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My Belly is White
THIS is a revealing book on Sri Lanka’s now dead peace process, written by one who was in the thick of it all. Austin Fernando was Defence Secretary when Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe signed the Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement (CFA) with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in February 2002. In no time, critics, dominantly from the Sinhalese majority, began to accuse the government of betrayal. The opposition and the
media viciously targeted Fernando, whose job was to ensure that neither
the military nor the Tigers spiked the prospects of long-term peace. He
had no direct control over the LTTE. But he could influence the
military. Critics thought he was stifling the armed forces while
allowing the Tigers to blossom. In this packed-with-information 927-page
volume, he argues that the allegations against him were mostly false, at
times bordering on fantasy and libel. "The much-maligned
government paid a huge political toll because of its commitment to the
peace process," he moans. "Superficial and sometimes immature
rationalisation of highly complicated, intricate and sensitive issues
was routinely used by political opponents and the media for hypocritical
advantage." The reference is to the defeat Wickremesinghe’s
United National Party suffered in April 2004, coinciding strangely with
an event that severely dented the Tigers from within: an unprecedented
split in the LTTE, led by Karuna, the group’s then eastern regional
commander. By then, the LTTE had walked away from the peace talks. Fernando’s grouse is that for all her bluster, she did nothing concrete to weaken the LTTE. "Our approach was different. It was to corner the LTTE through negotiations and international pressures." As one who was left wing in his student days, Fernando thought that peace could be brought to Sri Lanka through give-and-take, without compromising the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. But making peace was no easy task. The military, he says, had no faith in the LTTE; the ceasefire pact was not a perfect instrument; the Sinhalese radicals were opposed to truce; the militarist LTTE would not trust the government; the media did not give the government breathing space. Thus the search for the elusive peace took place "under great difficulties, complexities and under great stress". Why did Sri Lanka sign the truce in 2002? One key reason was that the war was bleeding Colombo. One sortie attack by the air force costs Rs 2.5 million, and "we fire 5 to 10 of these attacks per day on the average when the war is on". When he took charge, the defence ministry did not have pellets for training. Add to it, the LTTE would just not give up. Fernando is no admirer of the LTTE. He calls them "unpredictable", "stubborn" and "ruthless" and accuses them of trying to have their way at every turn, of creating "many-faceted problems". For one accused of appeasement, his understanding is revealing: "LTTE cadres suspected everybody, and breaking into their hearts was extremely difficult. The outer rim of the LTTE mind was very thick and rigid and also the core. Their hearts were of hard rock." But the Tigers "had a long range vision, mission, strategising and action planning." Fernando, however, contradicts himself. "LTTE cadres would not change their stripes just because their leader has signed on a dotted line." Eighty pages later, he says: "They changed their stripes (so) fast (that) one cannot place trust on promises made by the LTTE." Fernando has a grouse against Erik Solheim, Norway’s first Special Envoy to Sri Lanka. He calls him "stubborn" and accuses him of "favouring the LTTE for some unknown reasons." In the same breath, he gives credit to the Norwegians for persisting and coming up, in December 2002, with what came to be called the Oslo declaration, in which the LTTE agreed to explore a possible federal solution to the ethnic conflict. Among the reasons the peace process failed, he says, were shortcomings in the CFA as well as "negative media reporting", which turned many against the truce. Fernando candidly admits that the government he worked for followed a strategy: "giving a sense of dignity, a relatively free hand to the LTTE other than in HSZs (high security zones), building an international safety net for further stabilisation of the peace process, strengthening of confidence building measures to consequently lock the LTTE to peacemaking." And "compromises were possible if properly approached, planned and executed, even with the LTTE". But critics saw "such close understanding and public relations by us as our sympathy towards the LTTE. In both parties there were individuals or groups who would consider that war was the panacea to every illness." No wonder, the peace process kept getting weakened. "Its abrogation in January 2008 (by the present regime) sounded like issuing a delayed Death Certificate to a decomposed corpse!" — IANS
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