Sri Lanka: The Nation In Question

Here is my latest piece, a review of some recent books about Sri Lanka published in the Ceylon Today newspaper.

Mark Salter, 29/12/2017

2016 has been a good year for books about Sri Lanka. (Interest disclaimer: Hurst, the publishers in focus here, released my book on the country last year) First up was A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka by Commodore Ajith Boyagoda, as told to Sunila Galappatti, a writer and former Director of the Galle Literary Festival.

As befits a prisoner of war memoir A Long Watch is couched in direct, lucid prose. It tells an extraordinary story. In September 1994, at the height of the civil war, Boyagoda was commanding one of the Sri Lankan Navy’s largest warships, the Sagrewardene. South of Mannar it came under attack by LTTE vessels and eventually sunk. Unlike many of his crew Boyagoda survived the assault, only to be pulled out of the sea with the other survivors and hauled away by LTTE cadres.

The highest-ranking officer ever captured by the Tigers, Boyagoda spent the next eight years in captivity, eventually being released in 2002, as part of a prisoner exchange deal. The majority of the book covers his long years of imprisonment. The picture that emerges is a complex one. Boyagoda makes no bones about his rejection of conventional ‘evil terrorist’ characterizations of the Tigers. He is also at pains to emphasize how fairly he was treated by his jailors, expresses sympathy for the injustices visited on the Tamil population, and even shows empathy for his captors, many of whom were, as he notes, forcefully conscripted by the Tigers in their youth.

As Galappatti has acknowledged elsewhere, telling a story as exceptional and as potentially charged as this one was never going to be an easy task. As a consequence she sticks firmly to a first-person narrative, keeping herself and her opinions firmly in the background. Inevitably, the resulting account has proved controversial. In particular, following its publication accusations that in a war time version of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ Boyagoda had sold out – even spied for – the Tigers were voiced in a number of quarters.

Certainly, the return to the South in 2002 did not prove easy for Boyagoda: eventually released from the Navy, initially he struggled to relate to his children and family, from whose lives he had been separated for so long. Overall, the account of Boyagoda’s wartime captivity is best read for what it is: one man – albeit a particularly thoughtful, sensitive one’s – experiences, as opposed to what it is not: an objective, critical account of the Sri Lankan conflict.

Next came, Madurika Rasaratnam’s Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared. An altogether denser, more academic work of comparative political history, Rasaratnam’s book is a magisterial effort to address a central question. Why did India and Sri Lanka’s post-independence evolution follow such hugely differing trajectories with respect to their Tamil populations? Why was it the case, for example, that whereas by the late 1960s, previously independence-oriented political parties such as the ADMK had fully embraced the notion of Tamil Nadu’s place within the wider Indian polity, in Sri Lanka the Sinhala-dominated State’s continuing failure to accommodate Tamil aspirations eventually succeeded in transforming political forces that had vocally advocated independence from Britain and national unity into advocates of Tamil Eelam– and eventually into those, such as the LTTE, with no qualms over the use of violence to achieve that goal?

Not that all was perfect on the western side of the Palk Straits. As Rasaratnam’s book makes clear, for all the Indian National Congress (INC)’s success in accommodating Tamil demands within a broader pan-Indian nationalist framework, the story with respect to another key minority – Muslims – was rather less rosy. In particular, in the lead up to independence Rasaratnam highlights growing antagonism between a nascent Hindu nationalist movement and its Muslim counterpart as a source of – arguably still unresolved – tension within Indian society.

Nonetheless, the overall picture of a nation-in-the-making struggling and in a number of important respects succeeding in accommodating cultural, social and ethno-religious differences is a fascinating one. Not least, as noted above, on account of the vital successes India later achieved with respect both to Tamils and other Southern Dravidian cultures.

What then, of Sri Lanka? Space doesn’t permit a full review of Rasaratnam’s account of Ceylon, and later Sri Lanka’s dealings with its minority communities. At least the post-independence part of the story is well known to students of the civil war, notably pivotal events such as the 1956 Sinhala Only Act and the succession of ultimately failed pacts negotiated between Sinhalese and Tamil political leaders in the 1950s and 1960s.

What needs underscoring here is the lessons this story carries for the Sirisena Government in its efforts to move beyond the post-war morass it inherited from the Rajapaksas. First of these –underscored by Indian experience – is the central importance of a concerted effort to articulate and promote an inclusive national consciousness. An effort, moreover, that needs to go beyond simply devising a new constitutional framework (though undoubtedly it does need to include this).

In other words, while necessary for reaching a ‘political solution’ to the ethnic conflict, devising a new Constitution incorporating a revised framework of devolved governance embodying and even going beyond the 13th Amendment won’t do the trick by itself. What’s needed is a concerted attempt to frame a new national vision in which minorities crucially, Tamils and Muslims are given a central place in the country’s essential self-understanding and political practice.

‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack’, as British Jamaican poet Benjamin Zepaniah memorably pointed out. And the related question for Sri Lanka is this: can it put the colours excised by Sinha Le supporters back in the national flag in ways that will help make Tamils and Muslims as proud to be Sri Lankan as their Sinhalese compatriots in future?

Mark Salter is author of To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka (Hurst, London, 2015). His website is at: www.marksalter.org

President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia at the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo on Dec. 11. Vegard Grott/European Pressphoto Agency

Here’s a strong appeal to the international community from the US special envoy to the country to help make Colombia’s final peace agreement work in practice. Not least because it’s possibly the most far-reaching such agreement ever to be reached in Latin America – and even, perhaps, beyond the continent.

Colombia Needs Help to Make Peace Last

Bernard Aronson, New York Times, 13 Dec. 2016

OSLO — On Nov. 29, a 6-year-old Colombian girl, Yisely Isarama, was killed by a land mine in Choco Province. The same day, the Colombian Senate voted 75 to 0 to ratify peace accords to end the 52-year war between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC.

