Sri Lanka’s sacrifice of life may sow seeds of a new conflict
May 29, 2009
Jeremy Page: Commentary
Pakistan’s military commanders must be eyeing Sri Lanka with envy as they struggle to defeat the Taleban in the northwestern region of Swat. Perhaps Nato officers in Afghanistan are too.
Sri Lanka is far smaller, with very different terrain, and its 26-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers was based on ethnicity rather than interpretations of Islam.
There are enough parallels to pose the question: could Sri Lanka’s strategy and tactics be used against insurgencies elsewhere? Perhaps, more importantly, should they be?
The argument in favour is that Sri Lanka appears to have disproved the long-held theory that insurgencies cannot be defeated by the military. Its apparently winning formula was to curb political opposition and media scrutiny then unleash military force with scant regard for civilian casualties.
It rallied enough international support to paralyse the UN Security Council — and even got the UN Human Rights Council to vote in its favour on Wednesday.
It gambled correctly that the West has not only lost its taste for intervention, but that it has also lost its moral authority to censure others on humanitarian grounds.
“In no circumstances can the end justify the means,” pleaded Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the council meeting.
For Sri Lanka, however, the opposite appears to be true — and dozens of other countries facing insurgencies have duly taken note.
Some have long argued along those lines, most notably Russia, which used similarly brutal methods to defeat separatist rebels in Chechnya. China protects its rights to deal with separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang and opposes most attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
Sri Lankan officials say that Western countries are no different because they uphold international law when it suits their interests and ignores it when it does not — as in Iraq.
Pakistan, they say, is already using the same tactics in Swat by pummelling the area with artillery and helicopter gunships — with the support of the US.
There are, however, several elements of Sri Lanka’s approach that cast doubt on its long-term effectiveness and potential as a model for other countries.
One is the extent of the political repression required to achieve the victory: at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists have been killed with impunity since 2006.
Though few dare to say it publicly some Sinhalese question whether the victory was worth sacrificing democracy, especially in a region that is plagued by dictatorship.
“It’s been a very heavy price,” said Will Hartley, the editor of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. “That’s why the lessons learnt in Sri Lanka are of limited applicability — you have to be a certain kind of government to implement them.”
The second issue is the use of internment camps by the Sri Lankan Government to hold about 270,000 ethnic Tamil refugees from the conflict zone and find Tigers hiding among them.
The third, and most important, issue is the scale of civilian casualties — more than 20,000 since January, according to an investigation by The Times based on UN figures.
By comparison, 2,118 civilians were killed by all sides in Afghanistan in 2008, and 1,523 in 2007, according to the UN.
In Iraq there were 10,356 civilian deaths from coalition and insurgent attacks in 2006-08, according to iraqbodycount.org.
What may appear to be a radical counter-insurgency strategy in Sri Lanka is little more than a slightly updated form of the conventional Roman model that has been favoured by authoritarian governments.
Hawkish officers might fantasise privately about carpet-bombing northwestern Pakistan, covering up the civilian casualties and imprisoning its residents until they have proved that they are not members of the Taleban or al-Qaeda.
The Pakistani Government, however, could not justify treating its citizens in such a manner and few experts believe it would work because of the anger it would provoke.
Many predict that while the ruthless approach of Sri Lanka has won it a conventional military victory its disregard for civilians has sown the seeds of another conflict.
“The bottom line is that you can end the violence but that’s not the end of the problem,” Ashok Mehta, a retired major-general who was a commander of Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, said. “That has to be political — and the problem gets exacerbated by what you’ve done in the first phase.”
Sri Lanka is far smaller, with very different terrain, and its 26-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers was based on ethnicity rather than interpretations of Islam.
There are enough parallels to pose the question: could Sri Lanka’s strategy and tactics be used against insurgencies elsewhere? Perhaps, more importantly, should they be?
The argument in favour is that Sri Lanka appears to have disproved the long-held theory that insurgencies cannot be defeated by the military. Its apparently winning formula was to curb political opposition and media scrutiny then unleash military force with scant regard for civilian casualties.
It rallied enough international support to paralyse the UN Security Council — and even got the UN Human Rights Council to vote in its favour on Wednesday.
It gambled correctly that the West has not only lost its taste for intervention, but that it has also lost its moral authority to censure others on humanitarian grounds.
“In no circumstances can the end justify the means,” pleaded Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the council meeting.
For Sri Lanka, however, the opposite appears to be true — and dozens of other countries facing insurgencies have duly taken note.
Some have long argued along those lines, most notably Russia, which used similarly brutal methods to defeat separatist rebels in Chechnya. China protects its rights to deal with separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang and opposes most attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
Sri Lankan officials say that Western countries are no different because they uphold international law when it suits their interests and ignores it when it does not — as in Iraq.
Pakistan, they say, is already using the same tactics in Swat by pummelling the area with artillery and helicopter gunships — with the support of the US.
There are, however, several elements of Sri Lanka’s approach that cast doubt on its long-term effectiveness and potential as a model for other countries.
One is the extent of the political repression required to achieve the victory: at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists have been killed with impunity since 2006.
Though few dare to say it publicly some Sinhalese question whether the victory was worth sacrificing democracy, especially in a region that is plagued by dictatorship.
“It’s been a very heavy price,” said Will Hartley, the editor of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. “That’s why the lessons learnt in Sri Lanka are of limited applicability — you have to be a certain kind of government to implement them.”
The second issue is the use of internment camps by the Sri Lankan Government to hold about 270,000 ethnic Tamil refugees from the conflict zone and find Tigers hiding among them.
The third, and most important, issue is the scale of civilian casualties — more than 20,000 since January, according to an investigation by The Times based on UN figures.
By comparison, 2,118 civilians were killed by all sides in Afghanistan in 2008, and 1,523 in 2007, according to the UN.
In Iraq there were 10,356 civilian deaths from coalition and insurgent attacks in 2006-08, according to iraqbodycount.org.
What may appear to be a radical counter-insurgency strategy in Sri Lanka is little more than a slightly updated form of the conventional Roman model that has been favoured by authoritarian governments.
Hawkish officers might fantasise privately about carpet-bombing northwestern Pakistan, covering up the civilian casualties and imprisoning its residents until they have proved that they are not members of the Taleban or al-Qaeda.
The Pakistani Government, however, could not justify treating its citizens in such a manner and few experts believe it would work because of the anger it would provoke.
Many predict that while the ruthless approach of Sri Lanka has won it a conventional military victory its disregard for civilians has sown the seeds of another conflict.
“The bottom line is that you can end the violence but that’s not the end of the problem,” Ashok Mehta, a retired major-general who was a commander of Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, said. “That has to be political — and the problem gets exacerbated by what you’ve done in the first phase.”
at 06:55
Labels: Genocide, Human Rights, Sri Lanka, Tamil Eelam, Vanni Massacre, War Crimes
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