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INTERNATIONAL FRAME
&
Tamil Struggle for Freedom
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> The Oil Dimension
Nadesan Satyendra
Revised May 2004
[see also
International Dimensions of the Conflict in Sri Lanka, - Nadesan
Satyendra - Key note address at a Seminar on International Dimensions of the
Conflict in Sri Lanka presented by the Centre for Just Peace & Democracy
(CJPD) in partnership with TRANSCEND International, 17 June 2007]
"We are fully aware that the world is not
rotating on the axis of human justice.
Every country in this world advances its own interests. Economic and
trade interests determine the order of the present world, not the
moral law of justice nor the rights of people. International relations
and diplomacy between countries are determined by such interests. Therefore
we cannot expect an immediate recognition of
the moral legitimacy of our cause by the international community... In
reality, the success of our struggle depends on us, not on the world. Our
success depends on our own efforts, on our own strength, on our own
determination."
Velupillai
Pirabakaran, 1993
Introduction
India concerned to
exclude extra regional powers from the Indian region and at
the same time manage and channel Tamil militancy...
US Support for Indo
Sri Lanka Accord as a way of managing India...
IPKF, Rajiv Gandhi & LTTE Ban
Emerging Multipolar World
Australia, Canada, Great Britain, European Union,
Switzerland and South Africa
Ban on LTTE and
US concern that 85% of the world's population by the end of
this century will be living in Africa, Latin America and the
poorer parts of Asia....
Introduction
The Struggle for Tamil Eelam is a national question - and it is therefore an
international question. Given the key roles played by
India
, the United
States
and now
China
(with
supporting roles for the European Union, Japan and Pakistan) in the
Struggle for Tamil Eelam, it is not without importance for the Tamil people
as well as others who seek to understand the nature of the Tamil struggle, to
further their own understanding of the foreign policy objectives of these
countries - this is more so because the record shows that states do not have
permanent friends but have only permanent interests. And, it is these interests
that they pursue, whether overtly or covertly.
Furthermore, the interests of a state are a function of the interests of
groups which wield power within that state and 'foreign
policy is the external manifestation of domestic institutions, ideologies and
other attributes of the polity'. In the end, the success of any liberation
struggle is, not surprisingly, a function of the capacity of its leadership to
mobilise its own people and its own resources at the broadest and deepest
level. Whether the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will do so only time will
tell.
The nature of the struggle for Tamil Eelam was stated crisply by
17 non governmental organisations at the UN Commission on Human Rights in
February 1994:
"The Tamil population in the North and East of the
island, who have lived from ancient times within
relatively well defined geographical boundaries in the
north and east of the island, share an ancient heritage,
a vibrant culture, and a living language which traces
its origins to more than 2500 years ago.
The 1879 minute of Sir Hugh Cleghorn, the British
Colonial Secretary makes it abundantly clear that...
before the advent of the British in 1833,
separate kingdoms existed for the Tamil areas and for
the Sinhala areas in the island. The Tamil people
and the Sinhala people were brought within the confines
of one state for the first time by the British in 1833.
After the departure of the British in 1948, an alien
Sinhala people speaking a language different to that of
the Tamils and claiming a separate and distinct heritage
has
persistently denied the rights and fundamental
freedoms of the Tamil people...
A social group, which shares objective elements such
as a common language and which has acquired a subjective
political consciousness of oneness, by its life within a
relatively well defined territory, and by its struggle
against alien domination, clearly constitutes a 'people'
with the
right to self determination and in our view, the
Tamil population of the north-east of the island are
such a 'people'."
Despite protestations from time to time that the conflict
in the island is an internal matter for the Sri Lanka
government (a view assiduously
cultivated by Sri Lanka as well), both
India
(as the major regional power and an aspiring world
power) and the
United States
(as the world's super power) have taken a direct interest in
the conflict with a view to securing their own strategic
political concerns.
Often,
human rights
has served as a convenient point of entry for real politick.