In microcosm, the two events encapsulate Colombia’s past and its potential future.

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech here on Saturday, the president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, the architect of the peace settlement, called the war “a half-century nightmare.” It claimed 220,000 Colombian lives, most of them civilians’, and drove six million from their homes. In United States population terms, that would translate into 1.3 million dead and 36 million displaced Americans. Colombians year after year are killed or injured by land mines at rates higher than in any country except Afghanistan.

Under the agreement, FARC combatants will disarm and demobilize over 180 days under United Nations supervision. For most Colombians, it will be their first day living in a nation at peace. But the peace settlement, hammered out in Havana after four and a half years of negotiations, and revised following the loss of a plebiscite, aims to do far more than silence the guns, as welcome as the end of the conflict is.

The peace accord sets out to bridge the great historic divide between what President Santos calls “the two Colombias”: the Colombia of developed, modern urban centers and the Colombia of the vast, impoverished interior, where historically there has been little or no government presence and, as a result, little security, justice, rule of law or access to roads, health care and education. That is where the war was fought.

To close this gap, the government has committed itself to a far-reaching program of rural development for the largely peasant population that includes provision of land, titles, credit, roads, and crop substitution programs. To allow arable land to be cultivated safely, land mines must be removed.

The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which is monitoring the enforcement of the agreement, reports that half of all negotiated peace settlements fail and the conflict resumes. Those that succeed address not just security, but also the social and economic roots of the war. The institute says Colombia’s agreement addresses root causes more comprehensively than any other negotiated settlement has.

That is no accident. More than in any previous conflict negotiation, Colombia put victims at the center of the process. Victims’ issues were not only on the table; victims themselves were at the table, regularly and often, asserting their rights and concerns. As a result, the agreement stipulates that the worst perpetrators of wartime atrocities — whether guerrillas, paramilitaries, or state actors — must confess their crimes, make reparations and accept sentences that include up to eight years of “restorative justice,” such as removing land mines, that are deemed acceptable to their victims and “effective restrictions on liberty.” Displaced persons must be compensated or returned to their homes and the remains of the disappeared, where possible, identified and returned to loved ones.

To fulfill these and other commitments, the government must create far-reaching programs and policies that will cost billions of dollars and take years to carry out. It must establish a system of transitional justice, a truth commission and investigative and protective units to safeguard the lives of demobilized former combatants and human rights activists.

Colombia will bear the largest burden, but the international community, led by the United States, must continue to help.

The United States has no closer strategic partner in Latin America than Colombia, and our interests in the region are intertwined. Colombian trainers and troops are working today with their American counterparts to help Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — combat the drug cartel violence that is fueling refugee flows, largely of unaccompanied minors. If, in turn, Colombia with American assistance can reverse its recent upturn in coca leaf production, it will take pressure off the Northern Triangle’s embattled governments and institutions.

Two decades ago, Colombia was nearly overrun by guerrilla armies, paramilitaries and drug cartels. Colombians, at great sacrifice, fought back, strengthened their democratic institutions, and created today’s opportunity for peace. Colombian leaders and citizens deserve the greatest share of the credit. But steady, sustained bipartisan American support and assistance for 16 years under Plan Colombia made a crucial difference.

If the peace agreement succeeds, Colombia will emerge as the strongest democracy in Latin America, a political and economic model for the region. As in the past, the United States should help Colombia reach that goal with continuing bipartisan support. Passage of President Obama’s request for $450 million in fiscal 2017 for an economic assistance program called Paz (Peace) Colombia would send the hemisphere, where support for Colombia’s peace process is universal, an encouraging signal about American staying power.

In September, at the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of State John Kerry and his Norwegian counterpart, Borge Brende, secured commitments of $106 million from a coalition of 25 countries to help Colombia clear its land mines by 2021. President Santos showed the group a pamphlet that teaches Colombian children how to avoid land mines on the way to school.

Mr. Santos said he dreamed of the day when such pamphlets would teach Colombian students only science, art, mathematics or poetry, because Colombia would be land-mine free. Helping turn that dream into a reality would be a fitting memorial to Yisely Isarama.

Bernard Aronson, the United States special envoy to the Colombian peace process, was assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1989 to 1993.

Advice for Young Muslims

Pakistani schoolgirls.

Here’s an excellent excerpt from a new book of letters to his son by a senior UAE diplomant. Sane and compassionate, amounting to nothing less than a call for a humanistic revival within Islam. Reccommended.

Published in this month’s issue of Foreign Affairs.

Advice for Young Muslims

How to Survive in an Age of Extremism and Islamophobia

By Omar Saif Ghobash

Saif, the elder of my two sons, was born in December 2000. In the summer of 2001, my wife and I brought him with us on a visit to New York City. I remember carrying him around town in a sling on my chest. A few days after we got back home to Dubai, we watched the terrible events of 9/11 unfold on CNN. As it became clear that the attacks had been carried out by jihadist terrorists, I came to feel a new sense of responsibility toward my son, beyond the already intense demands of parenthood. I wanted to open up areas of thought, language, and imagination in order to show him—and to show myself and all my fellow Muslims—that the world offers so much more than the twisted fantasies of extremists. I’ve tried to do this for the past 15 years. The urgency of the task has seemed only to grow, as the world has become ever more enmeshed in a cycle of jihadist violence and Islamophobia.

Today, I am the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia, and I try to bring to my work an attitude of openness to ideas and possibilities. In that spirit, I have written a series of letters to Saif, with the intention of opening his eyes to some of the questions he is likely to face as he grow ups, and to a range of possible answers.

