by Gogol G.
With the war in Sri Lanka over and the Tamil Tigers defeated, much has changed in the political landscape. Much in the physical landscape has changed, too. The entire Vanni region has been razed to the ground. This is especially true for the Mullivaaykkaal area of Mullaitheevu district, where the final scenes of the war took place, and the 300,000 Tamil civilians trapped in roughly 2 square miles were subjected to an non-stop rain of heavy-weapons bombing and shelling from land, sea, and air. Not only do we have satellite photos, but we also have close-up colour photos of the aftermath in this area. Surely, as ordinary people, we see only a handful of such pictures floating around in the media. There must be thousands more where these came from. Many Tamils suspect the "clean up" operations being conducted by the SL military in the area following the end of the war are meant to literally clean up any evidences of war crimes and the mass killings. Such photos will prove useful.
If you had asked people one year ago, most did not expect the military campaign of the Sri Lankan military to be so successful, or the LTTE to be soon defeated (and resoundingly so). In a video clip of an interview with Mahinda Rajapaksa by NDTV, entitled "I was fighting India's battle: Rajapakse", Rajapaksa alludes to the months-long virtual stalemate before the tide turned in the war. Of course, the victorious Rajapakse, who is deified by ubiquitous propaganda posters spread all around the island, states for the record that he had no doubt. But what changed so rapidly? India's official line about the the LTTE's rapid defeat is that they had no idea that the LTTE would be defeated so quickly. Wen Liao's widely-carried article in June 2009, "China Crosses the Rubicon", sheds some light: "...the most remarkable aspect of Sri Lanka's recent victory over the Tamil Tigers is not its overwhelming nature but the fact that China provided President Mahinda Rajapaska with both the military supplies and diplomatic cover he needed to prosecute the war. Without that Chinese backing, Rajapaska's government would have had neither the wherewithal nor the will to ignore world opinion in its offensive against the Tigers."
Changing Power Balance in the World
What is termed as the Cold War was a period in which two hegemons, the US and the USSR, were competing to increase their influence
The disintegration of the Soviet Union was the final blow to conclude the end of the Cold War, and the US became the sole superpower in the world. The disaster of the second Iraq War for the US has seen its decline in influence and wealth in the world. China and other countries have bought much of the debt incurred by the US. China and India are two notable examples of rising regional powers, which include Iran and Brazil. The European Union has a strong economy with a currency stronger than the dollar, and NATO is now irrelevant as a tool by the US to keep Western Europe in alliance (or perhaps as a virtual protectorate, to match the Eastern Bloc) following World War 2. There seems to be a fledgling solidarity among the rising non-Western world powers and regional powers, and concurrently a lashback against US and Western hegemony. Anita Pratap summarizes this new world order well in her piece on May 31, 2009.
Much of the same border areas between global alliances from the Cold War seem reactivated. In addition, the deteriorating climate situation, which leads to melting ice caps, makes the Arctic a potential frontier. Russia planted a flag on the Canadian side of the ocean floor underneath the North ice cap, prompting Canada to introduce talk about its "Arctic sovereignty". Under Hugo Chavez, the oil rigs on Venezuela's coast have been nationalised and thus acquired from private Western companies by the government. His socialist politics have made him a hero to some, and a natural ally to Cuba, to the ire and scorn of the US.
These changes have had consequences in different parts of the world. As the closest Western-allied country to China, Australia has been most vocal in voicing clear concern to the changes in Asia:
Few if any allies have been quite so candid as the Australian government has been recently in constructing China as a military foe. This year’s Defence White Paper says: "The pace, scope and structure of China’s military modernisation have the potential to give its neighbours cause for concern if not carefully explained, and if China does not reach out to others to build confidence regarding its military plans...."
And similar to the way that Sri Lanka has prevented or kicked out NGOs and foreign diplomats the least bit critical, so too, did Iran kick out 2 British diplomats in June following the election turmoil there.
As Anita Pratap said, no where is this new world order, a sort of re-emerging cold war, if you will, most obvious than in Sri Lanka. While surely a simplification, I will focus on the US, India, and China as the representative most influential powers and look at their personal interests and their simultaneous rivalries with each other as they engage in their "co-petition".
China
China's "String of Pearls" strategy for solidifying power and influence should be clear by now.
Wen Liao again: "So not only has China become central to every aspect of the global financial and economic system, it has now demonstrated its strategic effectiveness in a region traditionally outside its orbit. On Sri Lanka's beachfront battlefields, China's peaceful rise was completed."
