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An Associated Press report said that the
Appropriation Bill for 2008 of the United States' Federal Government
was withholding military aid to Sri Lanka. It said that despite
certain shortcomings in their human rights records, allocations in
the bill for military aid to Indonesia and the Philippines had been
substantially approved, whereas Congress "decided to bar all but a
small amount of military aid to Sri Lanka until the Bush
administration … certified that the Sri Lankan government had made
certain improvements in its human rights practices." (AP
18/Dec/07)The bill stated that future arms sales to the country was
dependent on the secretary of state certifying that the Sri Lanka
government was prepared to prosecute military officials who had
allegedly recruited child soldiers and committed extrajudicial
executions, provide access to humanitarian groups and reporters to
the North and East and allow the United Nations to establish a human
rights office in the country.
The ban makes it clear that unless the government agrees to adhere
to basic principles of respecting human rights and international
humanitarian law by making the armed forces more accountable and
responsible, no more military aid would be forthcoming. To many Sri
Lankans exasperated by the government's deplorable human rights
record and its increasing confidence in committing violations with
impunity, the strictures that "no defence export licence may be
issued, and no military equipment or technology shall be sold or
transferred," unless Colombo delivers on the three conditions
insisted upon by Congress, are welcome. The question is however,
what lies behind Sri Lankan security forces acting with impunity?
Why is it that they commit atrocities that have led Washington to
impose a curb on military aid?
We all know that actions of any military are driven by political
agenda, whatever such agenda might be. The Sri Lanka army is no
exception. From the 1950s it has been called upon to suppress Tamil
rebellion demanding equal rights, which has taken different forms
over the decades. In other words, a Sinhala-majority military was
protecting a state that reflected Sinhala hegemony by suppressing
the Tamils' struggle for their rights.
Therefore, it was the Sri Lankan state's project of using armed
force to maintain a disparity of status between different
communities in Sri Lanka that has led the present government to
violate human rights with impunity, to bar humanitarian workers and
the media from accessing IDPs in the North and East, and its
cavalier attitude towards permitting a UN a human rights monitoring
mission in the country.So, we have to agree that human rights
violations by the security forces in their war against the Tamils,
that began in the 1950s and which is today causing much suffering to
civilians, is only a product or a consequence of a much deeper
malaise. Therefore, if we want human rights violations to come to a
halt, the fundamental problem faced by the Tamils and other
communities living in Sri Lanka has to be addressed. This would mean
addressing the core issue of access to political power, which would
guarantee the rights of Tamil citizens, as much as the rights of
citizens of other communities are guaranteed.
The fact that the American government too believes that a lack of
acceptable power-sharing lies at the heart of the ethnic problem in
Sri Lanka is exemplified in the numerous statements by White House,
the State Department, Congressmen, and the Co-chairs to the Sri
Lankan Peace Process of which the US is a member. However, in its
denial of military aid to the Sri Lankan government, the US only
refers to the Sri Lankan military's continuing record of violating
human rights and humanitarian law principles in prosecuting the war,
and not to any power-sharing exercise whatsoever, not even the APRC,
which all Tamils have regarded as grossly inadequate to address the
complexity of Tamil demands.
In other words, hypothetically, if the culture of impunity by the
Sri Lanka government comes to an end or even reduces (we should not
forget the Rajapaksa government has been killing civilians, starving
and abducting them from 2005, but the US has decided to take action
against Colombo only now), humanitarian and media access is allowed
to the North and East and a UN human rights field presence
permitted, the ban on transferring arms to the Sri Lanka government
would be withdrawn so that the military option could be pursued
against the Tamils without hindrance. No one denies that enforcement
of the rule of law and the transformation of the Sri Lankan security
forces into a professional outfit is important. But, in today's
context it is secondary.
The primary issue is bringing a halt to the conflict which can only
be done by placing on the table a credible set of proposals to share
power that would help evolve a political solution.But, by making
further military aid dependent on fighting the war without
large-scale, visible civilian casualties, the impression the US
conveys is that it is supportive of a 'clean war' by a professional
military outfit. And, we all know that in any strike by a military
outfit - be it the Sri Lankan security forces in the Wanni or the
world's most advanced, the US, in Iraq or Afghanistan - civilian
casualties are inevitable. But these are obviously not Washington's
concern. The fact that it is not is demonstrated in the bill's
qualification on the ban of military exports, by allowing equipment
for aerial and maritime surveillance. It is well known the Sri Lanka
government is taking delivery of such equipment from the US after
the LTTE knocked out some of it surveillance aircraft in the raid on
Anuradhapura air base.
To the Tamils, as well as others who support them in fighting for a
just solution for Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict, the only effective
way of compelling Colombo to sincerely address not only human rights
issues but also those of power-sharing, is by withdrawing the
facility it enjoys - the ability to re-arm, while its opponent
cannot. And the only way of doing that is by placing a strict
embargo on the arms supply to Colombo. But, to implement this is to
tie arms supply to an effective set of proposals for power-sharing
that would eventually bring about a solution and not to make arms
supply to Colombo contingent on its military measuring up to
professional standards. War by a state on its own people cannot be
justified just because it is fought professionally. The question
should be whether it is a just war.
If it is only military professionalism Washington is looking for, it
would mean committing the cardinal error of encouraging Colombo to
fight, based on the premise that all wars against anti-state forces
are justified, without looking into the fundamentals that drive such
wars.
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