For the full aritcle visit https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-11-29/advice-young-muslims?gpp=MOGgN0rMKDBJEoL2sCRiHTpURURUME1XMmdsQkRpR0c5dVNKNk1xb3FDNUVpTS9YcWMrRDBZU2cvMERyQUcvVTQ1Sk5JcnRqNHNDV0NCS1hTOmUzYWM4MGIzZTE5MzRiMmI2MzNmYjI1ODI2YzEwMzZkMDE2N2FjMDU1ZGIwN2Y1YzkzODQ5YjU3ZDJiMzQxNzM%3D

People listen to music during Eid Mela in Birmingham, England, August 2013. Darren Staples / REUTERS

‘Hail Trump!’

Alt. Right leader Milo Yiannopoulos

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”

The audience’s Nazi salutes grabbed the headlines, but just listen carefully to self-proclaimed ‘Alt. Right’ leader Richard Spencer’s speech to the 19 November annual conference of The National Policy Institute, held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C.

It is truly chilling.

‘Hail Trump!’: White Nationalists Salute the President Elect

Video of an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C., where Trump’s victory was met with cheers and Nazi salutes.

Daniel Lombroso and Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic, Nov 21, 2016

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”

That’s how Richard B. Spencer saluted more than 200 attendees on Saturday, gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.”

Spencer has popularized the term “alt-right” to describe the movement he leads. Spencer has said his dream is “a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans,” and has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”

For most of the day, a parade of speakers discussed their ideology in relatively anodyne terms, putting a presentable face on their agenda. But after dinner, when most journalists had already departed, Spencer rose and delivered a speech to his followers dripping with anti-Semitism, and leaving no doubt as to what he actually seeks. He referred to the mainstream media as “Lügenpresse,” a term he said he was borrowing from “the original German”; the Nazis used the word to attack their critics in the press.

“America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,” Spencer said. “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”

The audience offered cheers, applause, and enthusiastic Nazi salutes.

Here is the video, excerpted from an Atlantic documentary profile of Spencer that will premiere in December 2016.

Leah Varjacques contributed reporting to this story.

Messing up on Mahinda

Mahinda Rajapaksa meets the people during the 2015 Sri Lankan predsidential campaign

It feels a little odd to be sharing my latest Sri Lanka thinkpiece, published this morning, on a day when focus is very much on the other side of the planet. But here it is in any case.

Messing Up On Mahinda: Michael Roberts On Eelam War IV

Colombo Telegraph, 9 November 2016

As a commentator on Sri Lanka’s civil war Michael Roberts has proved himself as productive and tirelessly self-referential as he is frequently misguided. The latest example comes in his article ‘From Historic Compromise to Resolve: Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2006’ (Colombo Telegraph, 27 Sept. 2016).

In response I will focus on aspects of Robert’s analysis – mostly concerning the origins of Eelam War IV (2006 – 2009) – that are either contentious, factually inaccurate, lacking in supporting evidence, seemingly uninformed by my analysis of the same – or in some cases all of the above.

Jaffna advance

But let us start a little earlier, as Robert’s article does, with some summary conclusions regarding a key event in Eelam War III (1995 – 2002): the LTTE’s effort to seize Elephant Pass – and beyond that Jaffna – in July 2000. Here Roberts suggests that the Tiger’s failure to advance on Jaffna after taking Elephant Pass was essentially due to the actions of ‘chief hero’ Defence Minister A Ratwatte, the ‘ordinary soldiers in the peninsula war theatre’ plus President Kumaratunga and the Pakistani government in ‘supporting roles’. This account omits or otherwise glosses over some important facts:

• The 7000 LTTE force advancing on Jaffna in summer 2000 was massively outnumbered by the 40,000-strong SLA force garrisoned inside Jaffna. And by mid-June 2000 the SLA garrison had indeed succeeded – unsurprisingly given the balance of forces – in pushing LTTE troops southwards along the Jaffna peninsula.
• Irrespective of respective force size, and for reasons that have never been fully clarified, at some point the LTTE appears to have decided to hold back from advancing on Jaffna. Erik Solheim has this to say on the matter: ‘From the town outskirts the LTTE issued a demand that [the SLA] should leave all their military equipment behind, and ships could pick up the soldiers and take them to Colombo … The Indians were ready to rescue the soldiers by ship, but wanted no part in the fighting. We worked closely with Delhi on this offer. The LTTE were ready to let the soldiers go, but insisted they should leave their equipment.’[1] In other words hardly a case of ‘heroic’ SLA military pushback.
• Any discussion of SLA surrender modalities lost its relevance once, as Solheim notes, government forces were able to ‘stabilise’ the military situation and relieve the immediate threat to the Palaly air base.
• Pakistan’s rapid emergency provision of military supplies—most importantly multi-barrel rocket launchers (MBRLs), making their first appearance in the conflict here—undoubtedly played a critical part in the SLA military pushback: while at the same time India, in Solheim’s words, ‘looked the other way as it happened’.

Rajapaksa and Eelam War IV

Moving onto to events leading up to the start of Eelam War IV in July/August 2006, Roberts begins by outlining his basic thesis. Which is that, faced with a ‘Hobson’s Choice’, Mahinda Rajapaksa elected to follow the only reasonable course of action open to him, namely initiate all-out war against the LTTE.

Precisely why initiating what rapidly turned into full-scale war, going far beypnd the immediate objective of reopening the Mavil Aru anicut sealed off by the LTTE was the ‘only’, let alone ‘reasonable’ course of action open to President Rajapaksa remains unclear at this point, Before getting into the nuts and bolts of Eelam War IV’s origins, however, Roberts treats us to a somewhat breathless overview of the events of what might be called the functioning Ceasefire (CFA) era (2002-2006)..

Roberts is dismissive of the CFA – a position that gained widespread acceptance once it became clear the Rajapaksa administration had decided to ignore (and later officially abrogate) an Agreement that the previous administration had negotiated with the LTTE. I stress negotiated since, as Robert’s account makes abundantly clear, there was nothing in the CFA that had not been the subject of painstaking discussion, negotiation and compromise between the two sides.