The
Thimpu Talks in 1985, sponsored by India (and held in Bhutan) brought
the international dimension of the struggle for Tamil Eelam, out from the closet
into the open. And, some ten years later, the
Norwegian intervention
underlined the continuing interest of the 'international
community' in the affairs of an island, situated a mere twenty miles or so
from the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent - and strategically placed to
control the sea lanes of
the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.
India
concerned to exclude extra regional powers from the Indian
region and at the same time manage and channel Tamil
militancy...
Prior to the breakdown of the Soviet Union (and in the
context of a bipolar world order), India's 'non aligned'
foreign policy had for itself, a relatively broad canvas for
manoeuvre. At the 1975 non aligned conference in Colombo,
then Sri Lanka Prime Minister, Srimavo Bandaranaike
promoted the Indian Ocean Peace Zone - an ill disguised
attempt to exclude extra regional powers from the Indian
region.
The election of the West leaning Sri Lanka Prime Minister
J.R.Jayawardene in 1977, and the later disenfranchising of
opposition Sinhala leader, Mrs. Srimavo Bandaranaike were
matters of concern to India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
who herself returned to power in India in 1979. The US, on
the other hand, welcomed the open economic policy that the
Jayawardene government was pursuing with vigour as against
the protectionist and left leaning policies of the coalition
led by Mrs. Srimavo Bandaranaike.
An additional matter of concern to Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi was that the Tamil armed resistance movement which
had arisen in response to
decades of oppressive Sinhala rule, had sought
assistance from those outside the Indian region, including
the PLO and Libya.
India wished to exclude the influence of extra regional
powers in the Indian region, and in this, it had the support
of the Soviet Union. At the same time, India was concerned
that a separate Tamil Eelam state may be used by external
powers to as a 'pressure point'. Jyotindra Nath
Dixit , Indian Foreign Secretary in
1991/94 and National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister
of India in 2004/05 was disarmingly frank at a Seminar in
Switzerland in 1998 -
"...Tamil militancy received (India's)
support ...as a response to (Sri Lanka's)..
concrete and expanded military and intelligence
cooperation with the United States, Israel and Pakistan.
...The assessment was that these presences would pose a
strategic threat to India and they would encourage
fissiparous movements in the southern states of India.
.. a process which could have found encouragement from
Pakistan and the US, given India's experience regarding
their policies in relation to Kashmir and the Punjab....
Inter-state relations are not governed by the logic of
morality. They were and they remain an amoral
phenomenon....."
The high profile visit of US Defence Secretary of State,
Caspar Weinberger, to Sri Lanka in 1984 reflected the
continuing interest that the US, as a world power, had in
the Indian region. A US diplomat in Washington remarked
(with some arrogance) in July 1984: "India is not a world
power - and, it should not try to behave like one".
But whilst the US extended support to Sri Lanka and
described President Jayawardene's regime as a 'working
multi party democracy', (within 18 months of the
1983 Genocide), the State of Massachusetts hoisted the
Tamil Eelam flag in the early 1980s and at Tamil Eelam
conferences in New York, in 1982,
1984 and again in 1986, Tamil rhetoric was allowed free
flow. It was the US way of monitoring and managing Tamil
responses and advancing US foreign policy objectives.
Sri Lanka President J.R.Jayawardene sought to use the
political space created by the differences in approach
between US and India, by allowing one of his Ministers to
take a pro US stand and another a more pro India stand. When
confronted, he cheerfully admitted: "We may speak with
two voices but we have one policy."
With the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984
and the new dispensation under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi,
India's new Foreign Secretary, Romesh Bhandari, was openly
critical of the earlier Indian approach (which had a heavy
Soviet bias) and declared that that approach far from
excluding extra regional powers, had led to greater US
involvement in the Indian region.
