Covetous eyes on Sri Lanka's strategic
jewel By Ramtanu Maitra
After
protecting Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) chief and
fellow Norwegian Tryggve Tellefsen since October 23,
when he was first accused of aiding rebel Tamil Tigers
by Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's Peoples
Alliance (PA) party, Norway's Deputy Foreign Minister
Vidar Helgesen finally announced Tellefsen's replacement
with General Trond Furuhovde on January 16. Furuhovde
was the first SLMM chief and had preceded Tellefsen.
The Norwegian's replacement and the incident
behind it shed new light on the political fight that
erupted between Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe in November, and point to the strategic
churning around Sri Lanka, the island nation off the
southern coast of India at the crossroads between the
Middle East and the rest of Asia.
In addition to
Norway, India and the US have remained unseen
string-pullers in Sri Lanka's latest effort to resolve
the decades-old insurgency by the island's Tamil
minority led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam
(LTTE).
Not surprisingly, Sri Lanka's
Trincomalee - a "strategic jewel" that is considered one
of the best deep sea ports in the world, and which lies
in the Tigers' turf - is at the center of the
maneuvering.
Peacekeeper's faux pas In October, the PA, the coalition party behind
Kumaratunga, complained in parliament that Tellefsen,
using the authority of his office, had alerted the Tamil
Tigers so that they could evade capture. According to
the PA, the Sri Lankan navy had spotted a rebel Sea
Tiger ship in Sri Lankan waters, and asked for monitors
from the SLMM to go with them to apprehend the
suspicious ship. The PA says that Tellefsen telephoned
the rebels to inquire whether it was one of their
vessels - in effect forewarning the Tigers. The ship in
question fled.
Meanwhile, Kumaratunga was
growing increasingly uneasy over Norway's pro-Tiger bias
in its involvement in the ongoing peace talks between
Colombo and the Tigers. Initially, the SLMM, set up in
February 2002 by the LTTE and the government of Sri
Lanka, comprised 25-30 persons representing Norway,
Iceland, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. But by June last
year, the mission was strengthened, and now comprises 47
representatives, including naval monitors, the majority
from Norway.
The PA's finger-pointing at
Tellefsen is not an isolated incident. Many observers in
Sri Lanka were complaining that the SLMM, under the
pretext of evenhandedness, was doing a whole lot to
protect the Tigers' interests. On June 14 last year, for
instance, the Sri Lankan navy sank the LTTE ship,
Shioshin. Frederica Jansz of The Sunday Leader newspaper
reports that when her newspaper contacted Tellefsen, he
said the SLMM was still in the process of gathering all
information from both parties concerned and would only
be in a position to make a clarifying statement
thereafter. No SLMM monitors were present at the time of
the confrontation.
One might wonder why not. A
mere 24 hours before the incident, The Sunday Leader
points out, an LTTE leader had told Tellefsen that
increasing interference with LTTE ships in
Tiger-controlled areas and harassment of Sea Tigers, the
Tiger navy, would lead to a serious confrontation
between the two sides if not checked. Tellefsen was in
the Tiger-dominated town of Killinochchi on Friday, June
13, together with a delegation from the SLMM.
Kumaratunga strikes Following the
PA's accusation before parliamentarians, Kumaratunga
declared Tellefsen persona non-grata on October
23. Tellefsen had to leave Sri Lanka, but Helgesen and
other Norwegian authorities kept Tellefsen's sacking at
bay.
The Norwegian daily Aftenposten wrote
recently that Tellefsen was forced to work from Oslo
with the remaining members of SLMM in Sri Lanka, using
the telephone and email. This charade might have
continued longer, but New Delhi intervened on behalf of
the Sri Lankan president, and Norway let the Tigers'
good friend go.
On November 23 last year, while
premier Wickremesinghe was in Washington receiving kudos
for his government's on-going talks with the Tigers,
whom the United States had officially identified in 2002
as a terrorist outfit, Kumaratunga proceeded to topple
the Norwegian-pulled apple cart. Kumaratunga sacked
defense minister Tilak Marapana, accusing him of
allowing the Tigers to use the Norwegian-brokered
ceasefire that had been in place for 20 months to
strengthen militarily. She also fired interior minister
John Amaratunga, who controls the police, and mass
communications minister Imthiaz Bakeer Markar, who
controls the state-run media. These three were
considered the most powerful of Wickremesinghe's
ministers.
The president announced the dismissal
of the three ministers three days after the Tigers
unveiled power-sharing in their formal proposals. She
pointed out that she took this step "after careful
consideration, in order to prevent further deterioration
of the security situation in the country". Kumaratunga
was acting on the belief, held by many Sri Lankans, that
the peace process has led to a legitimization of the
Tigers and their control of large chunks of the
country's territory even though the group remains banned
in countries from India to the US.