Robert’s suggestion that what he obliquely calls the ‘media event’ in Kilinochchi in April 22002 – he is in fact referring to the landmark press conference held there by LTTE leader Prabakharan – paved the way for peace negotiations to start that autumn is false. Talks were part and parcel of prior Norwegian-brokered negotiations between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the LTTE leadership, chiefly in the shape of their senior adviser Anotn Balasingham, held before, during and after the CFA’s official signature in February 2002.

As far as pinning down the beginning of talks goes, the clinch moment in fact came in late July 2002, when chief GoSL negotiator Milinda Moragoda met Balasingham at the Norwegian Embassy in London. Most importantly, Thailand was agreed as the venue for opening talks –venue being, as often in such processes, a potentially fraught issue.[2]

Norwegian facilitators: LTTE stooges?

So far so strange. But now Roberts really gets into his stride with the claim that there is ‘room to suggest’ that ‘during the next few years’, ‘several Norwegian envoys [who?] and Erik Solheim in particular’, morphed from third party facilitators acting at the express request of both parties into ‘sides’ partial to ‘LTTE interests’.

Since the end of the war, the view – in some circles at least – that the Norwegians in general, and Erik Solheim in particular, acted on the basis of pro-Tiger sympathies has assumed the status of a quasi-mystical truth. A view of uncritical acceptance rather than careful examination, in other words. And it’s this perspective that may in turn help to explain Robert’s one-liner dismissal of my book To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka as simple ‘Solheim hagiography’.

Perhaps Roberts simply can’t bring himself to believe that there’s anything interesting to say about the Norwegian engagement beyond Mangala Samaraweera’s memorable ‘salmon-eating busybodies’ trope. Certainly in calling for a ‘careful’ study of the Norwegian role in Sri Lanka Roberts indicates that he doesn’t consider my research on the subject as meriting that description. In reality, however, I suspect the issue for Roberts is not one of an absence of careful study on my part, but rather the perspective from which that study is conducted – a perspective that, by the way, has as little to do with ‘Solheim hagiography’ as sections of Robert’s article have to do with known facts.

Robert’s casual manner with the facts is on open dsiplay in his summary treatment of the post-tsunami era. Specifically he suggests that the arrival of ‘funds and greater INGO involvement’ in the context of the post-tsunami disaster relief effort bolstered the LTTE. While it is true that limited amounts of relief did make it through to Tiger-controlled areas, this also completely ignores the fact that a key LTTE complaint throughout early 2005 was the marked lack of relief resources flowing into the Vanni, chiefly on account of the official obstacles placed in its way.

Indeed, as Norwegians involved in brokering the agreement attest in my book, the major political setback of this period – the failure of the P-TOMS agreement[3] intended to establish a structure to ensure equitable distribution of relief funds, which Roberts doesn’t even mention – may well, from an LTTE viewpoint, have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Why continue to try and make peace, so the argument runs, with a partner who won’t even help foster the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the pats of the country under your control? From this perspective, moreover, there is a certain grim inevitability underlying the path from the Sri Lankan Supreme Court’s suspension of key clauses of the P-TOMS agreement (14 July) to the assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar less than a month later (12 August).

2005 Presidential Elections

The most egregious example of Robert’s tendency to play fast and loose with the fact, however, concerns his account of the November 2005 presidential elections and beyond. He makes three central claims:

• Mahinda Rajapaksa secured his narrow victory over Ranil Wickremasinghe on the backs of Tamil wide scale abstention, undertaken at because the LTTE ‘asked’ for it.
• The LTTE backed Rajapaksa at the election because they wanted a ‘Sinhala hawk’ to win and in that way ‘assist . . . in its international campaign in the Western world’.
• Over time and under the influence of events, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s initially pragmatic attitude towards dealing with the LTTE and taking forward the peace process evolved into a hard-nosed determination to opt for full-scale confrontation.

At first sight at least, the initial claim retains some plausibility. It is certainly true, as Roberts states, that after an extended period of silence on the subject, in the final stages of the election campaign the LTTE began ‘asking’ Tamils to abstain – even if ‘ask’ is a strange way to describe the campaign of fear and intimidation they deployed in order to prevent Tamils – notably those residing in areas under direct Riger control – from voting.

That important detail aside, others factors contributing to the boycott included a last-minute Supreme Court ruling that polling stations due to be located close to official checkpoints between ‘uncleared’ and ‘cleared’ areas would have to be moved at least 500 metres away – thereby significantly reducing the incentives for the 250,000 prospective Tamil voters living in ‘uncleared’ areas to vote.

These are details that Roberts might reasonably be expected to address. But they pale in comparison to the real elephant in the room: the suggestion that the LTTE’s call for an election boycott was the outcome of a prior (not so) secret deal with Mahinda Rajapaksa. This, in my view, represents a pivotal moment in the war’s final years. Nonetheless, you do not need to invest it with the same significance to find it extraordinary that it receives no mention at all in Robert’s account.

Election Boycott Deal?

I will not go through every aspect of the allegations: these are amply detailed elsewhere.[4] The essential point is that there is clear evidence to suggest that not only was there a covert deal between Rajapaksa and the LTTE over the boycott, but also that it was the product of back door connections established between the two sides some months prior to the presidential election, if not earlier.

Speculation over the existence of a deal first surfaced soon after the election via Tamil journalist D.B.S. Jeyaraj, who suggested an agreement had been reached following a series of secret meetings in Kiliinochchi between Tamilselvan and a ‘special representative’ of Rajapaksa. (Allegedly, too, that ‘special representative’ was Tiran Alles.) With Rajapaksa’s expressed approval, it was suggested, Alles had established contact with senior LTTE figures, most probably Tamilselvan and possibly also Pulidevan and Nadesan.