Although the Chinese project to develop the port at Hambantota might seem like personal political patronage to Pres. Rajapakse's in his home province, its usefulness to China is nonetheless significant. (Side note: This article also mentions that a land route is being considered between Pakistan's port at Gwadar and China. Such a land route would enter China in the Xinjiang province, also known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in which there was serious unrest recently in July 2009.)
India
India has always been strongly interested in Sri Lanka for its resources, and its strategic location. As Sri Lanka's immediate very large neighbour, India has unofficially held a majority voice in Sri Lanka's relations to the rest of the world. If this were not true, then India would not have tried to direct the course of the war since from the 1980's, and Rajiv Gandhi would not have slipped the clause in the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord that includes:
- Trincomalee or any other ports in Sri Lanka will not be made available for military use by any country in a manner prejudicial to India's interests.
- The work of restoring and operating the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm will be undertaken as a joint venture between India and Sri Lanka.
India kept itself strongly involved in the Eelam War, even in the last stage, where it covertly armed Sri Lanka all during the peace process, as proudly declared by the darling of the peace process, Ranil Wickremesinghe in this video:
In a revelation that is bound to embarrass the UPA government in front of his pro-Tamil allies, Sri Lanka's former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe speaking exclusively to TIMES NOW said that India has actively helped the Sri Lankan army in its fight against the LTTE. In the interview Wickremesinghe admits India has played a key role in decimating the LTTE from its strongholds.
Wickremesinghe on the role of India and western countries in the fight against the LTTE
In the security sphere India and the developed countries gave us assistance from the time I was Prime Minister. Earlier there were embargoes, but with the peace process they agreed to come in with security co-operation. For instance, the interdiction of LTTE ships on the sea would not have been possible without the help of India, US and some other countries. The LTTE network abroad was also broken up.
On other countries helping in trading, intelligence co-operation with the Sri Lankan armed forces
That is also on. We arranged it and also got it expanded. There has been training. There has been intelligence co-operation, exchange of views and India also provided a raid of our defence in Sri Lanka.
India exhibits strange behaviour. My impression is that India likes to appear involved in the prosecution of the Eelam War, but does not want to take full responsibility for it either. NDTV recently publicized a book by one of its editors making the "revelation" that India covertly gave active assistance to Sri Lanka. But strangely, the NDTV clip of the Rajapakse interview doesn't include the quote which is the title of video -- "I fought India's War: Rajapakse". The same quote in print form published elsewhere online is no longer available online.
And so, India is to send 500 troops to SL, but based on recent behaviour, perhaps this is yet another crafty understatement.
United States
The US has clear interest in Sri Lanka for its location, and especially for the harbour of Trincomalee. Its current main naval presence in this region is Diego Garcia, which is clearly inadequate for the future. Trincomalee and Sri Lanka in general provide a better location without a large anti-Western sentiment or radicalized Muslim sentiment. It was SL president J.R. Jeyarwardene's closeness with the US and the threat of the US gaining significant leverage in Sri Lanka in the late 1970's that prompted Indira Gandhi to check Jeyawardene by covertly flaring up the armed conflict in Sri Lanka.
China-India
China's relations to Asia are summarized by Liao, "In the 1990s, China sought to mask its 'peaceful rise' behind a policy of 'smile diplomacy' designed to make certain that its neighbors did not fear it. China lowered trade barriers and offered soft loans and investments to help its southern neighbors. Today, China's government seeks to shape the diplomatic agenda in order to increase China's options while constricting those of potential adversaries." India may not yet publicly acknowledge it directly, but as it looks around, it can see itself trapped in the middle of this "engineered web" of Chinese allies. Note how Liao states that it is in China's interests to stabilize the countries in its immediate proximity, but India is encircled in a "ring of fire" -- all of India's neighbours are unstable and/or allies of China.
Directly on the border, there are long-standing disputes between China and India.
Internally, India is facing a lot of issues due to the growing Maoist activities along a corridor that stretches from Nepal to Western Bengal to Andhra Pradesh and ends at Kerala. In India's large, impoverished working class (which a direct consequence of the pyramidal new open-market policies that have created India's new middle class), the hearts and minds are disaffected, and there is a geographical split, too. Given that the form of Communism is Maoist (just like in Nepal), is there a Chinese influence? The Mumbai attacks on Nov. 26, 2008 gave India a bloody, embarrassing lesson on just how vulnerable it actually is. Does the fact that Pakistan allies with China closely, and that the perpetrators were unusually sophisticatedly armed and trained, lead us to any clues? Note, it is through China's sophisticated weaponry that Sri Lanka finally broke the deadlock and steamrolled through the Vanni in 2009. (EDIT 8/30/09: And also in Sri Lanka, the JVP has gained a lot of political traction recently, and they were a key election ally to Rajapakse's 2005 presidential bid. The JVP has always espoused Communist ideology, and the rabid majoritarian nationalism only came recently. The level of relations between the JVP and China are unknown to me, and I only surmise a little. Whatever they are, they are surely concealed. The fact that the JVP's heartland, the poor rural areas of the South, is also the site of China's construction projects in SL should be noted.)
