Geneva, India, And American Imperialism
Izeth Hussain
At the moment of writing I have not had access to the full text of the US Draft Resolution on Sri Lanka that has been presented at the UNHRC Meeting in Geneva. But the most important fact about it is known: there will be no meaningful action of any sort at the present stage, and there will be such action only after the lapse of another year if Sri Lanka fails to show that there has been progress in taking credible action on internal investigations into war crimes etc. In the meanwhile there will be no international investigations into war crimes and no sanctions, both of which were being confidently anticipated. We don’t of course know what might happen by the time of the final vote on the Resolution. But it does seem that what threatened to be a dazzling Western pyrotechnic display at the expense of Sri Lanka has turned out to be a damp squib – not pathos for Sri Lanka but bathos for the US and the West.
What went wrong for the latter? Probably nothing. We are probably witnessing the unfolding of a game plan worked out between the US and India in 2011, as I argued in my article The Ban Ki-moon Conspiracy.(Island of May 2, 2011). Everything falls into place, in my view, if were recognize the fact that the outcome in Geneva depends not on the US, not on the Eu, not on the international community, but on India as I argued in my article Dawn on the Ethnic Front? In the Island of February 17. I quote from that article: “The present expectation is that the UNHRC vote will go against us I believe that the best way of countering that possibility would be to get India to act on our behalf, not necessarily openly but effectively. There are several reasons why India could have very special clout with the Western bloc. It is a regional power and an emerging great power, for which reason the Western bloc would very probably be prepared to recognize that Sri Lanka is India’s turf.