While the deal’s substance—securing an election boycott—was supposedly clear from early on, the means by which it was to be implemented proved more problematic. Rajapaksa’s electoral alliances with the fervently anti-LTTE JVP and JHU meant that an open deal with the Tigers was out of the question. Thus the talks reportedly focused on the possibility of the Tigers offering ‘indirect support’ to Rajapaksa’s campaign. In the event this is exactly what they did, with the boycott only really moving towards violence and open intimidation in the campaign’s final 48 hours—the result, allegedly, of a last-minute visit to Kilinochchi by Alles to persuade the Tigers to step up their activities.

Jeyaraj suggested that ‘political and diplomatic circles in Colombo’ were first alerted to Alles’ role after reports of the particularly warm embrace and ‘profuse thanks’ he received from Rajapaksa at a post-election victory gathering.[5] Concerning further details, Jeyaraj confined himself to speculation that ‘a financial arrangement was more likely than a political arrangement’.[6]

Following the election, initially things went remarkably quiet concerning the deal allegations. Since then, however, they have resurfaced repeatedly. And thanks to some tireless investigative work by among others Sonali Samarasinghe, ex-Sunday Leader columnist and widow of its editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, a clearer picture of the deal’s probable contours has since emerged.

It is now clear for example, that substantial sums of money were involved. At some point before the election It appears that an initial cash payment of 180 million rupees ($1.3 million) was handed over by Basil Rajapaksa to LTTE go-between Emil Kanthan; and, in the event of an election victory for Rajapaksa, a second and larger package was agreed, allegedly involving an LTTE housing project, disarming the Karuna group, appointing ‘LTTE nominees’ to ‘various political offices’ and resuming talks in Thailand.[7]

Events on the ground, in particular deteriorating relations between the two sides, eventually ensured that much of this never saw the light of day. On agenda item number one at least, however, there does appear to have been significant movement.

Further investigations revealed that three months after the 2005 election, Rajapaksa made a series of unsolicited multi-million rupee grants to bogus housing projects in the North – in order, it was suggested, to facilitate the agreed transfer of funds to the Tigers. By the time Rajapaksa produced a cabinet paper on the subject in August 2006, some 150 million rupees ($1.1 million) had allegedly been paid out to a bogus company set up by Emil Kanthan—the mastermind behind the operation, by now identified by as an LTTE intelligence officer. And in an indication of the overall sums involved in the deal, Rajapaksa’s cabinet paper foresaw the eventual release of 800 million rupees (c. $6m) to the non-existent housing schemes.

In retrospect, circumstantial confirmation of the allegations was provided by the fact that shortly after his election victory, Rajapaksa established a new apex body—the Reconstruction and Development Agency (RDA)—to front his effort to promote an alternative mechanism to the abolished P-TOMS. And the chairman of the new agency was to be – Tiran Alles.

Overall the allegations remain relevant to this day. This year, for example, and as reported in this paper, there have been two attempts to bring the issue of Tiran Alles and Emil Kanthan’s involvement in the alleged RADA housing scams – and perhaps more beyond – to court in Sri Lanka.[8] How this story resolves itself remains to be seen. Robert’s failure, however, to so much as mention it in the context of his version of the runup to Eelam War IV is incomprehensible.

LTTE Calculations

Concerning the LTTE’s rationale for indirectly supporting Rajapakasa in the presidential election, as noted earlier Roberts opts for the view that the Tigers judged themselves to be better off with a ‘Sinhala hawk at the helm’. Here it’s disconcerting to see Roberts present as apparent fact something that is palpably an interpretation – and a contested one at that. For example, why would the LTTE have viewed Rajapaksa as a hawk if, at least during 2005, to quote Roberts himself, Mahinda ‘sought a modus vivendi and some form of cohabitation’ [with the Tigers]? Hardly the stuff of hawkish belligerence!

None of which is to say that the [widely-held] interpretation proffered by Roberts is totally without merit. It does, however, need to be revisited in the light of contrary evidence, not least the allegation of an election boycott deal with the LTTE, which taken together with other evidence regarding, for example, Rajapaksa’s wider actions and political compulsions, suggests that a more complicated set of motivations were in play here.

Mahinda’s Peace Policy

Third, Roberts presents a picture of Rajapaksa as an initially cautious, reasonable man pushed by the inexorable weight of escalating LTTE violence towards the war option. From his own conversations with Lalith Weeratunga, Rajapaksa’s Private Secretary at the time[9], we receive recollection pg a memorable Rajapaska reaction to the devastating LTTE attack on a bus near Anuararadhapura in mid June 2005, whose scene he visited: ‘We must finish these people off. There is no point in dealing with them’, he is quoted as saying.

It seems almost churlish to point out that by this point, following the failure to achieve a breakthrough in the talks held in Geneva in February 2006, both sides were engaged in what had by June morphed into an escalating series of military skirmishes. The important point here, however, concerns the image presented of Rajapaksa. Specifically, there is clear evidence that in advance of his election as president, Rajapaksa had expressed a far more accommodating attitude towards the LTTE than that suggested by Roberts.

While appreciating Roberts may see this as witness to a hagiographic intent, let me nonetheless quote two key Norwegian players on the subject. First Erik Solheim: in his view, following the presidential election Rajapakasa was ‘ready for any option. His priority was not any particular solution to the Sri Lankan crisis, but establishing his own power. In fact during our conversations in January 2006, right after his election victory, he told me that he was ready to hand over the North to Prabhakaran, without elections, in a kind of backroom deal—and with few caveats, except that there would be no separate state.’

‘What Mahinda was truly opposed to’, Solheim emphasizes, ‘was protracted negotiations of the type preferred by the LTTE. Because he knew that would bring down his own all-Sinhala political constellation. And he would also certainly have preferred a dirty backroom deal to any well-organized process leading towards federalism.’

