Real enemies of reconciliation

Editorial-November 15, 2013, 8:17 pm 

Not all foreign leaders gathered in Colombo for CHOGM 2013 have read the situation here correctly. Some of them seem to believe that reconciliation could be attained overnight if Sri Lanka does as it is told by them.

This country has been recovering from three decades of war and psychological wounds inflicted by the conflict are still fresh though more than four years have passed since its conclusion. The healing process cannot be accelerated. It takes time and haste needs to be avoided. This doesn’t mean that the government should be allowed to drag its feet indefinitely on vital issues which should be addressed immediately for the benefit of hapless people in the former war zone. It may be pressured to hasten its pace, where necessary, but in a constructive manner with what it has already done appreciated. Attempts to force it to strive for the impossible at the expense of national security and its own political survival are counterproductive.

Singapore Foreign Affairs and Law Minister, K. Shanmugam is one of the few foreign dignitaries who have appreciated the difficulties in the process of achieving reconciliation and realised that it is not something that could be forced down someone’s throat. Commending the Northern PC polls as a step in the right direction, he has told the Commonwealth Foreign Ministers’ Meeting that political reconciliation cannot be imposed by external parties, and isolating Sri Lanka will not automatically result in improvements in the welfare of its citizens. Sadly, some heads of state have not realised this simple truth.

Those who are in an inordinate hurry to bring about reconciliation had no qualms about waiting for thirty long years without lifting a finger to help the victims of terrorism. Foreign leaders who either mistakenly believe that supporting LTTE fronts in the post-war period is the way to help Sri Lankan Tamils or are doing so deliberately to further their own agendas only ruin chances of reconciliation in this country. Clausewitz famously said war was an extension of politics by other means. Going by the current diplomatic offensive against Sri Lanka by some Commonwealth leaders sympathetic to pro-LTTE groups one may wonder whether this kind of hostile diplomacy is war by other means.

Reconciliation, as Minister Shanmugam has said, should emerge from within Sri Lanka. So long as people who abhor terrorism believe that foreign governments are helping what remains of the LTTE achieve its goal politically, the chances of reconciliation are zero. The Indian government blundered by refusing to send Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the Colombo CHOGM and being seen in the process as putty in the hands of the pro-LTTE politicians in Tamil Nadu.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to India prior to attending CHOGM and his much-publicised statement that India, Canada and Britain are on the same wavelength where Sri Lanka is concerned haven’t done the reconciliation process in this country any good. When powerful nations pander to the whims and fancies of pro-terror groups it is only natural that they are seen to be partial to the LTTE and their intentions become suspect. They are the real enemies of reconciliation in that they strengthen the hands of terror backers and at the same time, albeit unwittingly, provide the hardliners on the other side with an excuse to resist efforts being made to evolve a solution.

Let all those who have been barking up the wrong tree as regards Sri Lanka’s problem be urged to heed Minister Shanmugam’s words of wisdom and desist from acting like bullies. Reconciliation is something they should try to facilitate; they cannot father it forcibly.