SALMAN KHURSHID – hope AGAINST the anti-Sri Lanka conspiracy

Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe

No further elaboration is necessary to prove the fact that the neocons are deploying all US government resources they can muster and a bag full of ‘dirty tricks’ to score a win at Geneva when their anti-Sri Lanka resolution goes to vote on March 22.

The neocons don’t want to lose in a duel such as this, due to the symbolism it carries for the purposes of sustaining the myth that they stand for protecting human rights the world over - they treat the opinion of the rest of the world on their wholesale murder of civilians in Afghanistan, not to mention Iraq in bygone years with contempt.

The Sri Lanka project has seen State Department employed neocon agents from Robert O. Blake and Denise Rolland to Esther Brimmer (no Rachels, Rebeccas or Sarahs this time around!) going hyperactive to ‘teach a lesson’ to the independence seeking elected government leadership of our little island.

The neocon project is provided with auxiliary pictorial, video and LTTE ‘eye witness’ support by shady groups such as Britain’s Channel 4, the criminal espionage network started by the spy Fred Cuny who disappeared without trace in Chechnya, The International Crisis Group (ICG), and a neocon cabal with no credibility, Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The propaganda work of these erstwhile human rights ‘defenders’ seeks to reinforce the behind the scenes attempts to influence the Indian vote at the UNHRC. This work is being carried out by the trusted long time friends like the Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai - he spent three days in Washington last week, meeting with the freshly minted John Kerry for ten minutes, and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman for three hours, to discuss regional issues “of mutual interest”.

The American public are kept in the dark

The sad irony of all this is that the US public, in whose name the phony neocon human rights agenda is being waged around the wold, have no idea of this flurry of activity by the State Department, USAID and other bureaucrats paid handsomely through billions of dollars borrowed from China, mortgaging their future.

The reason is, the American public is kept in the dark on foreign policy matters under a long-established pact between the two political parties, underwritten by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Those who are familiar with the workings of the American foreign policy and intelligence services bureaucracy are not at all surprised by the list of names that keeps popping up in relation to the current ‘project’ to pressurise Sri Lanka at Geneva. A detailed look at the neocon backgrounds and connections of these ‘public officials’ is essential in order to understand the neocon conspiracy.

Sri Lankans need no introduction to the tallest of them all, Robert O. Blake, currently Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. He is still angry that President Mahinda Rajapaksa did not hand over Prabhakaran to the US, to be sent to a “third country” for safe keeping until he could re-arm and come back.

Blake comes to Colombo periodically, without invitation, shakes hands with ‘civil society’ and a public official or two, with an ear-to-ear smile, and goes back to Washington and continues to do what he does best, plotting to avenge President Rajapaksa.

Blake rushed back to Washington last week, probably from Central Asia or the Maldives where he seems to be spending a fair bit of time these days, to tell the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that Sri Lanka is “moving backwards on democracy”, because the implementation of the LLRC has been “slow.”

Salman Khurshid

John Kerry

Robert O. Blake

He has also submitted that the US “wants to see” dialogue between the government and the Tamil National Alliance on devolution and that he is expecting wide support for the new resolution on Sri Lanka which will be presented to the UNHRC.

Esther Brimmer, an adopted neocon

Then we have Ms Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of International Organisations Affairs who laid out the neocon agenda for the UNHRC in her “Remarks on US Priorities” at the opening of the UNHRC sessions. Unlike Blake, who is a ‘rotten-to-the-core” neocon, Ms Brimmer’s background resembles that of our ‘friend’ Deputy Assistant Secretary Vikram Singh who recently blessed us with a visit - she has an acquired taste for it.

Like most careerist State Department bureaucrats on the neocon gravy train, Esther Brimmer has a B.A. from Pomona College in California, and a D.Phil. (Ph. D.) degree in International Relations from Oxford. Like Vikram Singh, she has done penance at the neocon think tank circuit - from 1995-1999, she managed “projects” at the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. She also worked at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.

