THE NORTHEASTERN MONTHLY July 2006
Page7

India’s concerns in worsening Sri Lankan situation
By J.S. Tissainayagam.

Though New Delhi has tried hard to keep up the subterfuge, nobody in Sri Lanka quite believed it. Despite all its protestations to the contrary, India has been intimately involved in Sri Lanka’s ‘peace process.’ At the same time it has also been making inroads into the island’s economy through investment and trade.
But of late, ever since the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse came to power, Delhi’s posturing has changed. It has been more forthright in its statements on affairs in Sri Lanka and is alleged to have admonished the Sri Lankan government hierarchy on more than one occasion on human rights violations and other such misderneanours.
India has also alluded to tile ethnic conflict as a symptom of the unfulfilled aspirations of Tamil people, which the Sri Lanka government was continuing to ignore by resorting to force. Though pointed references to the aspirations to the “Tamil people” is usually an attempt to define Tamil aspirations as distinct to that of the LTTE’s and thereby divide and rule, one has to admit it is an improvement on New Delhi’s usual equivocation.
There are a number of reasons for this change in the posture of the Indian government. One no doubt is the astuteness of the LTTE in pursuing its political goals. The Tigers’ judicious mix of politics, diplomacy and war such as the moves to marginalise the SLMM and selective use of force without having to be blamed for negating the CPA in its entirety, show their growing ability to negotiate the pitfalls of the international system. The response of the international community has been the now-predictable proscription of the Tigers by states and regional organisations, some of which, such as the European Union’s ban, the rebels have used to their advantage.
The second set of problems is connected to political developments in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. One of them has been the ability of the Rajapakse administration to successfully negotiate assistance from two countries that India considers its rivals in the Asian region— Pakistan and China.
Both countries have been responsive to supply Sri Lanka with military equipment in the past quite unlike New Delhi. While India has been undecided on the Defense Pact with Sri Lanka and limited its military supplies to non-offensive weapons — even its supply of radars to Colombo has met with stiff criticism in Tamil Nadu — both Islamabad and Beijing have been more forthcoming.
Second, though Delhi is supposed to have told Colombo that it is not worried from where it procures weapons as long as it does not affect India’s strategic interests in the region, the fact is that such procurements have to be seen in their overall context.
China’s growing interests in the Indian Ocean is well known. These interests are said to be twofold: (1) hemming in India by formatting a ring around its Asian rival, that is now cooperating with the sole superpower the United States for mutual benefit and (2) to develop strategic partnerships with countries in the Indian Ocean region in fear that expanding US interests in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean might choke its (China’s) oil route from the Gulf.
Such strategic partnerships include involvement in projects that have both economic and military significance. For instance, China has pumped massive amount of finds into the development of the port of Gwadar on the western littoral of Pakistan on the Arabian Sea. Gwadar not only gives China a facility in close proximity to the Straits of Hormuz through which a large proportion of the world’s oil from the Persian Gulf passes, but is also a listening post to monitor US military and Other activity in the Gulf.
Gwadar is only one port in China’s strategic presence in the lndian Ocean it calls a ‘string of pearls.’ The other ‘pearls’ include Marao in the Maldives, the importance of which prompted New Delhi to increase its defense cooperation with the Gayoom regime including gifting a fast attack craft. Myanmar from which not only is Beijing purchasing oil and natural gas, but supposed to be using part of its territory as a listening post of Indian maritime activity in the Mdaman and Nicobar islands. Beijing also has a naval presence in Bangladesh and Thailand. Though these countries dot the Indian Ocean sea route from the Gulf to China, they also form a girdle around India. New Delhi’s fears of encirclement are only enhanced by China’s influence in the political developments of Nepal as well.
In Sri Lanka, China’s hand is not evident as yet of a strategic presence. However, Beijing has become more influential after President Mahinda Rajapakse ascended to power than before. Rajapakse, despite protests by the Catholic Church and others went through with the Noracholai power generation deal. The Chinese are also deeply involved in the developing the Hambantota port. Hambantota opens onto the sea lanes south of Sri Lanka where a substantial volume of sea traffic both commercial and military bound eastwards passes.
Increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean, which New Delhi considers as part of its sphere of influence, the purchase of weapons from by the Colombo regime from Pakistan, seen in conjunction with the LTTE’s deft maneuvering of the international system could be why India is becoming more vocal in Sri Lankan affairs.
However, New Delhi’s uneasiness about the situation in Colombo is not such that it is willing to go along with the donor co-chairs to the Sri Lankan peace process in finding a solution to island’s ethnic problem. Since India regards Sri Lanka as being within its legitimate sphere of influence, it is not happy where it is forced to cooperate with die co¬-chairs (US, EU, Japan and Norway), all which are firmly established as part of the western bloc. New Delhi wants to go it alone. Besides, the co-chairs are pushing the Oslo Declaration as the constitutional basis of a settlement, which favors regional autonomy, whereas India is happier with the Indian federal structure, as prototype for a settlement in Sri Lanka.
