'Pragmatism'
may rule the world of power politics but statehood is
not a lottery...
Johanna McGreary is right to
point out both the nobility of the concept of
self-determination, and the less high minded 'pragmatism' which rules the
world of power politics. Some six years ago, Tamil
Eelam leader, Velupillai Pirabaharan made the same
point. He
declared on Maha Veerar Naal in 1993:
"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."
However, Johanna McGreary's
reasoning may be less than sound, when she suggests
that the 'bad luck of historical accident is what has
left most current claimants (for statehood) out in the
cold'. Statehood is not some sort of 'national
lottery'.
Often that which
passes off as 'luck' is the meeting of opportunity
with preparation...
It is true that the historical
situation in which a people find themselves will impact
on their struggle for freedom. But, states do not come
into being by 'luck'. Often, that which passes off as
'luck' is the meeting of opportunity with preparation -
and 'bad luck' may be simply a reflection of a failure
to prepare adequately and lead effectively.
It was on this that Velupillai
Pirabaharan dwelled, when he went on to say in his
address on Maha Veerar Naal in
1993:
"The world is constantly
changing and there will be unexpected changes. At a
particular conjuncture, the international situation
may change favourably for us. At that time, the
conscience of the world may be conducive to the call
of our just cause. 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. The moral legitimacy of the
cause alone will not lead to victory. We must be
strong, firm in our convictions and skilled in the
art of war."
The words of Subhas Chandra Bose to Nehru
are, perhaps, not without relevance: if you do not
take care to seek solid ground under your feet, you
will never be able to stand perpendicular anywhere.
A Jewish academic when asked in
Cambridge in 1987 to give a 'short answer' to the
question as to how it was that the Jews had succeeded
in establishing an independent state, responded: "The
short answer is that we never gave up the idea." That
unshakeable determination, coupled with years of
preparation, found the Jewish people not wanting, when
the opportunity for independence arose in 1948, with
the withdrawal of the British forces from Palestine. It
was a determination which found expression in the
eloquent words of Golda
Meir to the Jews of the United States on 2 January
1948:
"I want to say to you, friends, that the
Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to
the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will
fight with those, and if not, we will fight with
stones in our hands. I want you to believe me when I
say that I came on this special mission to the United
States today not to save 700,000 Jews. During the
last few years the Jewish people lost 6,000,000 Jews,
and it would be audacity on our part to worry the
Jewish people throughout the world because a few
hundred thousand more Jews were in danger. That is
not the issue. The issue is that if these 700,000
Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish
people as such is alive and Jewish independence is
assured. If these 700,000 people are killed off,
then for many centuries, we
are through with this dream of a Jewish people and a
Jewish homeland."
Today, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam may well say, with equal determination, to
more than 70 million
Tamils living in many lands and across distant
seas:
"We want to say to you, our brothers and
sisters, our udan
pirapukal, that the people of Tamil Eelam are
going to fight to the
very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will
fight with those, and if not, we will fight with
stones in our hands.We want you to believe us, when
we say that we appeal to you, not simply to save
Tamil lives in Tamil Eelam. During the last decade
the people of Tamil Eelam have lost more than 50,000
Tamil lives and many hundreds of thousands of Tamils
have been compelled to flee their homeland, and it
would be audacity on our part to worry the Tamil
people throughout the world, because a few thousand
more Tamils were in danger. That is
not the issue. The issue is that if the people
of Tamil Eelam can remain alive without submitting to
alien Sinhala rule, then the Tamil nation as such is
alive and an independent Tamil state is assured. If
the people of Tamil Eelam are killed off or
subjugated, then for many decades, we are through
with this dream of an independent Tamil state and a
Tamil homeland."
The
Kurds were
neither the victims of 'historical accident' nor of
'bad luck'...
Johanna McGreary is wrong to
dismiss the Kurds in northern Iraq as 'just another
bunch of bickering agitators until the U.S. needed them to challenge
Saddam Hussein'. The language she uses insults a people
who were described by the Minority Rights Group in its
report in1975 in the following terms:
"The Kurds are the fourth most numerous people in
the Middle East. They constitute one of the largest
races, indeed nations, in the world today to have
been denied an independent state. Whatever the
yardstick for national identity, the Kurds measure up
to it."
Kurdish nationalism was not created by the United
States. As long ago as 1920, the Treaty of
Sevres, imposed on Turkey by the victors of World War
I, provided, amongst other matters, for the recognition
of Kurdistan. But in the share out of power that
followed the ending of the first world war, the Treaty
of Sevres was not honoured. Again, the US attempt to
use Kurdish nationalism to further US foreign policy
objectives is not a recent phenomenon but goes back
several decades.
