Sinhala Columnist Dayan Jayatilleke in the Asian Tribune
 on the Impact of the Tsunami on the Peace Process

The water this time
1 January 2005

"..Velupillai Prabhakharan threw down the gauntlet in his November 27th Mahaveera day speech, and if press reports and the grapevine are to be believed, President Kumaratunga threw in the towel at the SLFP’s Central Committee meeting on December 20th, announcing her decision to negotiate on the basis of the ISGA. It is still possible to see some merit in her new stand: there is a world of difference between agreeing to negotiate, even on the basis of the ISGA, and actually agreeing to set it up. It is possible in the course of negotiations to advance issues such as the decommissioning of LTTE heavy weapons under international auspices, which would be acceptable to the international community but not so to the Tigers... The Tsunami may have delayed or deflected Prabhakaran’s war due to logistical considerations as well as those of world opinion, but the separation of Sri Lanka may occur more or less peacefully and speedily, a casualty of the earthquake in the sea-bed that registered 9 on the Richter scale, more powerful than a hundred thousand Hiroshimas.Who will better harness the power of that quake - the Sri Lankan state, to build a united country, or the Tigers, to accelerate separation? That will determine our destiny. If relief and reconstruction are done .. right, we can, with the international community, restructure while we construct...We now have the world’s unprecedented attention, solidarity, sympathy and support. Conceived in pain and tragedy, this moment is unique, historic and precious..."

[Note by tamilnation.org: see  Dr.Sachithanandam Sathananthan on A to Z of Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka, 22 September 2004  "..when a military stalemate ensues, then "talks" become the continuation of war by other means. Having failed to disarm the national movement through force, the State then manoeuvres to draw the movement into "talks" with the principal objective of forcing it to decommission weapons.This continuation of war by other means is the so-called "peace process". If armed conflict is the power struggle at the military level, "peace process" is the power struggle at the political level..." more]

James Baldwin’s masterpiece The Fire Next Time carried on the flyleaf a verse from an old ‘Negro spiritual’, from which it derived its title:

‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign
No more water
The fire next time’.

It may well be the reverse in our case. The Tsunami may have delayed or deflected Prabhakaran’s war due to logistical considerations as well as those of world opinion, but the separation of Sri Lanka may occur more or less peacefully and speedily, a casualty of the earthquake in the sea-bed that registered 9 on the Richter scale, more powerful than a hundred thousand Hiroshimas. Not by fire but by water.

Who will better harness the power of that quake - the Sri Lankan state, to build a united country, or the Tigers, to accelerate separation? That will determine our destiny. While the Tigers are hoping that a humanitarian crisis will develop in the North east, the Sri Lankan state must strive to pre-empt that, manifestly functioning as the state of the whole people, representative of all and responsive on the basis of need, not of electoral numbers, ethnic affinity and socio-political ‘voice’.

Both the state and the international community must consider the country, the island, a single unit and the affected as people, human beings, irrespective of ethnicity, profile, location or electoral clout. The basis of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction must be human need.

The state and the international community must work in tandem, not counter-clockwise or to checkmate each other. The State must not look after principally the South while the international relief effort prioritizes the North-east. This could result in symmetrical Southern and Northern backlashes, driving the tectonic plates of our society and state further apart. We could wind up a de-facto Cyprus or Yugoslavia.

If the international community is sagacious, it could neutralise Southern xenophobia in one go, not simply by throwing money at the problem, but by a dramatic, massive, prompt presence, efficacious and hands-on assistance, engagement and commitment. The tsunami has broken down the walls; we are ready for the world’s embrace. If it is not forthcoming, the populist forces of vulgar egalitarianism, which have readily mobilised in this crisis, will irreversibly gain ground in the tsunami’s wake. Nature’s levelling down will be followed by its social equivalent, initially among the displaced but more generally in the relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction phase.

A Separate State of Mind

This disaster could be an opportunity for drawing together but it probably won’t be. The catastrophe could be a full-stop to LTTE plans to wage war but I wouldn’t bet on it. It may only have receded, to come back with greater force, like the tsunami’s second wave.

The dialectics of nature exacerbate the contradictions of society and state. The fault lines in our society are as deep as those under the sea off Sumatra. The disaster hit Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim, underscoring our common humanity and our common destiny on a small island. However, while the worst affected in relative terms (in proportion to population), were Tamil and Muslim, the reportage and reaction, the complexion of structures set up in response, have not yet adequately reflected that reality.

In fact it reflected another reality. We died as human beings, but mourned our dead as South, North and East - as Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim. Tectonic plates shift more easily than attitudes. The main reason some of us were concerned about another community was just to reassure ourselves that they were worse or at least as badly hit as we were.

This natural disaster may therefore have the same effect as the Managua earthquake of 1972, the aftermath of which ripped open Nicaraguan society. If we, as a society, treat the North and East as a separate country, leading a separate existence, condemned to second class citizenship and a different destiny, a separate country is what it will have become once the rubble is cleared. The people there will have rebuilt their lives as inhabitants of a separate state.