India is using the refugee situation in Tamil Nadu as a way whereby it could resume a more comprehensive involvement in the affairs of Sri Lanka — especially the northeast. And it is using Tamil Nadu leaders rather than those of the central government to whip up sentiments about the displacement from northeast, while seeing to it that things do not go out of control as it did in the 1980s.
Muthuvel Karunanidhi, leader of the DMK and the chief minister of Tamil Nadu speaking to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Indian National Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said that he had told Arumugain Thondaman: “The central government’s policy (on Sri Lanka) will be the (Tamil Nadu) state’s policy.”
Says M. R. Narayanan Swamy, well-known political analyst and author of a study of LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran Inside an Elusive Mind, “What was left unsaid (by Karunanidhi) was if New Delhi considers the… LTTE a terrorist outfit, or draws a distinction between the Tigers and the Tamil people, then that will be Tamil Nadu’s view too” (IANS 06.06.06).
New Delhi has been indeed drawing that distinction — in fact in the past it has cautioned Sri Lankan leaders that the just aspirations of the Tamils have to be met. What is more, it has also been promoting the anti-LTTE Tamil groups such as Karuna’s TMVP, the EPDP and the EPRLF (Vàrathar Group) as part of a ‘democratic alternative’ to the LTTE. These groups are paramilitary units working with the army, while the EPDP has a toehold in parliament as well. They have the support of the Sri Lanka government too to emerge as a contending force to the Tigers, hoping the low intensity war in the northeast weakens the latter.
A consideration paramount in Indian thinking is that frill scale military conflict should not commence soon because it could result in the LTTE taking the upper hand through military conquest that will undermine New Delhi’s plan entirely. Therefore, it is in the interest of Colombo and Delhi to foster a low intensity conflict, compel refugees to become an issue in India and use the disenchantment created by continued killings of individuals, including Tamil civilians, to emerge as apolitical and existential problem in the northeast. It could give the space for New Delhi to move in through its anti-LTTE proxies.
On the other hand, thinking is said to be evolving within South Block and elsewhere in the Indian establishment that the Tigers are too powerful a force and too well entrenched in power, at least in the north of Sri Lanka, to be dislodged by Colombo and its Tamil cronies-This school of thought believes that dialogue between the LTTE and Delhi has to become a reality. However this school remains a minority.
An impediment for a more favorable impression of the Tigers is-the negative perception they have among influential sections of the Indian population, mostly due to the media. If such a mindset has to be changed the air surrounding the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has to be cleared. LTTE chief negotiator Dr. Anton Balasingham has said that his words to NDTV on the expression of regret over the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were misquoted. It is true perhaps. But strangely, one feels that it might have set in motion a process.
The sinister design behind Karuna’s child recruitment drive
The Karuna group’s recent drive of recruiting children after abducting them from the government—controlled areas in the east has a design far more subtle than merely replenishing its cadre. The exercise is also a sinister form of achieving the political and social legitimacy the group is desperately looking for from the people of the east.
In the wake of the parents’ tearful appeal that their children be released the group has said they will allow the parents to meet the new recruits but that they might have to come to the camps the group is running in the government-controlled areas of the east.
The meeting is to take place on the day the child cadres’ training comes to an end and during the passing out ceremony. The Karuna group hopes to transport the public to their camp and capture their arrival on video. It is hoping to then use the video, without showing the context in which it was taken, as popular endorsement the group is getting from the eastern public.
The fear however is that the LTTE will be lying in wait for the young recruits. The moment they are mobilised the LTTE, as it does to other cadres of the Karuna group, will hunt them down. There is going to be mayhem in the east.
But it appears Karuna hopes to turn such tragedy too to profit. I-Ic is hoping that the LTTE will actually kill his new recruits — at least some of them — because he could turn the tragedy into a public spectacle of mourning thereby adding support to his cause as well as to the LTTE’s discomfiture.
It is this sinister design of augmenting ‘support’ that has led the Karuna group to even agreeing to meet representatives of TJNICEF on child soldiers. The renegade and his followers have designs that have much greater import than merely acknowledging abductions and negotiating their release, or for that matter replenishing its cadre.
What is also interesting is that this bizarre tactic of demonstrating support was undertaken by the Tamil National Army (TNA) in the late 1 980s. The TNA was a rag-tag-and-bobtail armed group raised by the IPKF to offer protection to the then North and East Provincial Council (NEPC) government from local cadre. The identical fate that befell them awaits Karun’s child recruits too.
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