Romesh Bhandari sought to remain true to the central
premise of Indian foreign policy of excluding extra regional
powers from the Indian region. Having used Tamil militancy
to pressurise Colombo, India under Rajiv Gandhi was ready to
do a deal with J.R.Jayawardene, if India's own strategic
interests in the region were protected. Here, New Delhi's
approach was not without parallels to the role of Iran in
the Kurdish struggle against Iraq. (see
Tamil Eelam, Kurds and Bhutan
written in 1985). The debacle of the
Thimpu Talks was one consequence of the Romesh Bandhari
line.
The limited support extended by India
to the Tamil armed resistance during the period 1981 to
1987, the
Parthasathary led conflict management initiative in the
aftermath of
Genocide'83, the 1985
Thimpu Talks sponsored by India, the 1986 "December
19th proposals", the
1987 Indo Sri Lanka Accord, and in particular the
annexures to the Accord, all evidence New Delhi's
efforts to manage and channel Tamil militancy and at the
same time, further its own strategic interests in the
region.
"The Shah of Iran once said that
in his role as the gendarme of the region he had two
main weapons for dealing with the revolutionary threat
which existed in the region. First, was direct
intervention. This was applied in the case of Oman in
1973, and also in the case of Baluchistan when the Shah
provided armaments and military finance for the
Pakistani state's repression in the area. The second
weapon was internal subversion of the national
liberation movements among the various nationalities.
this method was applied in Kurdistan. The goal,
ofcourse, was to allow the national movement to grow in
a particular direction in order to defeat it. The case
of Kurdistan was classic. The Shah said openly that the
Kurdistan operation was relatively cheap for him. With
30 million dollars the job was done. He simply
supported Kurdistan to destroy it. Such a
possibility always exist in Baluchistan. What is the
best way of destroying the Baluch movement? The answer
is clear: allowing the development
of the national movement under a reactionary leadership
who would then be willing to sell the national resources
and the strategic value of Baluchistan to the highest
bidder. It is also clear that it is only the revolution
which can defend the natural resources and the strategic
value of Baluchistan from all foreign control."
(Murad Khan of the Baluchistan People's Liberation
Front, speaking to Raymond Noat - Interview quoted in
Tariq Ali's 'Can Pakistan Survive')
A
booklet, published by the Indian intelligence sources in
1987, immediately after India had air dropped food
supplies to the Tamil homeland in the island of Sri Lanka
declared:
"As hundreds of innocent civilians - both Sinhala and
Tamil - perish in the escalating violence in Sri Lanka,
the question of a negotiated political settlement
becomes ever more difficult. Any such complex issue
is inevitably rendered more complicated by the
malevolent involvement of external powers. This
involvement does unfortunately have long-term
implications for India's security.
There has been periodic criticism of India's good
offices and diplomatic efforts which have aimed at
bringing together the representatives of the Sri Lankan
Government and the Tamil minority to work out a viable
and durable constitutional set up which would meet the
Tamil aspirations and enable the Tamil minority to live
in Sri Lanka in safety and with dignity. This booklet
presents a factual account of the efforts made by
India, through its good offices, to assist in the
restoration of peace, harmony and mutual trust in Sri
Lanka."
Jyotindra Dixit, India's High Commissioner in Colombo in
1987 has given his version of the events leading to the
signing of the Indo - Sri Lanka Agreement in his book titled
'Assignment
Colombo'. One of his comments is revealing:
"It was also my considered opinion that the LTTE's
insistence on the creation of a separate Tamil state in
Sri Lanka, based on ethnic, linguistic and religious
considerations, would have far-reaching negative
implications for India's unity and territorial integrity
too..."
US Support
for Indo Sri Lanka Accord as a way of managing India...
The detailed and comprehensive
statement by the Political Committee of the LTTE at an
International Tamil conference in April 1988
set out the LTTE viewpoint on the 1987 Indo Sri Lanka Accord
and the conflict with the Indian Peace Keeping Force:
"....Thus, the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord
secures India's geopolitical interests and strategic
objectives. The LTTE is sincerely pleased that the
Government of India was able to put an end, through the
Agreement, to the dangerous activities of the
international subversive elements who operated in Sri
Lanka as agents of Imperialism.
