By N Sathiya Moorthy

A fortnight has passed since President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Independence Day address to the nation, described by many as denial of autonomy to the Tamil minorities. Yet, no one has asked what he has in mind instead, for an all-embracing political solution to the ‘ethnic issue’, which has refused to die down despite the conclusion of the ‘ethnic war’ and violence – or, has it?

If the international community’s interest in Sri Lankan affairs has achieved anything thus far in the past two years (against the four-year post-war period), it is to nearly obliterate all reference to – and possible relevance of – a political solution to the existing situation and evolving conditions. The world is seeking to engage Sri Lanka on ‘accountability issues’ pertaining to the war, and other allegations of human rights violations, both during and after the war-period. There is no talk of power-devolution.

Nor is anyone thinking about ‘accountability issues’ as a means to an end – a political solution. Though it was not mentioned, it was how it used to be understood until not very long ago. Now, everyone seems to be talking about ‘accountability issues’ in particular and other HR concerns unconnected to the war, as if they are an end in itself. The Government seems to be inadvertently feeding the latter through instances such as the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake and the unresolved and increasing number of attacks on journalists and others identified as institutional beacons of a free nation and a freed people.

In post-war Sri Lanka, the people have been supposedly freed from the LTTE’s terror-tactics in the case of the Sinhala majority and the Sri Lankan State, and the ‘LTTE clutches’ over the Tamils. There is however a perception – undeniable after a point, whatever the circumstances and justification if any – that ‘freedom’ from the State – as distinctly different from a ‘free State’ – has become as much critical as freedom from the non-State actor. That is at least the perception that the polity and civil society in the country have been able to convey to the international community. The latter has been acting upon it.

The Tamils and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) are not alone in it. The concern is upper-most in the minds of the international community, as the latter understands, or is made to understand and wants to understand, as well. Solutions to these concerns and issues run parallel to the traditional demands of the Tamil community in the country. The latter relates to and revolves around political autonomy of some kind.

The TNA’s desperation with the Government may be understandable on this score. But their denial of self-existence and relating it to politics nearer home, as different from those played out for and by the international community, defies logic and substance – and thus sustenance after a point. Both inside Sri Lanka and outside, it is not the voice of the TNA or that of the rest of the Tamil polity and society that is being heard now.

Even in Sri Lanka, the international community alone does not seem to matter anymore. Their agenda, goals and methodologies are different from those of the TNA, and may be different from one another’s, too. They do not make for a conducive atmosphere for implementing whatever gains that the international community if at all may be able to obtain for the Tamils ultimately.

The TNA, or the rest of the Tamil polity, has not asked the Government thus far why there was no reference to the much-promised and even more delayed elections to the Northern Province in President Rajapaksa’s Independence Day address. There has not been any question raised on the absence of any reference to the Parliament Select Committee (PSC) in the address. This time last year, those were the pet-phrases of the Government.

A TNA delegation headed by party leader R. Sampanthan visited South Africa recently to learn useful lessons, if any, from the nation’s post-apartheid reconciliation, including the catch phrase ‘transitional justice’. It is likely that the South African experience may have not tossed up other fallouts, but then there have been internal fractures dating back to the pre-apartheid and apartheid periods that remain within the larger South African community.

The choice of the source and tool for Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamils could not thus be specific, nor could the solutions be pre-determined at this stage, for them to learn it from South Africa. They have fought a bloodier battle, both within themselves and with the State, than the South Africans. The African National Congress (ANC) was not known to be a ‘terror outfit’ as the LTTE became.

Closer to home, in Bangladesh, the Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is grappling with the issue of ‘transitional justice’ just now. Hasina’s Awami League party had spearheaded the Independence movement and war. In Government, post-war, it did institute a war-crimes inquiry, naming 37,000 people as perpetrators of mass-murders, alongside the Pakistani Army, together accounting for the death of up to three million people and the rights-violation of 500,000 women.

Ultimately, nothing came of it as the country’s situation was not found to be conducive to the post-war reconstruction and reconciliation efforts. In installments, successive Governments in Dhaka, starting with that of Prime Minister Hasina’s slain father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the ‘Banga Bandhu’ or ‘Father of Bangladesh’, dropped the cases against all accused/perpetrators, the same way they had been arrested. There were also reports at the time about proving/fixing individual ‘responsibility’ or ‘liability’. The term in currency at present is ‘accountability’.

