It is easy to analyse popular media, which is dominated by Americans, and find all the clues pointing to the American mentality and decision making that fueled the crescendo of GoSL genocide against Tamils in 2009. After a full decade of suffering of Tamil-speaking peoples, there have been no real improvements, save the absence of outwardly-visible violence. And unsurprisingly, there have been no serious attempts at improvements in a full decade.
It is important to dissect these past mistakes if we are to find a better way forwards.
For example, at the time of this writing, the US govt is withdrawing its remaining military personnel and assets from Northern Syria, allowing the loyal Kurds to be defenseless to the fresh genocidal military onslaught from Turkey. Tamils and Kurds see kinship in one another on account of their liberation struggles being so similar. In both, they have a distinct language, religion(s), culture, territory, and historical rule that has been usurped. They have fallen through the cracks of geopolitics, at the intersection of more than 2 competing world powers, meaning they receive support from no one and exist in a limbo statehood. Their ethnic group is spread across multiple recognised political states as minority percentage nationalities and bear discrimination in each, leading to a diaspora population of refugees in exile. They both commenced the armed phase of their liberation struggle in an official sense in 1983.
There are plenty of examples within the US in recent days of recognising how damaging the betrayal of Kurds is.
The Tamils in the island of Eelam have been betrayed since 2009. Actually, longer, since the donor conference co-chairs in 2006 drafted the plans for the genocide in 2009. Tamils still remain loyal to the Western liberal order, despite being "left to the wolves" time and time again, just like the Kurds.
Once again, the Kurds and the Tamils find themselves in similar places in their quest for liberation: just about nowhere. How long can someone be betrayed before they take matters into their own hands? Is anyone listening?
Being clear about how we got here is important now more than ever, since a full decade after 2009, we are witnessing a resurgence of the same perpetrators of 2009 genocide, with smoke and mirrors to distract from the source. We cannot be so easily distracted. But more importantly, the same conditions that gave rise to these people still exist, which is why attempts at "good governance" (Ranil) or "regime change" (Sirisena) have been abortive.
If you have been a fan of Game of Thrones or Marvel's Black Panther, then you can understand better why we continue to make the same miscalculations.
Game of Thrones and Southern Lanka
It has been mentioned here repeatedly how the structure of the island's political structure needs to break up and re-form itself. Until then, you will only have selfish small-minded actors thriving in such an environment which funnels everyone into overtly racist politics. It was also mentioned here, years before the Sirisena-Ranil "good governance" government came to power, that mere regime change will not change anything.
And isn't that why Game of Thrones describes Southern Lanka so well? It's an environment where various factions fight viciously for the right to rule over everyone else, but in the end, everyone perpetuates the cycle of violence and injustice. In the game of thrones, you either win, or you die. The only thing that everyone can agree on is those people to the North are evil and sub-human and need to be annihilated. The extermination of the people of the North only focuses our attention on what existed all along -- a world that despairs in its yearning for justice and freedom, in which the only thing reliable is a bleakness summed up in "valar morghulis" -- "all men must die".
It is important to note that the analogy breaks down if we consider the people of the North (Whitewalkers) as "invaders from the North" and not just people whose mission is to protect their homeland at all costs. Because Tamils were not invaders to the island. If anything, the recent Keezhadi excavations in Tamil Nadu show a deep connection between ancient Tamils and the Indus Valley Civilisation to such an extent that Tamil civilisation is more likely a continuation of this highly-advanced 4500 year old pre-historic tradition. If anything, the island of Eelam, as it was first called, was a Tamil island, and the Sinhalese are the "invaders". After all, Tamil civilisation in the southern part of Tamil Nadu is at least as old as 580 BCE, so it only lends to reason that a society with perpendicular streets and underground sewers that traveled all the way to Australia also had established itself in Eelam in pre-historic times. So if Tamils were in Eelam 2580 years ago, and if that date will get pushed back further as the research literally digs deeper, and if Singalese founder Prince Vijaya only arrived in Eelam 2500 years ago, then Tamils are the original inhabitants of the island. That is, of course, looking past the clear problems of the Mahavamsa as a historical source, unless we're ready to accept that Vijaya is the grandson of a lion and has a family tree that does not fork. As a compromise, Tamil-speaking peoples deserve their claim to rule themselves in Tamil Eelam, from Chilaabam to Ampaarai -- no more, and no less.
One final connection between ancient Tamils and Game of Thrones is that the story of "Valyrian steel" is based heavily on "Tamilakam steel" aka wootz steel Even though it came to Europe under the name "Damascus steel", it was only produced by Tamils in modern day Tamil Nadu, even the contemporary ancient recipes in modern day Karnataka could not compare.
Let's talk about Season 8, the final season. It seems that most people detested it so much that they don't want to talk about. Fair enough. But it's important to look at why we don't like it. The most common reasons given are that the writing is poor, the writers were lazy, the plot progression was rushed, and that the characters changed abruptly without warning.
Hmm, the characters changed abruptly? But did they really? In a bleak world where everything built up ultimately gets torn down, in which "all men must die" and no one is spared, one of the lead characters Danaerys committing genocide is not a shock to the world they all live in. And to close observers, the signs of Danaerys of betraying her publicly espoused principles of equality, justice, and righteous rule were present all along. Her obsession for power allowed her to coldly kill her brother as a youngster and to wholesale kill entire battalions of defeated soldiers that refused to pledge fealty early in Season 7.
Some people point out that the TV show's Seasons 7 and 8 were only written by the TV's show runners and head writers from an outline by author George R. R. Martin of how the yet-unfinished books will proceed, and that difference is the cause of the bad writing. Others point out the head writers are capable of writing compelling plot-driven fiction on their own, so they are not lacking in skill. So what gives?
The best explanation is that the lack of already-written books for Seasons 7 and 8 revealed the mistakes that the show runners and the audience make when approaching the story. Specifically, they see the story as a story of individuals rather than a story of a society (or as the article puts it, a "psychological" rather than "sociological" storytelling perspective). But if we dig into the explanation, we see that GRRM's novels "seemed to specialize in having characters evolve in response to the broader institutional settings, incentives and norms that surround them". And we see that "society" and "sociological" refer more specifically to the system of rules and forces within that society.
And when you understand how the Southern Lankan political system is a cynical self-reinforcing racist genocidal machine, you instantly understand Game of Thrones. Of course genocide is committed in the climax.
In Southern Lanka, how will we "break the wheel" -- end the proverbial wheel of power that crushes innocent underneath and pulls the rest into its cycle of violence?
Of course, we should not be asking "who" will break the wheel. We should be asking "what" will be the agents of change to dismantle this system.
Black Panther and Tamil Eelam
This "psychological storytelling" method is "the main, and often only, way Hollywood and most television writers tell stories". Americans' focus on the individual is a well known thing. Even in American superhero lore of the last 70 years, we see several instances of a lone hero (Batman, Superman) who single-handedly saves "society" repeatedly. In other cases, we have small teams (X-Men, Avengers, Justice League). Movies tell similar stories of the individual (Rocketeer, Rambo, Rocky, Mission Impossible, James Bond, Terminator).
American politics often times seems similar, or at least the political rhetoric around it does. In a country that espouses its egalitarian credentials, it heavily focuses on the leaders of countries as the reasons for their ills or successes. American political calculus simplifies situations into binaries, you're either with us or you're against us. But situations like the Kurds in Syria can only be handled best with nuance, and the lack thereof is disastrous, as we see currently.
So why is it that the Tamils of Eelam have not been afforded that nuance of wisdom and clairvoyance? Instead, the US govt's treatment of Tamils in 2009 is similar to its fictionally depicted counterparts in Marvel's 2009 animated series of the Black Panther comic.
Season 1, Episode 1, 3:15:
Military General 1: They can't do that! We're the United States of America. Where all did a bunch of savages get off, telling us that they got a No Fly Zone? Hey, what are they gonna do, fly spears at our jets?
[glare from black female Secretary of State resembling Condoleeza (Condi) Rice, nervous silence from other meeting attendees]
Military General 1: Did I say something wrong? [to Secretary of State] My god, Dondi, you know I didn't mean you when I say--
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: Shut up, Wallace.
Military general: I mean, they're nothing like you.
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: Shut up!
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: Is there someone here who can give us some accurate intel on these people?
Everett Ross: Uh, that would be me, Ms. Reece.
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: Mr. Ross. Uh, who the hell are these people, Everett?
Everett Ross: Wakanda is a small country in Africa notable for never having been conquered in its entire history. When you consider the history of the region, the fact that the French, the English, the Belgians, or any number of Christian or Islamic invaders were never able to defeat them in battle -- it's unprecedented! The Wakandans have a warrior spirit that makes the Vietnamese look like, well, the French. They've also maintained a technological superiority that defies explanation.
Administrator 1: Where'd they get their tech from? Soviets?
Everett Ross: No Cold War alliances with either side, and no contemporary alliances with the Arab world, including OPEC. Geologists estimate that they have large oil deposits.
Administrator 2: That's what our boys at Halliburton said.
Everett Ross: They don't even pump it.
Administrator 2: That is crazy.
Everett Ross: Apparently, they don't need it, as an energy source or a financial base. They have a variety of eco-friendly power sources, like solar and hydrogen.
Military General 2: Who's in charge?
Everett Ross: He's called the Black Panther
Military General 1: What does this have to do with the price of tea in China, gentlemen? Since when has beating the French meant anything? You give me a 12 man Black Ops squad and I'll--
Everett Ross: It's been tried, general. With the best
Military General 1: The best? As if you had a day of military training.
Everett Ross: The..best.
[flashback to Captain America fighting and being handily defeated by Black Panther and then immediately let go by Black Panther with a mild chiding]
Season 1, Episode 1, 17:09:
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: So, what we've got here is a highly militaristic culture with no ties to the United States.
Administrator 3: They're a rogue state.
Everett Ross: Before you go adding them to the Axis of Evil, I should point out that they have never invaded anyone. The only time they have taken hostile action is defending their own borders.
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: But a regime change could bring about a change in that policy. Look, I don't want to jump the gun here, but it's standard operating procedure to have a military option in place for any potential threat to the United States.
Everett Ross: Now, I certainly don't want to speak in the place of our recently departed general, but with our military forces stretched all over the Middle East, do we even have the resources?
Secretary of State Dondi Reece: You're right, Mr. Ross, that is certainly not your area of expertise. You just keep providing accurate information. Besides, this conflict would not be appropriate for conventional forces. This is a job for special forces. Very special forces.
Lest we consider the analogy from this episode of Black Panther as a hyperbole, let me remind you about Operation Unceasing Waves 1, 2, and 3. After the success of Unceasing Waves 1, the Tigers launched Unceasing Waves 2, where the SL army fell like ninepins and lost 3 years of captured territory in just 3 days. The US and UK militaries stepped in to help GoSL fortify Elephant Pass and make losing that military base impossible, on top of the fact that it is the bottleneck to Jaffna. Instead, Operation Unceasing Waves 3 successfully captured Elephant Pass, leaving the US and UK dumbfounded and proving that the LTTE was a fully conventional military whose success defies expectations. Ironically, the fall of Elephant Pass was engineered in part through the same tactic in the real-life US Civil War battle depicted in the movie Glory.
Edit: And this fact bears repeating every single time: the LTTE won the war militarily in 2000. As D. Sivaram pointed out, after the fall of Elphant Pass, the Liberation Tigers marched on Jaffna successfully, trapping the 40,000 SL Army troops stationed there. Given that 40,000 soldiers was half of the entire SL Army, and that they were trapped, to the point that GoSL asked India to intervene and airlift all 40,000 trapped soldiers:
The Sri Lankan army was on the brink of its most catastrophic defeat in 17 years of bitter civil war with the Tamil Tigers last night, and reports said the country's president had asked India to evacuate 40,000 troops trapped by a rebel offensive.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga's reported plea for help from India follows a series of stunning military advances by the Tigers during the past two weeks. They have now advanced to within 25 miles of the main northern town of Jaffna, which they fled five years ago. "Sri Lanka's first appeal has been to India," one official told a Sri Lankan TV station last night.
An official close to the Indian embassy, speaking on the condition of anonymity, yesterday confirmed that the Sri Lankan government had requested India's assistance....
Tamil Tiger rebels took control of the key Elephant Pass military base on the northern Jaffna peninsula on April 22; the base had never before fallen to the rebels.
Eight days later the Tigers consolidated their hold on the peninsula when they captured another crucial military base, at Pallai.
The Tigers vowed three months ago to recapture Jaffna, their former stronghold, which they lost to government troops in 1995. The town can now be supplied only by military aircraft and most analysts believe its fall is inevitable. "It is not a question of when, but how," one defence expert said last night....
As Brigadier Balraj put it: "He who holds Elephant Pass owns Jaffna". As India Today put it, "With LTTE knocking at the doors of Jaffna Peninsula, Kumaratunga presses the panic button". As The Economist put it, Few people in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, expect the army will be able to hold on to Jaffna. ... The government would then, for the first time, lose its foothold on the Jaffna peninsula.
As the politico-military analyst par excellence D. Sivaram (aka Taraki) observed, "The failure of Operation Agni Khiela in April 2001 eventually showed that the military power that the LTTE had developed in the Vanni was equal to more than 83 per cent of the total fighting component of the Sri Lankan armed forces."
Although he noted India's unwillingness to provoke the Tigers into direct conflict, India was reported to have told the Tigers to "stop, or else" at the outskirts of Jaffna and not advance, allowing India to perform the airlift of half of GoSL's military without issue. Most Tamils understood that threat to mean that India would isolate Tamil Eelam diplomatically forever even if the Tigers ignored their warning and followed through with their military victory and declared independence.
And if that wasn't enough, less than a year later, GoSL used the ceasefire declared by the Tigers in 2000 to regroup and launch a new attack and lost again, this time with Western knowledge, as Sivaram noted: "The army may not have been able to achieve the necessary concentration of force to launch Op. Agni Khiela if not for this window of opportunity that was opened by the LTTE's ceasefire. Norway, Britain and the US were not unaware of the preparations for the offensive by the SLA."
American miscalculations
Can we say that the Americans calculated well vis-a-vis Tamils? Or even in regards to their own interests, which are firmly defined by A2/AD (Anti-Access / Access Denial)?
Obviously, if China's influence is slowly constricting around the neck of Sri Lanka, with no end in sight, then America's policy continues to be an utter failure, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Needless to mention the complete moral failure and failure of moral leadership, given that Tamils have seen no improvement, no freedom, and continue to live under military occupation.
It is said that the treatment of Eelam Tamils has followed the prevailing winds of the global order. The global geopolitical order is not an immutable thing, but rather one that shifts with time.
The Cold War was an unusual period of 2 main superpowers (US, USSR) fighting each other across the globe, and anything communist or remotely close to it (socialism) was considered a threat to the US. That's why the US needed War Plan Red in case of emergency. Even though the Tigers espoused a vision of Tamil Eelam that looked like a Western European Democracy -- democratic socialism -- they were viewed with heavy suspicion. Even though the Tigers' most desired goal was not a pure military means to secure Tamil Eelam but rather international acceptance of Tamil Eelam's freedom.
After the fall of the USSR in 1991, the world saw a most unusual thing for the next 20 years -- a unipolar world with America on top of everything. Any challenge to this flimsy balance in the form of wars that challenge the borders of a country was seen by America as a threat. These threats were labeled as terrorism, and the Tigers were finally added to the US and UK's lists in 1997. The obvious reason for this is the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The evidence shows it was planned out in advance by the CIA, which looking for one of the many disaffected groups in India to carry it out (Punjabis, Assamese, Kashmiris, etc), and it was facilitated by very high-ranking members within the ruling Congress party. Maybe that is why it took the US and UK 6 years to make the designation, whereas India made it immediately? And perhaps George W Bush's administration, especially after 9/11, lost any nuance of the situation and brandished all "terrorists" the same? Or, maybe it was the fact that the War for Peace and anti-humanitarian genocidal economic blockade by the Kumaratunga government did not succeed in dampening the Tigers' military or public support, while Operation Unceasing Waves I in 1996 gave proof to that fact.
The military defeat of the Tigers and the overt genocidal onslaught of the Tamil people in 2009 coincided with the rise of China. Mahinda Rajapakse is what connects these 2 large scale changes, and he & his familial accomplices thus receive focal point of the praise and resentment for the genocide that they committed. The military successes of the LTTE that led it from strength to strength in the following years resulted in the US taking an aggressive militaristic approach to the LTTE. It superseded concern for Southern Lanka's genocidal system but competed with the optics of human rights that was useful to American diplomacy. Genocidal politics inherently lacks much nuance, so the perceived contradictions by Americans was a threat to GoSL for which an emerging China was the answer.
But let's back up to that "Cold War" period, the period before 1991, the year when the Soviet Union collapsed and Raji Gandhi was bumped off. Was it all miscalculation there? Did the US really believe GoSL when the GoSL blamed Black July on the Leftists and the Tamils and said the Tamils were Leftist terrorists?
Surprisingly, the answer is no. In 1989, the West-aligned UNP member Premadasa was elected president to SL, continuing the faithful role of the UNP in supporting American / Western liberal interests. Just a year later, the US govt wrote this now-declassified letter to its aid agencies about GoSL:
One Hundred First Congress
Congress of the United States
Committee on Foreign Affairs
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
October 19, 1990
The Honorable Ronald W. Roskens
Administrator
Agency for International Development
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20523-0001
Dear Mr. Roskens:
We write to urge that human rights issues be a high priority item for the United Sates during the Sri Lanka aid consortium to be held in Paris next week.
As you know, Members of Congress have long been concerned about reports of violations of human rights in Sri Lanka, including killings and other abuses against non-combatants in the context of civil conflict political killings in the south, disappearances, failure to inform family members of the arrest of suspected insurgents, failure to adequately investigate and bring prosecutions against those responsible for human rights abuses, and failure to ensure equitable distribution of humanitarian relief supplies.
We understand that the Sri Lankan Government confronts several terrorist groups that have been responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Nonetheless, abuses by terrorist groups do not justify abuses by Sri Lankan security forces, and do not diminish the importance of government efforts to address the concerns we have raised.
In view of the fact that some one million Sri Lankans are now displaced as a result of the conflict, we are particularly concerned about provision of humanitarian aid, and we hope that you will urge the Government to do everything possible to ensure that food and medical assistance reach people in urgent need.
We urge that you make it clear during the meetings in Paris that these are issues of great concern to the United States and to the donor community.
We would also appreciate your expressing concern about several recent instances in which the Government of Sri Lanka has confiscated human rights documents in an apparent attempt to suppress information about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. In particular, we are disturbed by the reported seizure on September 11 of over 500 documents from human rights activist Mahinda Rajapakse, who was planning to present them to a meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Disappearances in Geneva. According to Asia Watch, this was the latest in a series of attempts by the government to prevent Sri Lankan human rights activists from sending information overseas.
We look forward to hearing from you on these most important matters.
Cordially,
STEPHEN J. SOLARZ
Chairman, House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs
GUS YATRON
Chairman, House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations
Let me repeat an important paragraph with added empahsis:
We understand that the Sri Lankan Government confronts several terrorist groups that have been responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Nonetheless, abuses by terrorist groups do not justify abuses by Sri Lankan security forces, and do not diminish the importance of government efforts to address the concerns we have raised.
And let me also repeat the last paragraph with added emphasis:
We would also appreciate your expressing concern about several recent instances in which the Government of Sri Lanka has confiscated human rights documents in an apparent attempt to suppress information about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. In particular, we are disturbed by the reported seizure on September 11 of over 500 documents from human rights activist Mahinda Rajapakse, who was planning to present them to a meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Disappearances in Geneva. According to Asia Watch, this was the latest in a series of attempts by the government to prevent Sri Lankan human rights activists from sending information overseas.
Assuming your brain didn't melt already, you could write an entire Greek tragedy with the amount of irony in the sentence: "In particular, we are disturbed by the reported seizure on September 11 of over 500 documents from human rights activist Mahinda Rajapakse, who was planning to present them to a meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Disappearances in Geneva."
But the other sentences about the government "attempts" to suppress HR activists, including Mahinda Rajapakse, should give you pause. Because those "attempts" were ultimately successful over the long run. Human rights lawyer Mahinda Rajapakse went on to commit the largest genocide of South Asia, still possibly worse than the genocide of Rohingyas by the Burmese in Myanmar.
He may be out of power now, thanks to "regime change". But nothing really changed, because that same political structure is in place, perpetuating things. It is no surprise that his brother Gotabaya, a US citizen up until this past April, the scariest most racist candidate in the field, is also the frontrunner considered very likely to win the upcoming presidential election.
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