Most importantly, Brimmer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the neocon foreign policy formulating body, for implementation by the Departments of State and Defence. She was nominated to her present position by Barack Obama in 2009.

Brimmer’s direct links to the neocon establishment are supplemented through her husband’s, the well-known Zionist and author Steven Beller who has written a biography of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and other books on antisemitism where he accuses key historical figures such as the composer Richard Wagner, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx himself, all Jews incidentally, of being antisemitic.

Esther Brimmer cannot be expected to have a neocon bone in her body because her father was the distinguished African American economist Dr Andrew Brimmer, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Aaffairs in the US Department of Commerce in the 1960s who took an abiding interest in lifting the economic well-being of poor Afro-Americans.

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Federal Reserve Board as the first black member of this neocon preserve. The neocon owned Wall Street Journal made no secret of their less-than warm welcome of him when they published a front-page article headlined “Desire to Aid Negroes Could Make New Fed Member More Liberal.” Andrew Brimmer died in October 2012 after a long illness.

Esther Brimmer’s late father would not have approved of the prepared speech she delivered at the UNHRC sessions, introducing the new resolution on Sri Lanka - the speech contained the paragraph - “The Council’s work remains unfinished so long as Sri Lanka continues to fall short in implementing even the recommendations of its own Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, or in addressing the underlying sources of its longstanding ethnic conflict.”

Literally in the next breath she read: “And the Council’s work remains unfinished so long as it continues to unfairly single out Israel, the only country with a stand-alone agenda item.

“Until this Council ceases to subject Israel to an unfair and unacceptable bias, its unprincipled and unjust approach will continue to tarnish the reputation of this body, while doing nothing to support progress toward the peace among Israelis and Palestinians that we all desire so deeply.”

The juxtaposition of these two paragraphs portrays the motivation behind the Zionist-neocon conspiracy to keep Sri Lanka “on the agenda” at the UNHRC - it is to deflect international attention from Israel’s real war crimes.

Suffice it to say that the neocon reach is such that today, the daughter of a progressive African American is dutifully serving their reactionary agenda, giving it a different, benign complexion at international fora.

USAID and neocon agents come out in the open

One of the less noticed part of the neocon strategy was the arrival in Colombo, from Bangladesh, of the real USAID “heavy” Denise Rollins to wage psychological warfare.

She was not mincing words since her arrival - she dismissed talk of secret undermining of poor countries by USAID as mere “speculation”, warned the government that the resolution this time would be sterner, and that $4.5 million would be given to “lawyers” to strengthen the judiciary.

She stated, matter-of-factly, that USAID bypasses the government because they work at the "grass roots".

Ms Rollins probably did not expect the Sri Lankan media to know that Russia chucked them out recently and the Latin American ALBA countries are going to do the same. She probably will not expect anyone in Sri Lanka to know the transfer of millions to Daya Gamage of the UNP on the garment factories 'joint venture' in the Eastern province. Of course, she wants Sri Lankans to believe that USAID is a benevolent, charitable organisation.

The other, probably the most important part of this strategy that naturally attracted no attention in Sri Lanka was the three-day (Feb 20-23) US visit of the Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai. While he had meetings with a number of middle level officials at the State Department on a range of energy, visa and other matters, his ten minute meeting with John Kerry and three hour meeting with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman would be consequential from a Sri Lankan point of view.

After the meeting with Mathai, Kerry tweeted under his personal tag: "Saw friend/Foreign Secretary Mathai- discussed importance of relationship with India, expressed sympathies to brave people of Hyderabad - JK."

According to a State Department spokesperson, during the Mathai-Sherman meeting the two discussed "a broad range of issues, including bilateral cooperation on energy, climate change, defence, civil nuclear issues, education, regional dynamics, and joint collaboration in Afghanistan, Africa and Asia". In diplomatese, the one-word reference to "Asia" revealed a volume.