Today, a full 40 years after the establishment of Bangladesh and the conclusion of the ‘Independence War’ that was as bloody as it was prophetic, the nation has come to terms with the realities of the times. The International War Crimes Tribunal (ICT), set up by the Hasina Government, has greater political acceptance than at the time of the earlier attempt. Pakistan, which had protested on the earlier occasion, as the sins and crimes were committed in its name and for it, is now looking the other way. The international community has no word of appreciation, or condemnation.

Inside Bangladesh, the otherwise adversarial political Opposition in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), headed by former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia is looking the other way, as the trial is goes on and convictions have commenced, one after another, however delayed the programme is and however slow the processes be. Arraigned before the tribunal are leaders of the Jamaat-i-Islami, the all-important political and electoral ally of the BNP, whose support the party continues to require for a possible win in this year’s parliamentary polls.

It is not unlikely that any post-poll government with Khaleda Zia and the BNP leading it would wind up the ICT as fast as it was set up by the Hasina dispensation, for which it was an election promise the last time round. If it is a victory for the BNP combine this year, the election results too could be cited as a non endorsement of the Hasina Government’s decision by the people at large. Yet, the Awami League could be expected to take to the streets, promptly, protesting any decision of the kind.

On the reverse side, should the BNP-led alliance lose the parliamentary polls, the party might find sudden justification to protest the ICT, or otherwise. The decision would depend on the public mood – or, perception of the public mood and that of the Jamaat voters. Or, it will be based on the perceptions of the same by the BNP, instead. That is how the politics of transitional justice are likely to play out.

Sri Lankan parallel

The situation is no different in Sri Lanka. If the West is not worried about the effect of the ‘accountability issues’ pertaining to Afghanistan and Iraq on the morale of their armed forces and the popularity of the parties and leaders in power, it is not without reason. There is no one challenging them on ‘war crimes’ and ‘accountability issues’. Their conscience too is clear that the Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein needed to be eradicated, and ‘collateral damage’, of whatever shape, size and numbers, could not have been avoided.

It is not clear if the Sri Lankan Government leadership and the armed forces worked on such a matrix while fighting the LTTE. For the record, however, both kept repeating that it was a ‘humanitarian operation’ and not a ‘war’, and that a ‘zero-casualty’ war was their motto. They kept repeating the same even at the conclusion of the war and afterward when there was clear evidence that people had died in substantial numbers, not in any way staying close to the ‘zero casualty’ figures that the declared policy entailed.

When correctives should have been and could have been applied, the Government did not dither. It denied it outright. Today, as was only to be anticipated, the ghost of the war has come to haunt the Government and the armed forces, but the complexity of the situation is worse than can be admitted at present. How to marry the need for accountability with the reality of the ground situation is the question that the international community should be asking itself, if they are serious about keeping Sri Lanka united, and as Sri Lanka.

Clearly, the armed forces, both individuals at all levels and the institution, are not going to be happy about being tried and punished post facto for what they have come to believe was the greatest thing that could have happened to the nation in all these centuries of existence. The eradication of the LTTE was this and more. In a perceived situation in which at least some analysts want to believe that the armed forces may one day have a nation, and not the other way round as it stands at present, that is saying a lot in terms of keeping the armed forces in the barracks.

In turn, all of it means that the Government has to keep the armed forces in the barracks, in the Northern Province, too – and not let them roam about the streets, as is being claimed by critics, or peep into people’s homes, to see if an LTTE cadre is either lurking in the backyard, or is in the making. It is attitudes such as this, and approaches such as this, that may make new cadres and make for a neo-LTTE.

Well, that in turn could obliterate the justified perception of the security forces and agencies that they needed to be heard on power-devolution issues, particularly Police powers for the Provinces. In turn, this could bring before the eyes of the international community what the Tamils in Sri Lanka had been seeking through the early years of Independence, when the western nations were busy rebuilding theirs after the two Great Wars, which they had won – and in the name of democracy and freedoms!

(The writer is Director and Senior Fellow, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, ORF, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi)