By Don Wijewardana

The end came fast. By Saturday the last of the remaining 50,000 hostages were rescued. And by Monday it was all over. After having rescued 250,000 hostages earlier it was thought releasing the last lot held as a human shield by the terrorists could not be accomplished without much bloodshed. The whole world was watching with baited breath. Clinton, Brown, UN’s Pillay and the European Union as well as the INGOs waited to see a ‘blood bath’ and a ‘human catastrophe’. They warned the government of “severe consequences for its actions”.

But their hopes were dashed when a well planned and superbly executed strategy of the armed forces accomplished the mission without any loss of civilian life. Sri Lanka thus achieved the most successful largest ever hostage rescue mission anywhere in the world. The international community was stunned by its success; so much so, none of them could gulp the pride to congratulate Sri Lankan government. Not even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Isn’t her job, as she claims, to be “the voice of the victim everywhere”? Was there some confusion as to who the victims were? Or perhaps they were questioning how dare a puny developing country achieve such a feat when a number of major players have failed in much smaller operations?

The cost

Anyway that’s all behind us now. But the cost of three decades of ravage caused by the LTTE is yet to be calculated: there is no doubt it is colossal. The loss of 80,000 lives, countless maimed, thousands of families who continue to suffer from the loss of loved ones and many more displaced, are only one aspect. The other is the social and economic wellbeing that a generation of people had to sacrifice. The cost is not confined to any community or any group. It transcends Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and the entire nation. Who is responsible for allowing that scale of violence to last that long to exact such a heavy toll?

There is no doubt a major part of the responsibility lies with short sighted and ineffective political leadership of the country. For many of them, although it devastated the country, terrorism was of lower order priority than vying for political power. They were also convinced of the invincibility of LTTE, an idea Prabhakaran successfully ingrained in their minds through brutal massacre of civilians using suicide bombers and assassination of political leaders.

Ceasefire Agreement

The worst of the government deeds came with the signing of the ceasefire agreement (CFA) of 2002. It had several devastating impacts. One was the freedom it gave the LTTE during the four years of the agreement to expand its military infrastructure including, adding four new battalions, expanding naval capability – the Sea Tigers, and establishing the nascent air force. During the period it also built up its arsenal with heavy and modern equipment and established modern communication systems all in preparation for war. It also enabled the Tigers to some extent dictate the terms of the peace process, establishing itself as the sole representative of the Tamil minority, a status denied to it earlier. Thus, the peace process accorded parity to the LTTE with the elected Government at the negotiating table.

More importantly, the CFA gave wings to the idea of a separate state through international involvement in the peace process. It brought Norway, US, Japan and the EU as guarantors or peace monitors. For the first time the international community was involved in a big way in the Sri Lankan issue bringing with it hordes of INGOs. It gave some in the NGO industry, posing under the banner of ‘civil society’, the licence to intervene in Sri Lanka in very uncivilized ways. The outcome was an essentially domestic issue becoming a full blown international concern.

The CFA also generated great political expectations among the Tamil population, especially the diaspora, of Prabhakaran’s ability to deliver their dream of a separate state. The diaspora involvement filled LTTE coffers, through legitimate contributions as well as extortions, drug deals, credit card fraud, human trafficking and other vices, along with enhanced ability to acquire arms while at the same time promoting its legitimacy overseas.

International responsibility

While the bungling Sri Lankan political leaders offered a free hand to the LTTE to implement its nefarious agenda the Tigers set out systematically to establish within the international arena its case as the underdog, a helpless minority discriminated against by the Sinhalese majority based on the fact that Sri Lankan population consisted of 74 per cent Sinhalese and 12 per cent Tamils. The crux of its claim of denial of human rights was this statistic. There were areas that needed improvement but the claim was fundamentally based on falsehoods and half truths generated by the swift LTTTE propaganda machine . But it fitted the human rights abuse model like a glove.

This was pointed out over and over but it was dismissed by the West and the INGOs as implausible. Indeed it was implausible as no other country would have treated a minority better than some of the majority. But the campaign of misinformation continued to gain currency now with the well organised NGOs picking up the case.

The success of the campaign is evident in Obama during his election campaign making a distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters and including LTTE in the latter category. A feeble effort of a weak government machinery to counter this propaganda was no match to the well polished performance of the LTTTE and the NGOs. The irony is the deception continued for three decades with none of these groups questioning the validity of the claim.

The riots of 1983 were a disaster that the government should have averted. The damage caused to the Tamil community was high and it was seen as evidence of discrimination. But, the proportion of Tamils living among the Sinhalese in the south since 1983 increasing to 55 per cent showed that the riots did not leave any lasting impact on the friendly coexistence of the two communities.

However, it led to Western countries opening their borders for an influx of Tamil “refugees” from Sri Lanka. Once they became established as voters it was the politician’s lot to pander to their demands. From then on whether the information on which they persecuted Sri Lanka was false or not did not really matter.
While this was going on, these governments could not ignore the mountain of evidence that the LTTE was a terrorist organisation.

By all accounts the LTTE led by Prabhakaran was far more deadly than Al Qaeda. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has described it as the “most dangerous and deadly extremists” in the world and ranked it ahead of Al Qaeda and Hamas. So, when Al Qaeda was banned there were no grounds not to ban the LTTE in US and the EU. But it was a Clayton’s ban - a ban imposed when you don’t want to have a ban. With mounting pressure from sympathisers these governments were unwilling to fully implement provisions relating to banned organisations. So they were allowed to raise funds and carry on the propaganda making a mockery of the law.