Kumaratunga's
drastic move no doubt rattled not only Wickremesinghe,
but also some in Washington with whom he was then
visiting. "We certainly hope that these political
tensions do not delay progress on peace talks ... " one
unnamed official said, in a veiled attack on
Kumaratunga. Washington made clear at that point whose
side it would be on in case a full-fledged power
struggle was unleashed in Sri Lanka between the
president and the prime minister. The growing US
interest in the Sri Lankan peace talks is particularly
intriguing as there was no evidence in Sri Lanka of any
al-Qaeda involvement, Washington's ostensible priority
concern.
Trincomalee to the fore The
revived US interest in Sri Lankan affairs centers, no
doubt, on the old Trincomalee port. Trincomalee, located
on the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka, has a slightly
higher percentage of Tamils than Sinhalese (the majority
community) or Muslims. The Tamils, who mostly live in
the north and the east, claim they have been
discriminated against in job allocation, land use and
education by governments run by the majority community.
Trincomalee, meanwhile, is considered by
military experts as one of the best deep seat ports in
the world. Moreover, it is situated strategically on the
sea lanes through which oil is carried from the Middle
East to east and far-eastern Asia. According to
observers, Trincomalee is a "strategic jewel". For
several decades, the Pentagon had shown interest in this
port, but during the Ronald Reagan administration
interest appeared to have waned.
The recent
revival of interest in Trincomalee in the Pentagon can
then only be associated with the growing overall US
interest in acquiring bases for intervention and rapid
deployment for the sake of developing a quick strike
capability in the general area. According to
anti-imperialist American strategists such as Chalmers
Johnson, "once upon a time" you could trace the spread
of imperialism by counting up colonies. Says Johnson:
"America's version of the colony is the military base.
By following the changing politics of global basing, one
can learn much about our ever-larger imperial stance and
the militarism that grows with it. Militarism and
imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each
thrives off the other."
Visits to Sri Lanka by
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and ranking
US government and military officials in recent times,
and the strong statements repeatedly issued by the US
ambassador in Sri Lanka, Ashley Wills, are noteworthy.
Is the US seeking a base? Soon after
the ceasefire between Colombo and the Tigers was
announced in February 2002, the Straits Times of
Singapore put out an article, perhaps to test the Indian
reaction. "As rebel fire ceases in Sri Lanka, the United
States has been laying the groundwork to deploy its
military personnel to the strategically located country.
This move will both aid its campaign in Afghanistan and
keep New Delhi's growing influence in check," the
newspaper reported. "Located between the Middle East and
Asia, Sri Lanka could ease the transport of US military
ships, troops and equipment. Its port, Trincomalee, is
one of the world's deepest natural ports and could serve
as a refueling station for the US military."
It
has been generally reported that Sri Lanka and the US
have been discussing military cooperation for some time
now. The two countries have been negotiating an
Acquisition and Cross-Service Agreement (ACSA) for
several months. The ACSA would allow US forces to
procure food, fuel, ammunition and transport in Sri
Lanka at the same rates as those paid by Sri Lankan
forces.
But the US's move, if there ever was a
formal one, was not in any manner challenged by New
Delhi. In fact, New Delhi had struck up an excellent
relationship, centered around economic and trade issues,
with Wickremesinghe, who, to put it mildly, was gung-ho
on the peace talks. Signals emanated from New Delhi
suggesting that India was watching every move the
Norwegians made like a hawk. But at the same time, New
Delhi exhibited the utmost caution. Every time the star
Norwegian peacemaker, Erik Solheim, visited India, he
was cordially received. This despite India's discovery
of the paw-marks of the Tigers in India's turbulent
northeast, and the Tiger-Naxalite alliance in India's
southern states in recent years. In other words, India
and the US concurred in seeing that the peace talks
succeed.
But Sri Lankan observers point out that
India was fully aware of the growing American interest
in Trincomalee. It is perhaps for that reason that soon
after the Straits Times article appeared, Indian High
Commissioner Gopalkrishna Gandhi, along with other
embassy officials, paid a visit to the Trincomalee
harbor. Gandhi's inspection of the oil tanks located in
the harbor was a reminder of the abiding Indian interest
in Sri Lanka.
One result of Gandhi's trip to
Trincomalee is an Indo-Sri Lankan agreement to lease
part of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation's 99 oil tanks,
each with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes, to the Indian
Oil Corp. The deal was signed in New Delhi in June,
2002. The deal was not adequately analyzed at the time,
but it could be Kumaratunga's way of keeping India in
Trincomalee and fending off the US pressure. The other
major commercial establishments already in the city are
a flour mill owned by Prima Ceylon, a subsidiary of
Prima Singapore, and the Tokyo Cement Co plant, a
subsidiary of Japan's Mitsui.
India
alerted What drew the attention of Indian
authorities to developments surrounding the ceasefire
agreement was the report they received from former Sri
Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar during a
visit last August to New Delhi to "alert and sensitize"
Indian leaders about the "grave situation" on the
island.
