action Plan, transparent governance, a process of accountability for events at the end of the or human rights violations or anything else in Sri Lanka.

Various implied allegations and efforts to intervene in Sri Lanka's domestic affairs have been addressed adequately on numerous previous occasions. These three bureaucrats should not be allowed to raise issue again at their own behest.

People in Sri Lanka, like those in so many other developing countries, and Russia, are getting sick and tired of listening to US hectoring about a vibrant civil society, an independent judiciary, a free and independent media, and full respect for human rights. James Moore's self-interested attempts to resuscitate will not make an iota of difference.

The three operatives have not done a very good job of hiding their motives and modus operandi, and the busy bodies can go home: they can have cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down, as an Australian grandmother would have advised.