As a revolutionary liberation movement
committed to anti-imperialist policy we recognise
India's security concerns in the region and support her
cardinal foreign policy of making the Indian ocean as a
zone of peace free from interference of extraterritorial
powers.
In this context, we wish to point out
that it was the LTTE fighters who put up a heroic and
relentless fight against foreign mercenaries. It was the
LTTE fighters who shed their blood to contain these evil
forces. Our liberation movement is not opposed to
India's interests.
We have no objection whatsoever to
India's strategic aspirations to establish her status as
the regional superpower in South Asia. We always
functioned and will continue to function as a friendly
force to India. We would have extended our unconditional
support to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord if the Agreement
was only confined to Indo-Sri Lanka relations aimed to
secure India's geopolitical interests. But the Accord
interferes in the Tamil issue, betrays the Tamil
interests. It is here the contradiction of interests
between the LTTE and India emerges..."
Shorn of the cold war rhetoric of the "dangerous
activities of the international subversive elements who
operated in Sri Lanka as agents of Imperialism", the message
that the LTTE sought to convey to India was clear: 'we are
not opposed to your geo political interests'.
Here, the circumstance that the 1987 Indo Sri Lanka
Accord (and Indian armed intervention in the island) did
have the overt support of the US was not without
significance.
On the surface, it was surprising that the US supported an Accord which
called for the dismantling of the Voice of America installations in the island
and increased potential Indian influence in the Indian Ocean - an Accord which
was hailed by Rajiv Gandhi as having secured India's strategic interests in the
region.
But, the US appears to have have taken the view that
India's
direct involvement was a way of ending the less
manageable covert support that India
had extended Tamil militancy during the period 1981 to 1986.
The US was mindful that should India's influence in the
island tend to become stabilised, President Jayawardene (who
for many years was called 'Yankee Dick' by his political
opponents) and US supporters in the Sri Lanka cabinet (like
the then Sri Lanka Prime Minister Premadasa and National
Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali) could always be
encouraged to delay or even sabotage the implementation of
crucial terms of the Accord.
In the event, the arrest of top ranking LTTE leaders
including Kumarappa and Pulendran did provide National
Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali with that
opportunity. His insistence (backed by President
Jayawardene) that the arrested LTTE leaders should be
brought to Colombo for questioning despite the amnesty
proclaimed in the Indo Sri Lanka Accord, forced Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi to choose - and Rajiv Gandhi chose to
support Sri Lanka (in an attempt to salvage India's role in
the region). The subsequent suicide of Kumarappa, Pulendran
and others was the final straw that broke the fragile peace
that the Accord had secured. (see
Eyewitness Account of Incidents in Jaffna - September to
November 1987).
Many may conclude that Rajiv Gandhi
was entrapped in the snare that had been laid for him and in
the end succumbed to forces bigger than those that India
could manage.
Also, the assessment of sections of the Indian intelligence
services that the EPRLF was the appropriate instrument to
further India's interests in the island may have been a
monumental mistake.
Perhaps, Rajiv Gandhi should have recognised something which
his own IPKF Divisional Commander in Jaffna,
Lieutenant General S.C. Sardesh Pande declared later in
1992:
"I have a high regard for the LTTE for
its discipline, dedication, determination, motivation
and technical expertise... I was left with the
impression that the LTTE was the expression of popular
Tamil sentiment and could not be destroyed, so long as
that sentiment remained." (Lieutenant General S.C.
Sardesh Pande in "Assignment Jaffna", published in 1992)
Again, whether the events surrounding the death of
Kumarappa and Pulendran left the LTTE with no other
option but to confront the IPKF will remain a matter for
debate. Reportedly,
Sathasivam Krishnakumar (Kittu) dissented from the
decision to go to war against India. It is ironic, perhaps,
that it was the same Kittu who in the end died as a
consequence of an
act
of piracy by India in January 1993. But, by then much
water had flowed under the bridge.
