Gwynne Dyer holds up a mirror on Sri Lanka's future
by Dayan Jayatilleka
| “…there have been much uglier ends to long and brutal wars like this one” -Gwynne Dyer (“Sri Lanka’s future”, Dec 24, 2009,) |
It usually takes an objective, empathetic outsider to hold up a mirror before us, reflecting our achievements and our failures.
We have two in our midst: Padraig Colman who publishes in the prestigious Le Monde Diplomatique and Kath Noble, who sticks loyally to the local press when she is easily good enough to write for papers back home in the UK. Yet it is the more credentialed professional Gwynne Dyer, a commentator on world affairs whose syndicated column appears in forty five countries, author of several books (most recently on climate change) and an independent liberal-progressive if slightly cynical voice, who has best captured the considerable Sri Lankan achievement, failures and dangers ahead, as we close out this momentous year 2009 and head into a decisive 2010.
His terse re-counting in his Christmas Eve column “Sri Lanka’s Future” (Dec 24), which has appeared in the most diverse parts of the globe from Dec 24 to 29th, 2009, is a vital corrective to the intellectual and moral failure of the Sri Lankan intelligentsia to respect the successes and strengths of our state and society and the collective achievement of our peoples, while being critically aware of our flaws and fallacies. We either trumpet our triumphs with no regard to what has been left undone and needs to be done, or we flagellate our state and collective state of being for our failures with no acknowledgement of our hard fought and won successes. We are unaware or ignore either our strengths or our weaknesses. Neither is a sound thing to do and indeed undermines the health of the body politic and corrodes the social consciousness.
Gwynne Dyer’s opening paragraph is the most succinct recounting of what we, Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans have done this year, of which we must be proud, take credit for and give credit where credit is due. Those living today can judge themselves and their worth by the role they have played and the contribution they have made to these triumphs as well as to the raising and tackling of the tasks still at hand. This is what he says:
| “First, the good news. Sri Lanka’s government, whose 26-year war against the separatist Tamil Tigers ended in total victory last May, is keeping its promise to let all of the 300,000 Tamil civilians who were captured in the final battle go home again. Not only that, but it is going to hold a free election next month–so free that the ruling party might even lose it.” |
He tackles the myth that there was a peaceful political solution to the issue of the Tigers.
| “It’s easy to understand why the government headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defence Minister Gotabaya Rajapkasa, insisted on a decisive victory over the Tamil Tigers, whose insurgency had caused 70,000 deaths over the years. There had been cease-fires and peace talks over the years, but the Tigers never really abandoned their goal of total independence for the Tamil majority areas in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.
That was utterly unacceptable to the Sinhala-speaking majority, so the war was bound to end in a last stand by the Tigers sooner or later. They could have carried on with suicide bombings and assassinations forever, but their territorial ambitions drove them to seize and hold ground with a more or less conventional military force. (They even had a navy and an air force of sorts.) That made them vulnerable to military defeat.” |
Dyer then deals with the issue of Western calls for ceasefires. His conclusion is the most objective answer to those commentators who bleat about the head on assault on an area where the LTTE was making a last stand, in the midst of civilians. As if this weren’t part of Prabhakaran’s strategy for survival and as if any state which faltered or blinked, would not be playing into his hands as well as setting a precedent for terrorist movements all over the world. The message would have gone out that the tactic of mass hostage taking, from Beslan to Puthumathalan, (or embedding among pseudo hostages) works. The presence of the civilians was a problem that the Sri Lankan forces should have, had to and did take into account, NOT a factor that should have deterred a death blow to the Tigers. We got it more correct than most under the circumstances: neither agreeing to a getaway through “international auspices’ nor using, for the most part, air power and heavy weapons in the Zone despite Tiger shellfire from within the Zone.