Second Vidar Helgesen, who met Rajajapaksa during a trip to Colombo to attend Kadirgamar’s funeral in August 2005 Helgesen reports that he enquired about Rajapaksa’s views on the peace process, ‘should he become President’. ‘This is when he told me that he would offer the LTTE a federal solution, and very quickly so’, Heögesen recalls. ‘He said he wanted to move rapidly and strike a deal with the LTTE within six months, and wanted me to convey that message to Bala[singham] in London. Which I did. In the aftermath’, Helgesen concludes, ‘it is possible to read that as part of the scheme that many claim was in place, whereby he struck a deal with Prabhakaran to have the LTTE boycott the presidential elections’.

‘Vote Rajapaksa for deals – lots of them’ might have been an appropriate election slogan then. For it is the pragmatic – some would say wholly unprincipled – willingness to cut deals that comes across most strongly from the Rajapaksa approach to dealing with the LTTE at this stage. And recalling the February 2006 Geneva talks – wholly unmentioned, curiously by Roberts – Solheim states as follows:

The Village Chief

‘One of the Sri Lankan negotiators gave the best explanation of Mahinda’s style of operation. He is the village chief, he argued, and the chief sits in the middle of the room and everyone comes to him and he agrees to sort out this matter with you, that matter with someone else. There is no overall strategy: he may make a deal with you today that is contrary to the one he makes with me tomorrow. The village will be happy, they will have a great leader. And he will be kind to everyone, do his best for them. And that is how the Geneva delegation was put together.’

For all the obfuscation Roberts does at least offer one interesting snippet of information, culled from his contacts with members of the former Rajapaksa administration, relating to a confidential face-to-face meeting between government minister Jeyaraj Fernandpoule, sent at Rajapaksa’s express request, and the LTTE’s Tamilselvan, held on or around the time of the mounting July 2006 Mavil Aru crisis. I take this to be yet another example of the tangled web of intrigue woven by Rajapaksa in his efforts to maintain lines of communication to the LTTE – and with the ‘official’ Norwegian facilitator at times appearing to be treated simply as one among many such channels.

If he is interested in such matters, moreover, Roberts might wish to consult my account of the role played by Irish Sinn Fein Deputy Leader Martin McGuiness both in Rajapaksa’s contacts with the Tigers, and at his express request, in setting up a meeting for the Sri Lankan President with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in September 2006.[10] With all such individual cases, however, the important thing is to discern the pattern – a pattern that is well captured by the Rajapaksa as ‘village chief’ notion referenced above.

Here the last word on the subject goes to the focus of my supposed ‘hagiography’ – Erik Solheim: ‘[Mahinda]’, Solheim told me, ‘wanted to open up as many avenues of contact as possible in order to give himself the greatest variety of options: that’s why the delegations to the Geneva talks included both pro- and anti-peace people. It also fits with his opposition to a protracted peace process. Giving an opportunity to someone other than the Norwegians is in accordance with everything else we know. Looking for a shortcut would be absolutely logical from his point of view. But while he didn’t want a protracted affair, I also think that initially, at least, he had no clear idea of how to pursue the peace process: this developed later’.

And one could also ask: who or what helped him develop that clear idea? Roberts seems to think it was essentially a function of events. But he might also wish to consider the role of specific personalities: starting, perhaps, with Mahinda’s brother and Defence Secretary: Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Mark Salter is a writer and analyst. His latest book, referenced throughout this article, is To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka (Hurst, London: 2015). Visit www.marksalter.org for more information.

[1] See my To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka (Hurst, London: 2015), p. 46.

[2] To End A Civil War, pp. 96-97.

[4] To End A Civil War, pp. 233-238.

[5] According to one report Rajapaksa’s words to Alles were simply ’You made it possible’. ’Meet Tiran Alles’, The Nation, 11 March 2007.

[6] D.B.S. Jeyaraj, ’Did LTTE have secret deal with Mahinda to enforce boycott?’, TamilWeek, 27 Nov.-3 Dec. 2005.

[7] S. Samarasinghe, ’Payment vouchers to Tiger companies for vote swindle surface’, The Sunday Leader, 23 Sept. 2007.

[8] See e.g.,‘Tiran Alles And Emil Kanthan Faces Charges For Financing LTTE’, Colombo Telegraph, 14 Aug. 2016.

[9] Weeratunga is one of those alleged to have taken part in secret meetings with LTTE representatives prior to the 2005 presidential elections, to trash out an election boycott deal with the Tigers.

[10] To End A Civil War, pp. 269-273.

Jubilant: President-elect Trump. John Locher AP/Press Association Image

This is not a moment when considered analysis or reaction comes easily. But this piece makes a pretty good stab at attempting to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump. As Liam Kennedy suggests below:

‘Trump embodies that most American of American archetypes: the huckster or “confidence man”, a figure with a long history in American culture, dating from at least the early 19th century. He is a charlatan whose schemes invariably fail. In the end he skips town, leaving those he has scammed to learn their lesson…..

Right now, Trump’s victory should remind us just how fragile the social and political order we take for granted is – and how quickly an advanced democracy can be dragged into barbarism.’

After poisoning and dividing America, Donald Trump has won an ugly victory

Liam Kennedy , The Conversation, 9 November 2016

It’s over: Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. The election that elevated him to this office has been brutal, ugly and bizarre. It has poisoned the well of American democracy, and the toxins it has introduced are unlikely to disperse anytime soon.

Trump has eagerly led a mass abandonment of civility and reason, breached social proprieties and political protocols, and normalised prejudice and brazen dishonesty.

The nation is now so divided that Democrats and Republicans are unable to agree on what constitutes factual reality. Dark rhetoric implying violent retribution against “certain groups” courses through the air. How did it come to this? When historians look back at this election what will they make of of the Trump campaign and its legacy? Will it be remembered as a one-off, or will they pronounce him an agent of a revolution in the Republican Party – or indeed, in America at large?