The brutality of the war that India waged from 1987 to
1989, ostensibly against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam, but in effect against the Tamil people, brought its
own repercussions.
Eduardo Marino's report to International Alert, after a
visit to the war zone in November 1987 revealed the horrific
nature of the IPKF offensive in Jaffna. (see also
Indian Armed Forces).
The
war
crimes committed by the IPKF in Tamil Eelam
included
reprisal killings of non-combatants, looting of homes,
rape, a
murderous attack on the Jaffna hospital
, and
killing of a number of unarmed and disarmed guerrilla
suspects without trial and in breach of the Laws of War.
The election of Ranasinghe
Premadasa as the new Sri Lanka President in December 1988,
and the defeat of the Indian National Congress (led by Rajiv
Gandhi) at the Indian General Elections in November 1989
contributed to a reappraisal by India of its foreign policy
approaches and the IPKF withdrew from Sri Lanka in early
1990.
The
assassination in May 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi (in the run up
to a new Indian general election), led to a hardening of
India's position. It is true that India failed to
adopt a
balanced
approach which recognised that Tamil armed resistance
had arisen as a response to
decades of systematic oppression by a dominant Sinhala
majority. At the same time, the
Jain Commission Report
published in 1998, refers to some of the circumstances
that may have contributed to India's approach:
"By far, however, one of the most mysterious and yet
unraveled threat perception revolves around a warning
given by Chairman of PLO, Yasser Arafat to Shri. Rajiv
Gandhi. This extremely significant piece of information
was received by the Intelligence Bureau on 7th June 1991
and more details in this regard were received by R&AW in
September 1991 from Tunis. (Deposition of Shri S.A.
Subbaiah, dt. 14.02.1996, p. 5)
The information indicated that Yasser Arafat,
Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)
had received intelligence reports from his sources in
Israel and his European sources one month before the
assassination of Shri. Rajiv Gandhi that there existed
threats to the life of Shri. Rajiv Gandhi from LTTE or
Sikh militants who, the sources mentioned, would
eliminate Shri. Gandhi during the election period.
Yasser Arafat's sources also indicated that hostile
powers from outside India may also attempt the
assassination of Shri. Rajiv Gandhi. As per information
received by the intelligence agencies, Yasser Arafat had
drawn the attention of Shri. Rajiv Gandhi to this
information. The Palestinian Ambassador in India had
also spoken to Shri. Rajiv Gandhi in this connection.
Some enquiries to obtain specific details appear to have
been made in this regard by the External Affairs
Ministry with the PLO Ambassador in India, Khalid El
Sheikh, but nothing worthwhile has emerged so far.
This was a prophetic threat perception directly
conveyed to Shri. Rajiv Gandhi one month before his
assassination and, therefore, in order to get to the
bottom of the conspiracy, it is essential to conduct an
enquiry into this definite indicator which discloses
foreknowledge of foreign intelligence agencies regarding
the event..."
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi
in May 1991 was a crime. Rajiv Gandhi was not a combatant in
an armed conflict. Furthermore at the time of his murder, he
was not even holding office as the Prime Minister of India.
He was the leader of a political party campaigning at a
general election. And, the IPKF itself had withdrawn from
Tamil Eelam by early 1990.
It is true that prima facie, Rajiv Gandhi, as
India's Prime Minister during the period 1987 to 1989, may
be held accountable for the war crimes committed by the IPKF
in Tamil Eelam. But, the extent of Rajiv Gandhi's
culpability, for the crimes committed by those under his
command in Tamil Eelam, depended on the answer to several
questions.
| Was he aware of the crimes that were being
committed by the armed forces under his
command? Did he refrain from intervening to
prevent such crimes, although he had the power
to do so? Did his attitude amount to incitement
to crime and criminal negligence, and should his
actions be judged as severely as the crimes
actively committed and specifically covered by
the humanitarian law of armed conflict?
Did he take steps to adequately punish those
who were guilty, or did he condone their crimes?
