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The three visitors were all senior members of the Indian administration, not politicians, which indicates the broad consensus and continuity that India seeks in its policy toward Sri Lanka. On the other hand, the key persons they met in Sri Lanka were President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his two brothers, Senior Advisor Basil Rajapaksa and Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, and the president’s secretary, Lalith Weeratunga.
The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry was left entirely out of the deliberations, which demonstrates the Indian perception of the narrowing power structure in Sri Lanka.
There has been much media and general speculation about the purpose of the Indian visit, with rumors circulating that India was contemplating either supporting or stalling ongoing military offensives that have seen government troops advance into territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Indeed, one of the important issues raised by the Indian delegation was reportedly that the Sri Lankan government should minimize civilian casualties in the course of ongoing military operations. In particular there was reportedly a call for restraint in the utilization of air power to which the LTTE has still not found an answer, but which can also inflict heavy casualties on the civilian population in the event of inaccurate targeting.
The memory of the Sri Lankan military poised to flush out the LTTE from Jaffna back in 1987, and the subsequent Indian intervention that put a stop to the Sri Lankan offensive, has never completely faded. But there is no reason to believe, as some media have reported, that the Indian delegation put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to halt its military offensive in its entirety, as they did in 1987.
It is significant that barely a week after the visit of the Indian delegation, the Sri Lankan military reported further advances into the LTTE-controlled Wanni and regained control over the fertile rice bowl area in the Mannar district.
The problem for the Indian government is that some of the small opposition parties in Tamil Nadu state have made the Sri Lankan conflict their main platform for mobilizing electoral support. It is reported that some have been funded by the LTTE to keep the Tamil issue alive in Indian politics. Some of these parties have started to make calls for an Indian boycott of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit that is scheduled to be held in Colombo at the end of July on the grounds of the war situation in Sri Lanka.
Indian absence would effectively scuttle the SAARC Summit and cause a great deal of embarrassment to Sri Lanka. The conduct of the SAARC Summit specifically requires the presence of all heads of state or heads of government of each of the eight SAARC member countries. As the Sri Lankan government has put much emphasis on its relationship with Asian countries, the summit has taken center stage in the government’s international strategy. India’s bargaining strength comes from the fact that India’s attendance is crucial to the SAARC Summit being held at all.
Reports of a high level of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka could certainly put the Indian government in an embarrassing situation, especially if they take place closer to the date of the summit. Therefore it is understandable if India requested the Sri Lankan government to take greater care in its military operations in the period prior to the summit.
However, media reports indicate that the visiting Indian delegation went far beyond merely expressing their concern over the wellbeing of the Tamil civilian population in the run-up to the summit. It can be concluded that they utilized the opportunity presented by the summit to try to get Sri Lanka back to some extent within the Indian sphere of influence.
In the present advantageous situation, the Indian delegation is reported to have brought up several issues of concern to India. These include speeding up the formulation of the government’s political proposals to resolve the ethnic conflict; inviting the largest Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance, which the government has been marginalizing, to India for discussions; the growing closeness between Sri Lanka and India’s main neighboring rivals, China and Pakistan; and issues concerning major Indian investments where Sri Lanka has taken a tough line.
In addition there are reports that the Indian delegation asked for Indian security forces to share the burden of protecting the summit with their Sri Lankan counterparts. For a government that has given top priority to affirming the importance of national sovereignty, these Indian demands might be a bitter pill to swallow if such demands have indeed been made.
The Indian visit reveals the vulnerability of Sri Lanka to external pressures. Over the past two years, the government has gained the admiration of nationalists for taking strong and often belligerent positions in favor of the country’s national sovereignty, despite becoming increasingly dependent on foreign commercial banks to prop up the ailing economy.
The government has often taken punitive actions against international organizations that it sees as meddling in the country’s internal affairs, especially with regard to humanitarian issues and human rights violations. The government has also not been averse to criticizing powerful countries, especially those from the West, on numerous issues in international forums even at the risk of alienating these economic aid-giving countries.
However, the problem that is becoming apparent is that Sri Lanka is too small, and too dependent on the international system, to wage a lone battle against the international system and the powerful countries that sustain it.
It has been recently reported that the French-based NGO, Action against Hunger, which lost 17 of its staff in a cruel massacre in Muttur in 2006, is campaigning for an international inquiry on the matter, having lost confidence in the Sri Lankan system of justice. In addition, the European Union will soon decide whether or not to continue with the economically important GSP+ privilege to Sri Lanka.
International pressures may soon come to snag Sri Lanka’s efforts to solve problems in its own way, unless a different approach to conflict resolution is adopted.
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(Dr. Jehan Perera is executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, an independent advocacy organization. He studied economics at Harvard College and holds a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. ©Copyright Jehan Perera.)