Fund raising in the West boosted LTTE coffers. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly (JDW) the group had a profit margin that would be the envy of any multinational corporation – some USD200 to 300 million per year. The Tamil Tigers, JDW claims, was consequently the only known insurgent organisation with its own army, navy and even a rudimentary air force, with access to financial resources and weapons giving it the luxury of introducing bold, new dimensions to the conflict. It goes on to say the LTTE had created one of the most sophisticated insurgencies in the world, largely due to a complex global network of financial resources and weapons that are integral to prolonging its campaign for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka”. JDW noted further that “in addition, the LTTE creates and staffs some charitable organisations, projecting its influence through this front to raise money from Tamil communities and, ultimately, convert the gains into arms. The system works as an efficient way to move funds wherever investment or procurement opportunities arise while utilising a charitable façade’s tax-free status and legitimacy”. The west turning a blind eye to the activities of an organisation “banned” by them was a major factor that allowed the LTTE to thrive.

Financial strangulation

While the LTTE was using its vast earnings to purchase arms from anywhere Western countries were cutting their aid to Sri Lanka on account of the so called human rights violations. As Jeremy Page of the Times noted, by 2007 US aid to Sri Lanka had declined to a mere $ 7.4 million and British funding to just 1.25 million pounds. In addition US also ceased arms sales to Sri Lanka.

The attempt at strangling Sri Lanka financially to stop the government offensive against the terrorists did not stop there. The US and the UK went out of their way to pressure the IMF to prevent supporting Sri Lanka. Clinton said “the time was not yet ripe for Sri Lanka to get the $1.9 billion IMF loan”. Egged on by Miliband, British foreign minister, she went on to say “We think that it is not an appropriate time to consider that until there is a resolution of this conflict. And that’s what we’re focused on trying to help bring about”. This was in spite of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn stating that Sri Lanka deserves the funding on account of the impact of the global recession.

As the Sri Lankan Central Bank observed the money was a short term standby arrangement to help stabilise the balance of payments and not for the purpose of financing the war. It appears the statements of western leaders related to these countries hatching a plan to rescue top LTTE terrorists. It is well known how George W Bush manipulated the United Nations to get it to endorse his Iraq policy. Obama came to power promising to eliminate such behaviour by the executive. It appears the practice has not ended with the exit of Bush.

The duplicity of the West is incomprehensible. On the one hand they are engaged in a vicious war against Taleban and in the process bombing out many innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the other hand when a far more vicious terror group was cornered they were creating every possible obstacle to pressure Sri Lanka to offer a ceasefire. Less than a fortnight earlier a 48 hour ceasefire was declared by the government. But anyone attempting to escape was shot at by the LTTE. That was logical when they were holding them as a human shield. As Kenneth Cooper points out in the Boston Globe those international voices also ignored the pattern to pauses in this civil war: The Tamil Tigers used every cease-fire to rest, recruit, and rearm. Then they took the offensive. That’s how they broke a 2002 ceasefire. Another ended in 1995 when the rebels, dramatically, sunk government navy ships. In these circumstances, as Cooper notes, complying with the request would have been a major strategic mistake. That would have been a recipe for perpetuation of terrorism with attendant costs. Besides that, would these parties suggest a ceasefire if Osama Bin Laden was cornered like that?

These are only a few examples of the role played by western governments in nurturing the LTTE. Then along with INGOs and the UN by persecuting the Sri Lankan government they all have contributed in a significant way to the perpetuation of LTTE for which Sri Lanka has paid dearly. In fact they would have succeeded too, if not for countries such as China, Russia, Japan, and India who supported the efforts of Sri Lanka to combat terrorism and assisted financially and strategically. If not for them Sri Lanka would still be embroiled in fighting.

Sri Lanka is an independent functioning democracy and has been so ever since independence over half a century ago. Yet, it is amusing to see the extent of patronising by the west that is still going on regardless. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said “we urge the Government of Sri Lanka to take immediate steps to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the north for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons”. In a strange conclusion to the press release it also called on the government to protect, among others, Doctors Varatharajah, Shanmugarajah, and Sathiyamurthy.

These doctors, without authority, issued pres statements on the numbers killed and hospitals damaged by firing. In the meantime Gordon Brown had rung the President to ask him to involve Tamils in an inclusive political future for the country. For Pete’s sake Sri Lanka is a functioning just as much as these countries were. And there is a duly elected government in power dealing with issues relating to minorities. President Rajapaksa has reiterated the government’s commitment to deal with the issues as a top priority.

Why shouldn’t it be treated any different from an elected government of the West? A simple test before proffering such advice should be ‘How would they feel if President Rajapaksa advised how to deal with their own domestic issues?’

The inability to dictate terms to satisfy their own pressure groups would have been seen as a major setback by some of these western powers. Perhaps that is the reason for not acknowledging the world’s greatest hostage rescue, or congratulating Sri Lanka for bring to a successful close a civil war that has lasted nearly three decades. In fact what Sri Lanka deserves is an apology for everything that the West had done to prolong terrorism in the country. But it is unlikely Sri Lanka will get either.

Don Wijewardana is an economist and freelance

- Courtesy of Asian Tribune