| “All the well-meaning foreign pleas last May for a cease-fire to protect the Tamil civilians trapped with the Tigers were quite rightly ignored by the Sri Lankan forces. The Tigers always made sure that they had lots of innocent civilians around when they fought. The civilians absorbed a lot of the enemy fire, their deaths served to radicalise other Tamils–and cease-fires to protect civilians had frequently allowed the Tiger fighters to escape in the past.” |
Gwynne Dyer pretty much settles the dispute of who was responsible, decisively and by definition, for the military victory over the LTTE: the Rajapakse government.
| “All it took to make that happen was a government willing to devote all the resources of the state to building an army able to defeat the Tigers in stand-up battle, and tough enough to refuse all negotiations until the enemy was completely destroyed. The Rajapaksas provided that government.” (My emphasis – DJ) |
Dyer’s description of what that government did is also a description of what its predecessors failed to: fight a total war. He deploys a key term --“willing”-- which in turn indicates what was lacking in four governments preceding this one: the political will to defeat the Tigers and the clarity to have as the aim and objective of war, the “complete destruction” of the LTTE. I know this is true of the Premadasa presidency with which I worked closely, and the lacerating frustration I felt at my inability to convince the President that just such political will and clarity of objective towards the Tigers and the war, were the necessary conditions for guaranteeing the survival and sustainable success of his superb programs of development.
Columnist Dyer deals head on with the issue of incarceration or internment of large numbers of those Tamils who were with Prabhakaran almost to the last, a subject which warranted and requires rigorous critical scrutiny but on which much printers ink was absurdly expended in reproducing quotes about Nazi concentration camps and from Holocaust survivors! The international human rights community and their local fellow travelers seem to have forgotten that the Cubans who came across on the Mariel boatlift of 1980 during the tenure and at the invitation of the most liberal of western leaders, President Jimmy Carter, were confined in fenced off camps until there were riots with fatal casualties!
| “Nor was Colombo wrong to round up all 300,000 Tamil civilians who were caught up in the Tigers’ last stand. Any surviving fighters were bound to try to hide themselves among the civilians, so a protracted sorting-out process was needed. But the Sri Lankan government promised that everybody except suspected fighters would be released within six months–and it has kept its word, more or less.
The camps have been emptying out fast over the past couple of months, and Colombo promises that everybody will have gone home by the end of January. There are justifiable complaints that not enough is being done to help former detainees resettle, but there have been much uglier ends to long and brutal wars like this one”. That last sentence of that paragraph is the best and shortest possible answer to the UTHR-J wallahs and the rather more seriously adversarial “war crimes” lynch mob out there baying for the blood of Sri Lanka’s leaders and military for the crime of destroying their favorite underdogs, the Tigers. It bears repetition: “…but there have been much uglier ends to long and brutal wars like this one”. |
Gwynne Dyer’s column constitutes no grist to the mill of GOSL propagandists because he squarely addresses the main postwar problem.
| “The problem lies not in the past, but in the future. The Tamils are always going to be there, and the prospect of a peaceful future for Sri Lanka depends on reconciling them to coexistence with the Sinhalese in a state that treats both communities fairly.” |
He locates the upcoming election precisely against this backdrop and correctly critiques both candidates for their views on the ethnic issue which are hardly examples of enlightened reformism. Yes, we have no Obamas.