Did his speeches in Parliament and elsewhere
encourage those under his command to act with
impunity - and to commit further crimes? |
If Rajiv Gandhi had been tried before an International
Court of Justice, an opportunity may have been afforded for
an informed judgement to be made on the extent of his guilt.
In the absence of due process, the assassination cannot be
defended as 'punishment' for a war crime.
Again, if the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was a
political act, then the political consequences of that act
may have damaged the struggle for Tamil Eelam rather than
strengthened it.
At the same time, the
trial
conducted in secret against 26 Tamils accused of the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, under the special
Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (and
not the ordinary laws of the land), was a clear violation of
the principles of natural justice and has been condemned by
human rights organisations
including Amnesty.
In 1992, India banned the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Though originally
the subjects committee of the ruling Indian National
Congress adopted a resolution to ban the LTTE for its
alleged involvement in the
Rajiv Gandhi assassination, in the event the ban was
imposed on the ground that the
objectives of the organisation threatened the integrity of
India. The International Secretariat of the
LTTE lodged appeals against the ban, without avail. In
July 1996,
India renewed the ban on the same grounds i.e. securing
the integrity of India.
On the question of the integrity of
India (that the ban sought to secure), India may eventually
be persuaded by the views expressed by
Pramatha Chauduri writing in Bengali in 1920:
"Just as there is a difference between the getting
together of five convicts in a jail and between five
free men, so the Congress union of the various nations
of India and tomorrow's link between the peoples of a
free country will be very different."
In a more recent examination from a Western point of
view,
Robert L.Hardgrave Jr.
wrote in 1993 of the dilemma facing India:
"...In India, in a political culture of mutual
distrust and increasing violence, the dangers are
legion. India's democracy is challenged by communalism,
excessive caste consciousness, and separatism. But in
the state response to these challenges, India confronts
yet another dilemma--weakening the very values of
individual liberty that are at the core of its
democratic commitment. In its attempts to quell endemic
unrest and the challenge of terrorism, India has enacted
a plethora of laws that have become instruments of
repression; police and paramilitary abuses seem to get
worse while all sorts of other violations of human
rights are reported with numbing frequency. But for all
the challenges, pressures, and dilemmas to which India
is exposed by virtue of its plight as a multicultural
state, Indian democracy, sustained through ten
elections, still shows remarkable strength and
resilience..." (Journal of Democracy Vol. 4, No. 4
October 1993, pp. 54-68)
The collapse of the Soviet Union,
the emergence of the United States as the sole super power
and the new balances in an emerging
multi lateral world
have not been without their impact on the struggle for Tamil
Eelam.
Today, nuclear non
proliferation is admittedly the single most important
plank of US foreign policy and in the words of President
Clinton, the
US intends to ''weave its
non-proliferation strategy more deeply into the
fabric of all its relationships with the world's nations
and institutions''. (see also
'The Buddha Smiled')
This has had its impact on India's
nuclear policy and its own security interests. India, not
without reason, contends that whilst it will support nuclear
disarmament it will not support a 'nuclear non
proliferation' treaty that creates an elite nuclear club in
perpetuity.
Non
alignment in a multipolar world takes on a somewhat
different coloration to that in a bipolar one. 'Calibrated
adjustment' is the name of the new approach.
Again, the US is not unaware that whatever may be the
short term calibrated �adjustments', in the longer term,
stability will be achieved in the Indian region only on the
basis of a free association of the separate
nations of the sub continent.
The US may therefore seek to build up influence
within struggles for national self determination both as
a way of monitoring and managing them and also as a
useful addition to its armoury in managing New Delhi. It
is within this matrix of power balances that any
national liberation struggle in the Indian region may be
compelled to adopt its own calibrated approach, both
towards New Delhi and Washington.
At the same time, within the island
of Sri Lanka, the stark economic reality is that the Sinhala
dominated government in Colombo cannot annihilate Tamil
resistance without massive
foreign aid.