In truth, the sickness this election has brought to the surface has been brewing for a long time. Trump is a symptom, not just a pathogen. He has shown a genius for channelling the grievances and insecurities of those disaffected by economic and social changes in the US – primarily, though not solely, working-class whites. With this uncanny skill, he has magnified a form of identity politics the Republicans have long been using to appease and mobilise their base.

This experiment in political engineering began in earnest back in the early 1990s. It was until recently an insidious thing, usually advanced via dog-whistle tactics. Trump has picked it up and turned into a blunt instrument as he doubled down on his pursuit of a core white vote and eschewed any serious appeals to minorities.

But on a structural level, Trump’s victory is every bit of a piece with the way American politics now works. There’s abundant evidence that the choices of the US electorate are increasingly shaped by demographics, but there are underlying cultural dynamics at work too. This picture of extreme divisions is why getting out the core vote, rather than changing wavering voters’ minds with earnest appeals, is the ultimate device for winning an election.

The resulting focus on polarised core groups has exacerbated the crippling polarisation that wracks the US today – and the increasingly intense contempt in which Democrats and Republicans hold each other. Again, Trump did not create this divisive partisanship, but he has eagerly inflamed and manipulated it to his own ends.

The trickster

None of this means he will in fact serve the interests of the people who’ve elected him. Trump embodies that most American of American archetypes: the huckster or “confidence man”, a figure with a long history in American culture, dating from at least the early 19th century. He is a charlatan whose schemes invariably fail. In the end he skips town, leaving those he has scammed to learn their lesson.

The confidence man is often a comic figure. He crops up in Herman Melville and Mark Twain’s satirical depictions of a rampantly commercial republic. Sometimes he’s no more than a fast-talking, comic disrupter – think Sergeant Bilko or even the Cat in the Hat.

Would I lie to you? EPA/Jim Lo Scalzo

But the confidence man comes in darker manifestations too. He not only plays with other people’s trust, he abuses it to rob or demean them. Tricksters like Trump tell people what they want to hear, articulate desires not commonly expressed, and capitalise on their gullibility.

The Trump campaign was just such a trick. The disaffected and angry among the American electorate are Trump’s mark, his suckers. All he asked was that they trust him.

To his supporters, enraged by a dishonest, manipulative “Washington”, Trump “tells it like it is”. Many of them have lost faith in public institutions, and despise the country’s elites – and yet, in their search for an honest champion, they have gladly invested their confidence in Trump.

Onward and downward

Never mind the gridlock that has dogged the government during the Obama administration – what’s coming now will be deeply ugly. Trump’s campaign has radically upped the ante for distemper and dysfunction. The Republicans, who apparently still hold both the House and the Senate, will continue to throw red meat to Trump’s angry base. They might do well to recall Trump’s own idea: “You’ll have to have riots to go back to where we used to be, when America was great.”

Trump is an opportunist, not an ideologue – and he certainly isn’t driven by deep political convictions. Some claim he didn’t actually intend to make a protracted and successful run for the presidency, that he was seeking to promote his brand on the cheap, and that his ego simply took over once he was hijacked by his own success. Perhaps – but this overlooks the fact that he several times considered a tilt at the presidency, and it probably overstates just how much his campaign relied on improvisation and happenstance rather than something genuinely knowing.

While many found Trump’s approach risible even to the end, it was strikingly effective from the off – and, while he stumbled many times, the underlying instinct to “go low” became a distressingly effective strategy.

What’s the lesson of all this? The historians will one day be able to offer a longer view on that one. Right now, I suggest that Trump’s victory should remind us just how fragile the social and political order we take for granted is – and how quickly an advanced democracy can be dragged into barbarism.

Professor Liam Kennedy is Director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College, Dublin, Ireland.

War is peace: on bombing Syria aid convoys

The scene the morning after a convoy delivering aid was hit by a deadly airstrike in Syria. Photograph: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images

Sovietspeak is still alive and well, it seems. The Russian Foreign Ministry is claiming that the nearly 20 Aleppo aid convoy trucks reportedly hit by airstrikes outside Aleppo yesterday (see below) weren’t in fact: they claim, they simply ‘caught fire’. Brezhnev – and indeed Stalin – would have been proud of that line.

At the same time, I’ve just digested this take on the latest developments in Syra from a well-informed ‘insider’ regional anlysis:

“Both Russia and the Syrian regime will continue to use subsequent ceasefires to solidify gains against the Syrian opposition in Aleppo City, and to employ siege-and-starve tactics to force the defeat of the opposition in critical terrain. Russia will continue to exert pressure on the US and the international community by escalating levels of violence in order to extract concessions in negotiations over the Syrian Civil War.”

Which suggests that the prospects for an end to the fighting are a lot slimmer – and the consequences of this considerably grimmer – than intimated by mainstream media portrayals of the Syria conflict. In the midst of all this, particularly with respect to the UN’s hapless role in the conflict, combined with official – in this instance meaning Russian/Syrian government forces’ – aerial bombing of civilian targets, I continue to be haunted by the eerie parallels with the final stages of the Sri Lankan conflict.

Russian planes dropped bombs that destroyed UN aid convoy, US officials say

If confirmed, the claim of direct Russian involvement in the bombing that killed at least 20 people in Syria would have far-reaching consequences.

The Guardian, Julian Borger and Spencer Ackerman, 21 Sept. 2016

US defence officials now believe that Russian planes dropped the bombs that destroyed a UN aid convoy and killed at least 20 people, the Guardian has learned.

The claim of direct Russian involvement in the bombing, if confirmed, would have far- reaching consequences. Earlier on Tuesday, Ban Ki-moon used his farewell address to the UN general assembly to denounce it as a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack”, describing the bombers at “cowards”, and UN officials have said it is a potential war crime.

The outgoing secretary general told world leaders in New York that the UN had been forced to suspend aid convoys in Syria because of Monday’s attack on Syrian Red Crescent trucks that were carrying UN food supplies to a rural area west of Aleppo city.