A month after the signing of the
Iraqi-Soviet Friendship Treaty in April 1972, the
U.S. decided to counter Soviet influence in the region.
The Select Committee on Intelligence of the U.S. House
of Representatives (under the chairmanship of Otis
Pike) disclosed, on November 1 1975 (almost a quarter
of a century ago) that the Shah of Iran had been able
to convince President Nixon during his visit to Iran in
1972 that the United States should provide covert aid
to the Kurds. After the visit, Nixon ordered the CIA to
deliver millions of dollars worth of Soviet and Chinese arms and ammunitions
(some of which were collected in Cambodia) to the
Kurds. The Pike Committee Report charged:
"The President, Dr. Kissinger and the Foreign head
of state (the Shah) hoped our clients (the Kurds)
would not prevail. They
preferred instead that the insurgents (the Kurds)
simply continue a level of
hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our
ally's neighbouring country (Iraq). This
policy was not imparted to our clients (the Kurds)
who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the
context of covert action, ours was a cynical
enterprise."
The use of Soviet and Chinese arms was intended to
secure 'deniability' if the US
role was questioned in the international arena.
"... Given the large number of clear instances in
which one nation has felt the need to meddle in the
affairs of another, short of actual declaration of
hostilities, governments have become adept at
fighting wars by proxy. In times of notional peace,
United States deniable
operations are planned and executed solely by
the CIA..." (Mark Lloyd: Special Forces-The
Changing Face of Warfare -Arms and Armour Press,
London, 1995)
In the end, the
Kurds failed in 1975, because at that time, they
lacked an effective leadership, with the armed strength
and the political skill to resist the 'cynical
enterprise' in which Iran and the US were engaged. The
Kurds were neither the victims of 'historical accident'
nor of 'bad luck'. They failed for the same reasons
that some Tamil militant groups, overly dependent on
India, failed in
1987.
The Albanians like the
Kurds, were victims of a cynical enterprise
directed to secure the strategic interests of countries
far more powerful than them...
Johanna McGeary is also wrong when she asserts that
'no one cared a whit for the Kosovars until Slobodan Milosevic
ground them into the dirt.' During the Second World
war, Italy united the Kosovo Albanians with Albania.
The Albanians supported Italy and Germany in their war
against the West. The Serbs of Yugolslavia, led by Tito
fought against the occupying German army. At the end of
the war, the victorious Western powers found it in
their strategic interests to return Kosovo to
Yugoslavia.
However, a few years later in 1948, with the
sharpening of the cold war, (and long before Slobodan
Milosevic was even a gleam in the Yugoslav political
landscape), the United States and Great Britain decided
to use the Albanians 'to act militarily' against
Stalin. Nicholas Bethell, wrote in 1984, in the 'The
Great Betrayal':
"Hardly anyone knows that
the United States and Britain chose to make Albania,
Europe's poorest country, a secret battleground
between West and East, and the central point of their
efforts to regain the initiative in the Cold War that
began the previous year in 1948....
The Albanian affair was
conceived by American and British officials at a
meeting in Washington, then approved by government
leaders. It was a carefully considered act of policy
based on the idea that Stalin would be impressed by a
Western decision to act against him militarily
even on a small scale and in
an outpost of his empire.
The military side began in
October 1949 when the first teams of armed
British-trained agents were landed on Albanian
territory. It ended in the last days of 1953 when the
failure of an important American-sponsored mission
was publicly revealed..." (Nicholas Bethell, The
Great Betrayal, Hodder and Stoughton, 1984,
London)
Albanian exiles were recruited
to 'fight for Albania'. The Albanian exiles were later
to complain -
"(They) complain that their
innocence and trust were exploited by the secret
services of two powerful and sophisticated countries.
They were recruited, they say, on the understanding
that the United States and Britain wanted to liberate
Albania from communism. And on this basis they were
happy to agree. They would fight and they would
sacrifice lives, not only their own, but also those
of their brothers. wives and children.
They were ready to fight for
Albania but for no other
cause. And this is why, they say the truth was
kept from them. They were not told of the many other
reasons why the operation was taking place, about the
need to relieve communist pressure on Greece in the
civil war, about the decision to retaliate against
Stalin's aggressive moves... They were not advised that the conspiracy against
communist Albania was no more than a single move in a
great game of geopolitical chess and that they, the
'little men', were the pawns most likely to be
taken...