Japan has in
recent years become Sri Lanka's the largest single aid
donor. Japan views the Asia-Pacific region as its own trade
area and Japan's trade interests are not always in harmony
with those of the US. And China is not a passive bystander
and has helped Sri Lanka with arms purchases from time to
time - perhaps to the dismay of both India and the US.
The US itself has not been averse
to permit the supply of arms (and the provision of military
training) through countries such as Israel. There is also
the reported presence of US Green Berets as 'advisers' to
the Sri Lanka armed forces. It is an approach which the US
believes will give it leverage and prevent a power vacuum
which may suck in other powers (for 'other powers', one
should perhaps read 'India').
Again,
Australia,
Canada
and
Great Britain, which are commonwealth countries have
taken stands which are broadly supportive of US approaches
to the conflict and have offered, from time to time, to
facilitate talks to end the
conflict. The same is true of the
European Union
and
Switzerland. The
Bergen Conference in 1996, with the Norwegian Deputy
Foreign Minister in attendance, was one such effort, and was
the precursor to the
Norwegian 'facilitated' Peace Talks in 2001.
In the case of Canada and Europe,
the presence of relatively large numbers of
Tamil refugees and asylum seekers has influenced
governments to take stands that will facilitate their return
to Sri Lanka. The
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings have also
attracted appeals to address the conflict.
After the dismantling of apartheid,
the ANC led
government of South Africa has expressed its concerns
about the ongoing conflict and at the UN General Assembly in
September 1998, South African President Nelson Mandela
called for UN intervention to end the 'destructive conflict'
in the island.
US Ban
on LTTE and US concern that 85% of the world's
population by the end of this century will be living in
Africa, Latin America and the poorer parts of Asia....
It appears that the
US as the
world's remaining super power, tends to view 'third world'
liberation movements as threats to the stability of the
existing world order and therefore to US economic interests
and national security.
The categorisaton of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam, on 8 October 1997, as a 'terrorist organisation'
under the US
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
is a case in point. The
response by the LTTE and the
appeal by the Christian World Service
serve to expose the failure of the United States to
recognise that which international law recognises -
the
legitimacy of Tamil resistance against decades of
oppressive Sinhala rule.
A position paper updated by the US Foreign Affairs and
National Defence Division on 9 December 1996, titled
Terrorism, the Future, and U.S. Foreign Policy
underlines the frank views expressed by President Carter's
National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski as long ago
as 1983, on US foreign policy objectives:
".... the combination of demographic pressures and
political unrest will generate particularly in the third
world, increasing unrest and violence... The population
of the world by the end of this century will have grown
to some 6 billion people.... moreover most of the
increase will be concentrated in the poorer parts of the
world, with 85% of the world's population by the end of
this century living in Africa, Latin America and the
poorer parts of Asia....
Most of the third world countries... are likely to
continue to suffer from weak economies and inefficient
government, while their increasingly literate,
politically awakened, but restless masses will be more
and more susceptible to demagogic mobilisation on behalf
of political movements... it is almost a certainty that
an increasing number of third world states will come to
possess nuclear weapons....
Terrorist groups may also before
very long try to advance their causes through a nuclear
threat... the problems confronting Washington in
assuring US national security will become increasingly
complex..." (Zbigniew Brzezinski - Power and
Principle, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983)
It is not clear whether Brzezinski saw the irony in his
statement that as the peoples of the third world become
'increasingly literate' and 'politically awakened' they will
be 'more and more susceptible to demagogic mobilisation'.
Surely, literacy and political awakening will render people
not more but less susceptible to demagogy.
However,
Count de
Marenches, longest serving Head of the French
Secret Service holding office for 11 years under two
Presidents, Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing writing in the
'Evil Empire, the Third World War Now' (published by
Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1988) was somewhat more direct:
| "... I
do not believe in what one humorist called
'verbal words'. All the conferences, along with
other chit-chat, are merely for entertainment
value. It is like a 24-hour cinema... (The
population explosion) is very much a taboo
subject, because it is highly emotive and it
cannot be dealt with phlegmatically without the
term 'racist' being brandished. We are supposed
to bury our heads in the sand. However mankind
is faced with a fundamental problem of nature.