US-India
While the US and India have been allies for quite a while, it cannot be denied that there has indeed been friction between them, too. The Indo-Lanka Accord, as a means to prevent US influence, has already been mentioned. With the recent politics of the South Asian region coming into focus since 2001, the Indian Ocean is vital. This is not lost on India, which wants the Indian Ocean being under Indian control. The US wants a presence in the region for all the wars and turmoil in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The oil and natural gas either in these countries or coming from Central Asia through these countries to the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean is no doubt correlated, if not causal.
To a lesser extent, competition might arise in the technology sector. The US has benefited in some ways from IT and engineering outsourcing to India, but this relationship may change and become slightly more of a competitive one as economic protectionism might be adopted in the US soon, as it has been elsewhere in the world recently.
As far as Sri Lanka, the US was very supportive of the 2002-2006 peace process since it gave the West an avenue to introduce itself strongly in the affairs of the island. This was largely unavailable due to India's presence before. Sadly, the approach of short-sighted personal gain by both actors has pushed Sri Lanka out of the abmit of both India and the US, and into China's realm, not to mention the utter trauma and devastation mentally and physically meted out to Tamils and others in the Northeast.
US-China
The US-China competition is almost so well established that it needs little explanation. What I will say is that it may be testament to China's rising strength relative to the US that China has once again floated the idea of replacing the international currency standard with something other than the US dollar. (Or perhaps it is a sign of rapid US decline, which might also explain why Russia is raising the issue of autonomy for South Ossetia after it, too, abandoned the idea only recently.) China owns a large portion of the US debt, and the US depends on the cheapness of many products made with cheap Chinese labour. But the competition is complicated by the fact that since one of China's main markets is the US, it cannot significantly hurt the US directly without hurting itself. Nontheless, the more subtle approach can often be the more effective.
Going Forward
Given the 3 forces competing in Sri Lanka, almost representing East, West, and Middle/South, the situation is difficult. Which two will gang up on the third, and which one of those two will remain the 'winner'? Only time will tell, and things can always be changed. Rarely are things so absolute in life as we believe them to be.
At the moment, India is throwing its lot in with China. India joined with China at the UN HRC in congratulating Sri Lanka on its "humanitarian war" that upstaged the West's efforts to condemn Sri Lanka for its war crimes. As Himal magazine said, this is "repugnant", and "the coming together of Southasia’s antagonistic governments for an unethical purpose is shameful."
But there is also a danger to India of
What Tamils in the Diaspora must realize is that recent events show that justice doesn't happen on its own, and there is little, if any, morality in international real politik. We must realize how the struggle for peace and justice was set back -- as higher-level strategic interests came to bear. Thus, it is in this vein that our arguments for autonomy for the NE, and a comprehensive federal solution that will guarantee rights for Plantation Tamils and Muslims island-wide, must be put forth. Clinging to arguments of morality and justice in an international setting are only used to santize one's own actions directly before or after the action. But of course, they must be remembered, and never forgotten, as is true with the rest of our history. Win-win strategic incentives that do not compromise the integrity and rights of everyone affected need to be goal of our thinking and advocacy work.
For the future, the US needs to be ready to compete with China with India's help in the South Asian region and/or rescue India: "Most importantly, though, the Sino-Indian border dispute should be viewed as a test for proponents of China's 'peaceful rise' theory. If China becomes adventurous enough to challenge India's sovereignty or cross well-defined red lines, Washington must be willing to recognize the signal and respond appropriately."
This also means that India and Tamils of the Northeast need to bury hatchet and consider each other allies, for the common enemy to their own existence is China. With India's hurt ego after the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, and the rivers and rivers of Tamil blood that have flowed before that incident and also very recently, this may be quite hard for both sides, but it is also quite necessary. In this scenario, the US's interests are secured simultaneously with India's interests and the interests of the Tamil-speaking people island-wide. This necessitates significant European-level federal autonomy for the Northeast. Anything less will not address the structural problems perpetuating the conflict in the island. If this can be secured, then China can be checked in South Asia. If this can be done in Sri Lanka, it can be done anywhere in South Asia.
This is the only way forward that I can see right now. But I must not be the only one who thinks that this should be
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