American and British
intelligence men who took part in the conspiracy
point out in reply... In battle it is sometimes
necessary to give up a platoon so as to facilitate a
battalion's withdrawal. If 'pawns' have to be
'sacrificed' in order to deter an adversary from
aggression, then so be it, it must be done. And in
extreme cases, when vital interests are truly at
risk, the victims must be
deceived."(Nicholas Bethell, The Great
Betrayal, Hodder and Stoughton, 1984,
London)
The Albanians were not the
victims of an 'historical accident'. They, like the
Kurds, were victims of a cynical enterprise directed
to secure the strategic interests of countries far more
powerful than them. And,
present day Albanian nationalists are not unaware of
the nature of the support extended to them by the
'international community'
The
wise learn
from the experience of others - Tamil people are a
people, not without wisdom...
It is said that the wise learn from the
experience of others. The Tamil people are a people,
not without wisdom. The Kurds and the Albanians
were compelled to learn in the crucible of harsh
experience, something of that which had led Subhas Chandra Bose to tell
the Indian National Army in Singapore in
1942:
"....It is our duty, to
pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom
that we shall win through our sacrifice and
exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own
strength......"
These were the same concerns which led
Velupillai Pirabaharan to point out some seven years
ago:
"The whole world is
providing arms and funds to our enemy. We are not
begging from the world....We stand firm on our own
legs, on our own soil, relying on our own people and
fight with our own hands.... Since we are firmly
rooted in our own strength, we stand upright without
bowing to the pressures of others." (Maha Veerar
Naal Address, 1992)
The
struggle for Tamil Eelam is, ofcourse, not unique.
If the 1950s and the 1960s were the decades of the anti
colonial liberation movements directed against rule by
'First World' countries, the 1980s and the 1990s have
proved to be the decades of the post colonial national
liberation movements, directed mostly, against the
occupying forces of 'Third World' states. Today, the
organic growth of nations within and across the patchwork states of former
empires continues to gather pace.
Dictators
are reviled when real politick so demands -
otherwise, they are 'friends'...
Johanna McGreary is right to
suggest that "it obviously helps to be the victim of a
reviled dictator". But she may have put the cart before
the horse. Dictators are not 'reviled' because they are evil dictators. They are
reviled when real
politick demands that they be reviled. Otherwise,
they are 'friends'. The Shah of Iran was a friend. So
was President Pinochet of Chile. So, also was President
Suharto of Indonesia. And, President Jayawardene's Sri
Lanka was described by the US State Department Human
Rights Report for 1984 (in the months following
Genocide'83)
as an 'open,
working, multiparty democracy'. Fourteen years
later, Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga, faced
with growing support in South Africa for the Tamil
struggle, found it politically expedient to admit:
"Mr. J. R. Jayawardene ...
believed that he could use violence against the Tamil
people and solve the problem in the same way he used
violence continuously against our people, Sinhala
people and all other Sri Lankan people as a solution
to all political problems. The Tamil people were
attacked 4 times between 77 and 83,
physically attacked, bodily attacked, their
properties destroyed. 1983 was of course, the high
water mark of this anti-Tamil violence practised by
the UNP - horrendous crimes were committed against
the Tamil people." (Sri Lanka
President Kumaratunga in a TV interview in South
Africa in October 1998)
Now, in March 1999, the
US Congress Human Rights Caucus on Sri Lanka has
chosen to assert that Sri Lanka is a 'strong,
vibrant democracy' - though Sri Lanka's reliance on
extraordinary powers unknown to a free democracy
continues; though torture
continues on a systematic basis; though the
disenfranchisement of the opposition continues and the
Sixth
Amendment to the Sri Lanka constitution stands
unrepealed; though
ballot boxes continue to be stuffed and voters are
intimidated; though the muzzling of the
media and politically motivated attacks on
journalists continue with increasing frequency; and
though the impunity
afforded to violators of human rights and perpetrators
of extra
judicial killings, torture and
rape
proves the deep involvement of successive Sinhala Sri
Lanka governments in the actions of those under their
command.
The
comments of
the US Congress Human Rights Caucus on Sri Lanka
serve only to underline the correctness of
Velupillai Pirabaharan's analysis in
1993...
The
US Congress Human Rights Caucus on Sri Lanka
may not have recognised that its comments (in the
teeth of the proven record)
served only to underline the correctness of Velupillai
Pirabaharan's analysis in 1993 - an analysis which
bears repetition:
"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
rights of people. International
relations and diplomacy between countries are
determined by such interests... At a particular
conjuncture, the international situation may change
favourably for us. At that time, the conscience of
the world may be conducive to the call of our just
cause. 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."
Johanna McGreary may be right
when she says to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam:
"Your moment has yet to arrive." But, it will - and
that will be no historical accident.
