Debate on how international conditionalities or incentives have supported – or undermined – peacebuilding in Sri Lanka often focuses on whether those measures have been too harsh or too lax, or on whether they have been appropriate given that a sustainable peace process must ultimately belong to the domestic protagonists. Not enough attention has been given to whether conditionalities or incentives have even been seriously tried.

The declaration following the 2003 Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction and Development in Sri Lanka is a good example. Donors officially pledged US$4.5 billion – although there was plenty of ambiguity about how much was additional to assistance already planned and about where it would be used – and outlined ten 'linkages' between their pledged support and the peace process. The linkages included such indicators as full compliance with the ceasefire agreement, participation of a Muslim delegation in peace talks, as well as promotion and protection of human rights. A multi-donor group based in Colombo was initiated to monitor compliance.

However, it soon became evident that, with each donor limited by their own political and/or organisational constraints, a coordinated position on how the linkages should be interpreted – or even on their fundamental advisability – was impossible. At the conference, there had been enormous variations between donors in their support for the notion of peace conditionality and whether conditionalities should be negative, positive or simply defined as milestones to help monitor progress. The declaration represented a compromise aimed at keeping all participants on board. Not surprisingly these differences persisted after the conference, with a few organisations restricting funding as the context deteriorated, but with most donors citing the linkages only when they coincided with their interests. With a few honourable exceptions, major donors chose to pay lip service to the conditions while continuing with their aid programmes on a 'business as usual' basis.

Sri Lankan critics criticised the government for failing to execute a viable strategy to reinvigorate the peace process, thus 'foregoing' billions of dollars in funds. A government minister responded by commenting – disarmingly correctly – that the vast majority of Tokyo pledges were indeed being implemented, despite the lack of progress towards peace.

Several years later and with a different administration in power, a growing number of international actors have been expressing increasing discomfort in pursuing aid programs. The government's strategy of pronouncing stock phrases about wanting a negotiated settlement while simultaneously focusing on a military solution to the conflict has become too obvious to ignore. But beyond critiques of the government's approach and the LTTE's chronic recourse to violence, plus periodic encouragement for the protagonists to 'return to the negotiating table', international actors have appeared powerless to nudge the peace process back onto the rails.

There are several factors behind this weak, confused and sometime contradictory international response. First is the wide variety of political and organisational agendas and the pressure aid organisations feel to disburse committed funds regardless of conflict trends – in some western countries' cases buttressed by domestic political demand from immigrant Sri Lankan constituencies in support of reconstruction. Diplomatically, many actors are reluctant to further involve themselves in a country of modest strategic importance: despite their verbal support for a renewed peace process in Sri Lanka, they are distracted by numerous other concerns much higher on their priority lists.

Secondly, most international actors have not sufficiently analysed the factors driving the conflict and have generally neglected to ask themselves how their carrots or sticks would impact on the political interests of the main protagonists. As a result, the incentives or disincentives they have proposed are often of little relevance to those concerned. For example, the assumption that offering considerable sums to reconstruct the north-east would be sufficient to lure the LTTE back to the table has failed to take into account that the civil conflict in Sri Lanka has always been, above all, a political beast, where economic incentives matter only insofar as they impact on core political interests. The 2002 ceasefire agreement was only signed because of both sides' perception of the relative probability of medium-term gains with regard to their political aims. The promise of pledges in Tokyo was largely irrelevant to the LTTE, which saw itself being relegated to second tier political status by the April 2003 Washington conference that excluded them.

In practice the perverse impact of the incentives has often been not to cause protagonists to re-evaluate their position but to reinforce it. For example, the reconstruction funds intended as an incentive to bring the north-east (and the LTTE) back into the mainstream were brandished by Sinhalese nationalist groups as proof that 'outsiders' were attempting to reinforce the LTTE and split the country. Simultaneously, the gap between the funds that were believed to have been promised and what actually arrived in the north-east was used by LTTE hardliners to justify their scepticism about any negotiated settlement.

Thirdly, given the conflicting international agendas referred to above, most aid and diplomatic actors (albeit not all) have been unwilling to seriously engage in a discussion of how their own interests could be reframed within a wider, more concerted approach, in which the carrots and sticks might be complementary and thus mutually reinforcing. The notion of strategic complementarity has occupied a marginal place in discussions about the role of international actors.

Fourthly, many international actors have until recently failed to fully appreciate – and incorporate in their positions – the idea that responsibility for the current state of the conflict lies with both the LTTE and a succession of Sri Lankan governments. This has resulted in a clear lack of even-handedness in defining incentives and a lack of seriousness in holding the government accountable. Given widespread condemnation of the LTTE's responsibility for numerous appalling actions, ranging from assassinations to the recruitment of child soldiers to the suppression of democracy in the north-east, and donor organisations' frequent inherent bias towards governments, the general tendency was to publicly condemn the LTTE as the 'bad guys' and treat the government as the (comparatively) 'good guys.' This bias has driven the LTTE even further to the margins of a debate where they consider that they will never be treated fairly.

If international actors can potentially play a positive role in an essentially domestically-driven conflict such as Sri Lanka's, it is subject to several conditions:

• Helping move the peace process forward must be at the core of their strategy, not accessory to other political or organisational objectives;
• Incentives and disincentives must be based on a clear understanding of what is driving the conflict and thus what is likely to modify its course;
• Even the best ideas get drowned when they are part of a cacophony – the international community needs to be more serious about formulating peace support strategies that ensure each entity plays a complementary role;
• Greater efforts need to be made to identify explicit or implicit biases in the support being offered, in order to assess if they might be unhelpful in advancing a sustainable peace process.

Finally, international and domestic peace constituencies need to be more realistic in recognising the limits of what the international community can and cannot contribute. For there to be a peace process, the key domestic protagonists must first want one. The international community can support a peace process, but they cannot on their own create one.