The former Sri Lankan foreign minister,
who is now a senior adviser to Kumaratunga, pointed out
during extensive discussions with Indian National
Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, External Affairs
Minister Yashwant Sinha, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh,
former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal and Congress
leader K Natwar Singh, that the Tamil Tiger guerrillas
have tightened their stranglehold over the strategic
eastern port of Trincomalee, taking advantage of the
ceasefire. Armed with a map of the harbor and the LTTE
camps and bases that have sprung up around it,
Kadirgamar also provided Indian leaders with details of
preparations being made by the Tigers to seize control
of Trincomalee port at any moment. This revelation
startled the Indian officials, who made it clear that
the development was of concern to New Delhi. Kadirgamar
did not make a similar pilgrimage to either Oslo or
Washington.
Interestingly, the ill-fated
Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 contains an annexure
stating: "Trincomalee or any other port in Sri Lanka
will not be made available to military use by any
country in a manner prejudicial to India's interests."
Further that "the work of restoring and operating the
Trincomalee oil tank farm will be undertaken as a joint
venture between India and Sri Lanka."
In early
January, when Kumaratunga was in Islamabad attending the
South Asian Association of Regional Countries (SAARC)
summit, she told reporters that Sri Lanka is ready to
work out a defense pact with India. Within days, a
defense team from Sri Lanka arrived in New Delhi to work
out the details. It is yet to be seen how the defense
pact gets formulated and until such time as it is made
public, it is unlikely that Washington will respond one
way or the other.
The LTTE has already expressed
serious concern over the envisaged Indo-Sri Lankan
Defense Agreement, arguing that it could have
far-reaching negative consequences for the current peace
process, sources told TamilNet on January 19. Anton
Balasingham, the chief negotiator and political
strategist of the LTTE, has also reportedly conveyed his
organizations' objections to the government of India.
The same Balasingham told the Norwegians that
the proposed defense agreement between New Delhi and
Colombo might upset the balance of forces to the
disadvantage of the LTTE. What "balance of power"
Balasingham is referring to is difficult to fathom,
unless he is still thinking of an independent Tamil
nation.
How solid is the ceasefire? The peace talks have been stalled since early
November as the power struggle between Kumaratunga and
Wickremesinghe heated up in Colombo. Kumaratunga has
further increased tensions by bringing her political
party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), and the
pro-socialist Sinhala party, the Janatha Vimukti
Peramuna (JVP), together. Sri Lankan observers say that
this alliance is a clear parting of the ways between
Kumaratunga and the Wickremesinghe-led United National
Front (UNF) government.
The SLFP-JVP alliance
has rightly pointed out that the February 2002 ceasefire
agreement gave away too much to the LTTE. At the same
time, the LTTE has all the reasons to consider the
SLFP-JVP alliance as a move directed against the
continuation of peace talks. The JVP is against
devolution and believes the ethnic conflict should be
resolved only by administrative decentralization.
Kumaratunga, on the other hand, is the only Sinhala
leader to have unilaterally put on the table a
far-reaching devolution package to resolve the conflict
as early as 1995. The JVP's condition for the
short-lived alliance it had with the PA in 2001 was a
freeze on plans for devolution. While no such condition
was mentioned in forming the alliance this time, the
SLFP-JVP "memorandum of understanding" clearly states
their differences on the devolution issue. The SLFP-JVP
combine says it believes in a "negotiated settlement" to
the ethnic conflict.
The declaration of the
SLFP-JVP alliance is an indication that Kumaratunga is
considering an early parliamentary election to break the
cohabitation deadlock between her and the UNF
government. In reaching an understanding with the JVP,
Kumaratunga, who has sidled quite close to New Delhi in
recent months, has linked the political fortunes of the
PA, of which the SLFP is the main constituent, with a
party that was once virulently anti-India and heavily
dominated by anti-Tamil, Sinhala chauvinists.
Kumaratunga had hinted at snap polls at the
beginning of the year when she said her party is ready
to face the electorate at any time. Washington has
indicated that it does not encourage a snap poll. There
is no doubt that New Delhi does not want a snap poll to
take place right now. Kumaratunga sent Economic Reforms
Minister Milinda Moragoda as her emissary to India on
January 23 to discuss the island's worsening political
crisis and the troubled peace process against a backdrop
of new proposals to resolve the tug-of-war, officials
said. She held talks with Sinha and Mishra over the
weekend.
Since the SLFP-JVP alliance has been
announced, the Tigers have warned at least twice that
the ceasefire could break down. Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger
rebels have increased their numbers of child soldiers in
spite of a ceasefire, the United Nations reports. The
BBC's Frances Harrison in Colombo says there is a real
possibility that the child soldiers may fight again. Sri
Lankan newspapers report major rallies in the
Tamil-dominated districts in northern and eastern Sri
Lanka as an indication that the Tamils are preparing for
confrontation once again.
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Jan 31, 2004
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