During the visit, Mathai also addressed a select gathering at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. on "India-US bilateral relationship in the 21st century". The venue Mathai chose is significant - the Carnegie Endowment's eight currently operational programmes there has a strong South Asia focus, with Russia and Eurasia Programme, South Asia Programme, Democracy and Rule of Law Programme and Asia Programme, carrying out detailed analyses of everything happening in this neck of the woods. With branches already operating in Beirut, Brussels, Beijing, and Kazakhstan, the Carnegie Endowment spires to be the first global think tank.

Remebering that Mathai was instrumental in changing the Indian vote in favour of the US resolution against Sri Lanka in 2012, it can be reasonably surmised that whatever Mathai has up his sleeve for Sri Lanka in 2013 was conveyed to Wendy Sherman at the Washington meeting.

Sherman is a dry-as-a-bone neocon who was appointed to her current position by her close friend Hillary Clinton. She was counsellor to the devilish former Secretary of State Madeline Albright. Sherman is also the vice chair of her consultancy firm Albright Stonebridge Group where she also held the role of North Korean policy coordinator. She is also chair of the board of directors of Oxfam America and serves on the U.S. Defence Policy Board.

External Affairs Minister Khurshid will safeguard Indian interests

Considering all the above factors, the External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid is the only apparent obstacle to US corrupting the Indian position at the UNHRC - Mr Khurshid's comments and reaction so far indicates that he is one person who has seen the US conspiracy for what it is, and Sri Lanka probably can rely on his judgement on the issue. He also realises that it is in India's national interest to curtail the Tamil extremist separatism emanating from the rivalry between the DMK and AIDMK in the south.

Mr Khurshid is an Indian National Congress politician who represents the Farrukhabad constituency in Uttar Pradesh. He is the son of a former Indian Minister of External affairs, and grandson of Zakir Hussain, the third President of India. He holds a degree in law from Trinity College, Oxford.

Though a Muslim and heir to a political legacy, Mr Khurshud dislikes the 'Muslim leader' label: he sees the solution to the grievances of Indian Muslims in educational advancement, while retaining Muslim identity.

The response of Mr Khurshid to inflammatory speeches by the DMK leader Tiruchi Siva and the AIADMK leader V Maitreyan at the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, last week shows he has a full understanding of the US motives in pursuing Sri Lanka, in addition to his own principled position on Sri Lankan matters in general.

Mr Khurshid said: "While the government shared the concern of the parties from Tamil Nadu, India would not intervene directly in Sri Lanka's sovereign affairs. Accountability must come from within Sri Lanka".

In response to the disgraceful remark by Maitreyan that "Sri Lanka is an enemy country", Mr Khurshid said, "We should not be saying Sri Lanka is an enemy country". Expressing disappointment over Mr Khurshid's reply, the AIADMK, the DMK and the Communist Party of India walked out of the Rajya Sabha. Good riddance to them.

Mr Kurshid will be 'leant on'

Mr Kurshid's current position will be subject to pressure and influences from neocon agents within his own political party, the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) within his own ministry, and in the PM's Office. But it is likely that Mr Khurshid has enough wisdom, rectitude and foresight to hold on his own against such corrupt influences.

Salman Khurshid is a prolific writer on a variety of non-political subjects including creative writing. In an article titled Who Rules India? Mr Khurshid gives an insightful view of the universally adopted bureaucratic, methods of blocking information to the minister, reminiscent of the Departmental Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby's observations on the public service in the British comedy Yes, Minister.

Mr Khurshid writes: "The present administrative arrangement is often explained in terms of the civil servants being experts in a sense, whilst the politician is considered untutored, lay person. ...But there are counter examples of well-educated politicians who are professionals. ... How could then their Civil Servants even hope to pull (the) wool over their eyes?"

The neocons will move the anti-Sri Lanka resolution at the end of the session on March 22, and the future of Indo-Sri Lanka relations as well as the social, political and territorial integrity of both countries will depend on Mr Khurshid not allowing the bureaucrats to pull the wool over his eyes.

We live in hope.