Therefore what is crucial now is how the state handles the aftermath; how it is perceived to have handled the crisis, how sensitive, honest, efficient, committed, ethnically non-aligned and ethno-regionally equitable it is seen to be. What is at stake is the moral standing of the state.

Before the Tsunami

What if you throw in the towel but the other side declines to pick it up?

Velupillai Prabhakharan threw down the gauntlet in his November 27th Mahaveera day speech, and if press reports and the grapevine are to be believed, President Kumaratunga threw in the towel at the SLFP’s Central Committee meeting on December 20th, announcing her decision to negotiate on the basis of the ISGA.

It is still possible to see some merit in her new stand: there is a world of difference between agreeing to negotiate, even on the basis of the ISGA, and actually agreeing to set it up. It is possible in the course of negotiations to advance issues such as the decommissioning of LTTE heavy weapons under international auspices, which would be acceptable to the international community but not so to the Tigers.

In other words it is possible to win the battle of the negotiation having entered it, allowing the Tigers to break off the talks but on an issue that is unfavourable to them and favourable to Sri Lanka.

However, will Prabhakaran give Colombo that chance? What we are about to learn is that there is no point is throwing in the towel when the other side doesn’t pick it up. And the other side doesn’t pick it up only because it is headed for war- which we should have known to start with.

This is why Prabhakaran pre-emptively cut off President Kumaratunga’s avenue of retreat by insisting that the UPFA administration declare a common stand on his demand to open negotiations on the basis of the ISGA. He is counting on the JVP, hoping that even if Chandrika and the SLFP become ultra-flexible (or cave in, depending on your take), the JVP will remain rigidly opposed, and therefore the UPFA will not be able to adopt a common stand.

This gives Prabhakaran two advantages. He can go to war on the grounds that the UPFA govt refused to negotiate on the basis of the ISGA. And he can go to war against a government that is internally divided, thereby dividing even its anti-LTTE Sinhalese base, and perhaps the Armed Forces.

There are those intelligent Sri Lankans who have figured that Prabhakaran may not really want to resume talks, and thus keeps shifting the goal posts, but they are not intelligent enough to have figured why that is. They implicitly assume that he wants to freeze the situation, which assumption could be ruled out by any careful reading of his Mahaveera speech. The continuance of the status quo is precisely what he wants to avoid, change, and overturn. That leaves only one other logical possibility: he does not wish to resume talks because he intends to make war.

This is borne out by his (pre-tsunami) moves on the ground: the accelerated campaign of leaflets, loudhailer addresses and video screenings in schools and tutories in the North-east, the injunction to Mahaveera families to move to the Wanni, the instructions to the public what to do in the event of war, the collections and storage of rations. Having ratcheted up the war machine in this manner, Prabhakaran would find it difficult if not impossible to unwind it except at the loss of face among his cadre, which he can ill afford with Karuna still in the wings.

Second Wave

All this was of course before ‘9’ on December 26th. Right now Mr Prabhakaran must be doing the math: which side, which military machine was most affected? Which side can absorb the shock more? How many fighters should he deeply for relief and reconstruction efforts and for how long? Dare he go for it or should he wait for a decent interval? Would that mean passing up a great advantage, given that the Sri Lankan armed forces are wholly preoccupied with rescue and relief? Can he use the disaster to reinforce his propaganda, and should he wait for that propaganda offensive to unfurl? Prabhakaran will rethink, making a detour through the rubble of the tsunami, reinforcing his claim to the ISGA, reaching out even further, to the world.

I think that Prabhakaran will seek to use this disaster in five ways:

1. Permit a humanitarian crisis to develop which can reinforce the argument of the need for an ISGA

2. Use the absence of the ISGA and the travails of the Tamils as moral argument for a final leap to separation

3. Establish stronger ties with the international community especially international civil society, and attain de-facto recognition.

4. Siphon-off funds and relief materials for his army.

5. Use the issue of resettlement of the now vastly greater number of displaced, as a battering ram against the high security zones.

This can be prevented or minimised if the Sri Lankan state steps into the vacuum and is the engine of relief and rehabilitation for all its citizens, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim, in a transparently fair, equitable and efficient manner. Right now the state is facing two contending gravitational pulls, emanating from two power centres: egalitarian-populist demands on scarce resources from/for the sensitive South, and an internationally sensitive North and East. This historic disaster has not obliterated our essential bipolarity. The waves having receded, that reality is more starkly visible.

If relief and reconstruction are done wrong we shall end up with a more populist-xenophobic Sinhala South and an even more domestically alienated and internationally networked Tamil and Muslim North-east. Done right, we can, with the international community, restructure while we construct, not simply re-construct: we can construct a new country and its precursor, a new consciousness, or at least remould and reform the old.

We now have the world’s unprecedented attention, solidarity, sympathy and support. Conceived in pain and tragedy, this moment is unique, historic and precious. It is also fragile, and will never come again. Meanwhile our ethno-regional tectonic plates are moving.