Victims of the attack included the local director of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Omar Barakat. Ban hailed the dead aid workers as heroes and said “those who bombed them were cowards” before calling for accountability for crimes committed in the war. “Just when you think it cannot get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower,” he said.

Aid officials said the convoy was hit from the air while food and medicine were being unloaded at a warehouse in opposition-controlled Urem al-Kubra.

Reuters news agency quoted two US officials as saying two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the sky above the aid convoy at the precise time it was struck.

The White House and state department said they could not confirm the allegations, while the Russian foreign ministry rejected them with “resentment and indignation”.

Previously, US officials had said that they would hold Moscow responsible for the attack, even if it was carried out by Syrian aircraft, as Russia had taken responsibility for the regime’s compliance with the ceasefire as part of the 9 September agreement.

But Moscow has not conceded that the convoy was hit by an airstrike, claiming instead that the 18 lorries had “caught fire”. In a separate statement on Tuesday, the country’s defence ministry said that the aid convoy had been accompanied by a militants’ pickup truck armed with a heavy mortar, Russian news agencies reported.

The US officials said there was no doubt the convoy was destroyed in an airstrike and that western coalition forces had no role in it.

“There are only three parties that fly in Syria: the coalition, the Russians and the Syrian regime. It was not the coalition. We don’t fly over Aleppo. We have no reason to. We strike only Isis, and Isis is not there. We would leave it to the Russians and the Syrian regime to explain their actions,” said Capt Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

In a meeting with John Kerry, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, admitted that the Russian military had been monitoring the convoy – apparent drone surveillance footage of its progress had been live-streamed on a defence ministry website . But he claimed the Russians had “lost track of it when it entered rebel territory”, according to diplomatic sources. Moscow had launched an investigation, Lavrov told the other foreign ministers.

Later on Tuesday, however, the Russian foreign ministry put out an angry denunciation of allegations against Moscow and Damascus.

Aftermath of airstrike on Syrian aid convoy – video

“We are considering, with resentment and indignation, attempts by some foreign curators of rebel units and terrorists in Syria to put the blame for the incident on the Russian and Syrian air forces who allegedly bombarded a relief convoy,” the statement said, according to the Tass news agency.

Despite the outrage caused by the attack, and the continued bombing of rebel-held areas of Aleppo, the US and Russia have refused to declare the Syrian ceasefire dead.

Lavrov’s meeting with the US secretary of state was the first since the Syrian military declared itself no longer bound by the ceasefire the two politicians negotiated, and resumed its air campaign against eastern Aleppo and other rebel-held areas on Monday.

Lavrov and Kerry talked in a central New York hotel for about half an hour on Tuesday morning before walking, still in deep discussion, into a broader session with other foreign ministers from the security council, Europe and the Middle East who make up the International Syria Support Group (ISSG). Kerry emerged from the group’s meeting insisting: “The cease fire is not dead.”

“We are going to continue to work. We are going to meet again Friday on some specific steps,” the secretary of state said.

Boris Johnson, the UK foreign secretary, said: “Quite frankly, the Kerry-Lavrov process is the only show in town and we have to get that show back on the road.”

The UN later retreated from the claim that the convoy had been targeted in an airstrike. “We are not in a position to determine whether these were in fact airstrikes. We are in a position to say that the convoy was attacked,” its humanitarian spokesman, Jens Laerke, said.

The ISSG foreign ministers are due to convene again on Friday, though diplomats said the session could be brought forward to Thursday evening, as fighting intensified in Syria.

The bombardment of eastern Aleppo continued until 2am on Monday, according to reports from the city. At least 39 civilians were killed overnight in Aleppo and the surrounding province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, compared with 27 killed over the whole week when the truce was precariously in force.

In another incident late on Tuesday, four medical workers were killed and a nurse critically injured in an airstrike that hit a clinic in a village near Aleppo. The clinic in Khan Touman was completely levelled in the strike and more dead were feared to be buried under the rubble, the aid group that supports the clinic said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Syrian or Russian warplanes carried out the raid.

The UN special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said that none of the foreign ministers in the ISSG meeting had wanted to call an end to the ceasefire despite the renewed bombing, and the attack on the food convoy.

De Mistura described the targeting of the convoy as “outrageous” and hoped it would turn out to be “a gamechanger that will help Friday be a serious meeting about how to reinstall the cessation of hostilities [and] humanitarian aid”.

“The ceasefire is not dead. That I can tell you,” the Swedish envoy added. “It was confirmed by everyone around the table. The ceasefire is in danger. The ceasefire has been seriously affected but the only ones who can announce that the ceasefire is dead are the two co-chairs and they have today not done so. They want to give it another chance.”

The UN emergency relief coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, said that if it was found the convoy had been deliberately targeted, it would constitute a war crime.

Peter Maurer, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president, said: “Yesterday’s attack was a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and it is unacceptable. Failing to protect humanitarian workers and structures might have serious repercussions on humanitarian work in the country.”

Robert Mardini, the ICRC director for the Middle East and north Africa, confirmed that Barakat, the Aleppo director for the Syrian Red Crescent, was among the dead.

“The team is in shock,” Mardini told Reuters. “Omar was badly injured and the rescue team could not reach him for two hours. When he was evacuated he could not survive his wounds.”

Plans for aid convoys to rebel-besieged Foua and Kefraya in Idlib, and government-blockaded Madaya and Zabadani near the Lebanese border, had been put on hold, he said.

The US state department spokesman John Kirby said that the US, Russia and other ISSG ministers had agreed to keep up attacks on Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly the al-Qaida affiliated al-Nusra Front, “while recognising the difficulties of separating al-Nusra from the moderate opposition in some areas of the country”.

“They emphasised, in this context, the imperative of ending indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilians, which is exploited by terrorist groups. And they stressed the absolute criticality of creating the conditions necessary to resume UN-led political talks in coming weeks,” Kirby said.