| “The bad news is that it does not much matter who wins that election. Both the incumbent and the challenger are committed Sinhalese nationalists whose policies towards the Tamil minority militate against any reconciliation between the two groups. Tamils are less than a fifth of the population, so if tough treatment is enough to keep them quiet, then Sri Lanka faces a peaceful future–but repression has not worked in the past. .. The trouble is that it took an ultranationalist Sinhalese regime to create the army that defeated the Tigers, and it is still in power. It does not want to welcome the Tamils back into equal citizenship, nor does it feel that it needs to.” |
Being the top class commentator he is, Gwynne Dyer does not stop with that and declare himself agnostic. Given the choice available, he clearly indicates that which he thinks would be the worse choice, the choice that is least likely to improve things; the one that is likely to be more dangerous:
| “The Rajapaksa government has called an early election for January 26 to exploit its victory and consolidate its hold on power–and if it should happen lose the election, then things may just get worse. (My emphasis-DJ)
The Rajapaksas’ challenger is none other than General Sarath Fonseka, who commanded the army that finally defeated the Tigers. The main opposition group in the Sinhala community, the United National Party, has banded together with nine smaller parties and put Fonseka up as their presidential candidate. Fonseka could actually win, for his role in the defeat of the Tigers was just as large as that of the Rajapaksas. But he is also just as uncompromising a Sinhalese nationalist: as the war was nearing a conclusion, he was heard to say that Sri Lanka “belongs to the Sinhalese... (Minorities) can live in this country with us, but they must not try to demand undue things.” Like equality, perhaps? That is the attitude that drove the Tamils into insurrection in the first place. The next time it wouldn’t take the same form, but it could guarantee another generation of misery, insecurity (and perhaps also tyranny) for the long-suffering people of Sri Lanka.” |
As a commentator on international affairs Gwynne Dyer rightly raises the prospect which well read but emotionally overwrought local commentators fail to address, a prospect which is far more dangerous than dynastic rule or endemic corruption, which incidentally does not occur at all in his essay. He mentions instead, in a cautionary aside, the T word: “tyranny”.
17 Comments
Gwynne Dyer makes so called Sri Lankan independent journalists look like just puppets or more than puppets.
They work for NGO s only for money.They buckled their(and others ) university life only doing politics( they had enough reasons ,being underclass in a remote villages and have seen their parents are iltreated by village heads or valawwa clan).And end of the term got nothing than a degree certificate or not even that.Not good enough to find a job in private /commercial company only lookfor Govt; jobs.
Then the next step ;easy to form up a NGO by themselves(Only need a professor's name to put forward,Heap of NGO s in the web looking for representatives in developing countries)Start writing against the government ,That makes more money and that's what west need.
So They call them Independent Journalists..
I think too much credit is assigned to a bunch of brothers who had only one choice in the wild west style. Get him or he gets you. Prabaharn had only only one political weapon - murder. So he must be credited for creating the brotherly resolve. The Tamil expat community is also to be credited. No body seems to understand them. On one hand they cried about Sinhalese atrocities while supporting Tamil ones. They felt India can be trashed. They felt too important to be ignored by the world and felt the Sinhalese to be too stupid. No other society has invested so much in the liberation of its people and got to a zero state - this is an achievement that the expat community and the Tamil intelligentsia should be given due credit for. So credit should be given to the right people. Also the UNP through peace - put tremendous pressure on a murderous organization, which did not know what to do with it self for some time - except to keep murdering dissent to entertain the expats. So Dayan, you got it wrong.
All it took to make that happen was a government willing to devote all the resources of the state to building an army able to defeat the Tigers in stand-up battle, and tough enough to refuse all negotiations until the enemy was completely destroyed. The Rajapaksas provided that government.” (My emphasis – DJ) The exact details of what this actually meant are slowly emerging. The video broadcast by chanel 4, the breaches of the 4th geneva conventions etc.More will be revealed as the truth leaks out of the Vanni. I wonder if Dyer and DJ would be as glibly supportive of this strategy if the people involved were sinhalese or citizens of a european country?
All Court Criers are ordered to shift to a level of frenzy - as the going gets bad. The white-washing brigade has not succeeded too much so far even with all resources at hand. The Pacha Gaha graduates have dissappointed.
The regime had little to show by way of performance or keeping pledges. It cannot take advantage of Elizabeth Taylor's blurt "Success is a deodorant that hides away all your past sins" And so the Big Chief flounders again fastly losing equilibrium - for he states "Everyone of the Chintanaya pledges have been fullfilled" Phew??
