Breaking recurring themes in the cycles of war and peace in Sri Lanka
Liz Philipson
Liz Philipson is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the LSE and a part-time teacher in the International Relations Department. She is also a Programme Associate of the London-based NGO Conciliation Resources. She has studied and worked in and on Sri Lankan issues for over 15 years having previously worked as South Asian Programme Manager for International Alert and in the British Parliament. Recent Publications include, Demanding Sacrifice - War and Negotiation in Sri Lanka (Ed) 1998 Conciliation Resources Accord Series, London; Workers Rights are Human Rights - Labour Conditionality and the World Trade organisation, 1998 Solidar, Brussels; and various reports and magazine articles on countries in the sub-continent.
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Preface
This paper was written during the first half of 1999 and was published during the Sri Lankan Presidential Election Campaign at the end of that year. The campaign was a crescendo of political points scoring and squabbling in the South. Despite the rhetoric of peace and negotiation there has been little application to the hard work of preparing for constructive political engagement between the UNP and PA, let alone with the LTTE. Military activity escalated and casualties mounted. Thus, the thesis of this paper continues to be topical as new events continue to illustrate the domination of short-term thinking and lack of strategic analysis in politics and policymaking.
During the year, there was a sustained public debate on the need for international third party assistance to bring the Sri Lankan conflict towards settlement. This issue has become somewhat less controversial and even attitudes towards the UN seemed to be less harsh. The government publicly acknowledged the need for some assistance or facilitation. The LTTE continues to demand agreement to full mediation as a pre-condition to negotiation and also wants guarantors for any agreement reached. So the questions to be resolved are the nature of any third party assistance and who provides it. However, there is also a large gap between the thinking and mindset of the LTTE and the government over many major issues of the conflict and facilitation continues to be a daunting task.
The Presidential Election campaign has been influenced by severe military defeats suffered by the Sri Lanka military in the Wanni just after the election was announced. To the discomfort of the government, the war and the military defeats dominated the early campaign agendas. However, Colombo’s response to the Wanni defeats reiterated a pattern established following the defeats at Mulliativu in 1996 and Killinochchi in 1998. Shock and horror were expressed in the press and by politicians. A minority of hawks recommended a greater military effort but most Sri Lankans called for political solutions and moves towards negotiation. But very quickly, the war, taking place so near geographically, yet so far experientially, was overtaken by the next news story - in this case the hyperbole of the Presidential election. The tone of the election campaign was perceptively harder towards the ethnic issue than has been the case earlier and Tamils, carefully noting this, held a meeting in Colombo about how to handle any post-election, anti-Tamil violence. The Tamil vote, so overwhelmingly cast for President Kumaratunga in 1994, was generally disillusioned and bitter by 1999. The LTTE leader gave a very clear indication that Tamils should not vote for the President and allowed the opposition candidate, Ranil Wickremesinghe to hold a large election rally in the Eastern town of Batticoloa. The Tamil parties with armed cadres who previously entered the political mainstream endorsed President Kumaratunga but are widely viewed as having little influence on the Tamil people. The LTTE’s final intervention in the campaign was in the style for which they have become infamous. Bomb explosions at the final rally of both the President and opposition candidates, almost simultaneously, showed their contempt for the democratic system and killed over 20 people severely injuring two cabinet ministers. President Kumaratunga was also injured.
However, the campaign was dogged by violence between the parties and attacks on rallies. Fears about violence and election rigging were widely expressed in the NGO and Diplomatic communities. The Civil Rights Movement of Sri Lanka, in an appeal to the police to uphold and enforce democratic norms, stated: "… people are likely to remember not just who won but how they won."
Ranil Wickremesinghe declared that, were he elected, he would open negotiations with the LTTE and offer an interim regional council for the Northeast. This was bitterly criticised by the President and the PA who declared the election to be a referendum on their Constitutional Package, which had stuck in the parliamentary system, having failed to win the support of the opposition.
The next President of Sri Lanka, unless there is a change in approach, will face the same situation. The army will continue to be faced with massive military defeats, intersperced with assassinations in the South. The civilians of the Northeast will continue to be forced to live in refugee camps or conditions of terror and deprivation far from the sight of Colombo citizens. The short-term political changes, which dominate the political discourse, are taking place against an overall trend of increasingly entrenched war and violence throughout the island. It is this long-term trend which urgently requires attention. The events of the last year serve to underline the thesis of this paper: all parties need to develop a nuanced political analysis, a longer term perspective and a strong political will for peace.
Introduction
The Sri Lankan conflict gradually became more violent following increased repression and human rights violations and the war is generally cited as having begun in 1983. The violence engendered by the war is permeating deeper into Northern and Southern society and the island revisits its own history with increasing frequency and fatalism as each attempt to find a settlement to the conflict erupts in a greater frenzy of violence. Military victory is not within the grasp of either side but breaking these cycles of deepening violence is an extra-ordinarily difficult and complex task in this entrenched conflict.
The genesis of the conflict precedes the end of the cold war but, though cold war considerations within the Sub Continent provided the regional context, this never developed into a proxy war. However, the Tamil claims for self-determination and national identity found resonance in the post cold war neo-nationalisms. The end of a duo-polar dominated world has resulted both in a search for new structures and solutions and new political approaches. And, though many would argue that this has simply resulted in a mono-polar domination of the international agenda, new political movements are successfully challenging the total domination of orthodox economic and social policies. At the same time new political approaches to conflict have been developed and ideas of conflict resolution and peace building are no longer on the outer fringes of academic theory or political practice.
Conflict resolution or transformation is not a formula or technique to end conflicts, it is a set of insights informing political actions. Thus it is not the technical, neutral activity characterised in some literature but rather a dynamic, interactive, creative activity-taking place firmly within the political sphere. Conflict resolution is a process which seeks to return war to the regulated processes of constitutional politics. The constitutional settlements and peace agreements which signal the end of war impact upon the visible constitutional structures and the less visible power structures within which future regulated political processes will take place. Consequently, just as politics can be radical or conserving of the status quo, so conflict resolution can be pacifying or transformatory.
This writing began as a commentary on the key documents in a dossier for presentation to representatives of the Western diplomatic community as part of the papers for a seminar in the early summer of 1999. It soon became clear that a simple short commentary bounded by the primary documentation of the conflict was insufficient to explain the complexities of contemporary political history in Sri Lanka. The Accord Issue on Sri Lanka War and Peace Processes provides a contemporary analysis of the conflict and illustrates some of the conflicting voices and there are other more detailed contemporary histories written from various points of view. This paper is written from a different approach.
It explores possible ways of advancing the political process towards ending the war. Failures of negotiation in Sri Lanka offer insights into alternative approaches and give a practical context to some of the elements highlighted in conflict resolution and peace literature. The bulk of the paper examines some of these elements in turn incorporating some aspects of the Sri Lankan experience and examples from other countries. Current prospects for advancing the prospects for peace are evaluated and the discussion is designed to point the way towards identifying other opportunities as they arise.
However, there is no attempt to offer a blueprint, though there are some insights for negotiators, mediators, facilitators and others interested in Sri Lanka. Ultimately the dysfunctional social and political processes of Sri Lanka can only be changed by the Sri Lankans themselves. They are the only ones with the power to find and deliver a successful Sri Lankan peace process. However, the paper was written primarily for an audience of Western Foreign Ministry Officials in the knowledge that both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE have indicated that they will need foreign government assistance to re-enter negotiations, though the Sri Lankan government envisage a more limited facilitative intervention. It was also written in the knowledge that there is a wide audience of people, within and outside Sri Lanka, wanting to make their contribution positively towards a sustainable peace for the island.