Do we want to live in an organised world, where
the quality of life is of paramount importance,
or an overpopulated planet which is prey to
fratricidal racial tensions and conflicts, where
the rich, under populated and highly productive
North - America and Eurasia alike, would be
attacked by the swarming, hungry masses of the
South?
The
media present us with the most heart rending
images of children from the Third World, with
swollen stomachs, spindly legs and wide eyes,
which cannot but help move us. But the main
cause of our distress is never - or rarely -
tackled: the over population of bleak lands
devastated by natural disasters and often run by
incompetent governments, whose main concern is
the misappropriation of some of the funds made
available by the North.
Out of
every ten babies born, nine are born in the
Third World. Some misinformed people think that
with, with its 320 million inhabitants, the EEC
represents one of the greatest concentrations of
population in the world. That is a serious
mistake. In 100 years, India will have a
population totalling 1,600,000,000, and will be
the most populous nation on earth. At the moment
one human being in five is Chinese. The
population of Nigeria today is 105 million, but
this will rise to 312 million by the year
2020...
If the
governments of men, with all due respect to
morality, do not soon put forward vigorous
proposals to deal with the threat of a
population explosion, they will
inevitably preside over a North-South
confrontation. Hunger and poverty will
be ranged against prosperity based on hard work
but irresponsibly linked to its privileges...
(And) conscience is the weapon of the weak
against the strong... " |
For Count de
Marenches the prosperity of the North was based on 'hard
work' whilst the 'hunger and poverty' of the South was
the result of 'natural disasters' and 'incompetent
governments' - and he is concerned that the issue "cannot be
dealt with phlegmatically without the term 'racist' being
brandished".
Be that as it may, both Brzezinski
and Count de
Marenches
were right to anticipate the build up of demographic
pressures. In 1960 about 35% of the world's
population lived in "developed" countries, and 65% in "less
developed" ones. In 1990, about 22% lived in "developed"
countries and 78% in "less developed" ones.
And, these may be the considerations which
led Presidential candidate
George W.Bush to declare in the year 2000, some 10 years
after the end of the Cold War:
"(Then) it was us versus them and we
knew exactly who them was. Today we are not so sure who
the they are, but we know they're there.' (George
W.Bush, quoted in the New Internationalist, December
2000)
The truth is that what may be at stake is not so much the
'national security' of the US and the so called North, but
the capacity of the North (the
'minority world') to direct and control world events -
and world economic resources.
That the US should perceive the political awakening of
the 'third world' (in reality, the
'majority world') as a threat to US 'national security'
may be understandable but neither the US, nor for that
anybody else, can Canute like, command the waters to recede.
The politically awakened majority world is not about to go
back to sleep.
Gradualism may be the way to manage change. But at the
same time there may be a need for the international
community to accept the solid political reality of not
simply the third world but the emergent
fourth world as well.
The way forward for the US as well as other states
concerned with securing a stable world order, may be to
recognise that, whatever the short term results, in the
longer term, stability will not come by furthering the rule
of one people by another.
Stability will not come by the North building alliances
with ruling Third World governments to suppress non state
nations.
Stability within Third World States will not come from a
new version of the 'melting pot' theory. Peoples speaking
different languages, tracing their roots to different
origins, and living in relatively well defined and separate
geographical areas, do not somehow 'melt'. And in any event,
a 'third world' economy will not provide a large enough
'pot' for the 'melting' to take place. Nations and states
cannot be made to order - not even by a super power.
Stability lies in
securing structures where the different peoples of the world
may voluntarily associate with each other in equality
and in freedom. And if this be perceived by some as an
unrealistic 'idealism', the European Union (established
albeit, after two World Wars) may help to focus our minds
and
our hearts - and serve as a pointer to the future. |