It is too much even for a nation that has shown the world - having been taken for regular rides on election promises - they are no quintessential born suckers. MR makes it worse. He appeals to an area of much concern to the people - Housing. With usual grin says "will give you 600,000 houses this year itself" And the more initiated wonder - because what is needed really are 450,000 houses.
The Trade Minister says prices of most essential foodstuffs are down. The team is told to go round the country and tell the people "we will give you all that you want - just vote us in". But there could be those even among the gullible who might wonder "the man had nearly 5 years and what on earth did he do during that time?"
But I think the skilled Dayan sees the prognosis of Dyer viz: "there's going to be a free election next month. So free the Govt might even lose it" and therefore manages to conceal his ultimate WMD in his article more, I suspect, because he has the savvy to read the writing on the wall. So he shifts to naked threat and inflicts the piece-de-resistance
"And if it(MR's outfit) should happen to lose the election THINGS MIGHT GET WORSE" Is this aimed largely at the Tamil voters widely believed to make the difference between victory and defeat? If so then, this is flogging a near-dead horse. Tamils have taken left, right and centre for so long a little more is not going to matter much. But, beware, it can hurt the other side more - much more as we saw since 1956. On the other hand the "it might get worse" comment can mean some others are in mind.
Incidentally, Dyer's expertise takes a tumble as he wrily notes "tough treatment is enough to keep them quiet" Might do you some good to do some in-depth reading on the Tamil struggle, Sir.
ISS
DJ says that "tyranny" is far more dangerous than dynastic rule or emdemic corruption.
TYRANNY is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as 1)oppressive power 2)a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler 3)rigorous condition imposed by an outside agency or force 4)a tyrannical act.
The first two exist in sri lanka.The last two do not apply.Therefore, another generation of misery and insecurity will continue unless the present executive presidency is annuled.
Sarath Fonseka promises this.
.
There is nothing unusual about this report.
What they say is the winner is right and the loser is wrong.
The report has easily left out mentioning the options: Yes, the war could have ended without killing 30,000+ civilians, but the leaders (and their supporters) did not have the courage or will to do that.
This writer or DJ may not have 'lost' any so they can easily forget the past, but there are over a million tamils who have lost a lot.
Yes, they will move ahead, but will not forget the past (it's not easy as bulldozing tiger cemetery).
:-)
Dayan! Mirror images are all virtual,not real!
So Dayan has done it again! Six months after the end of the war he had found an objective outsider to endorse his views.
There is nothing objectionable in the article of Gwynne Dyer.
He is only expressing an opinion as journalists usually do
“there have been much uglier ends to long and brutal wars like this one” says Gwynne Dyer
So Gwynne Dyer also says that this may not be uglier, but still an ugly end.
Does he say that it was umanitarian exercise and there was zero causalities?
This was the one and only one objective report written during the last six months according to Dayan!
All the reports of international Human rights organizations,UN bodies are all subjective merely because they are all western conspiracies in the pay of Diaspora. Now the question is why the Diaspora failed to buy Dyer?
Are they short of funds?
Hello Prof.Dayan,
Gwynne Dyer is spot on when he claims"The Rajapaksas' challenger is none other than General Sarath Fonseka who COMMANDED the ARMY that FINALLY DEFEATED the Tigers".On the 26th of January 2010, Sarath shall win the election, most of your buddies will end up behind bars,Prof.Uyan will end up in the cabinet and you will end up as the next Chair of the Poli Sciences at Colombo.Prof.Dayan,as Malcolm X once said the cows have finally come home to roost.
Did you talk to your buddy Douglas?Please console him,he is a worried man,I hear from very reliable sources that Sarath had an unprecedented welcome in Jaffna, the traditional homeland of Tamils of Ceylon.
Cheers,
Siva
....there have been much uglier ends to long and brutal war like this one....
Thanks for the consolation Sir.
Dayan,
Despite glaring misconceptions and ignorance demonstrated by Dyer in his understanding of Tamil struggle, your penchant for his reasoning, only bares your despicable desparation to cover up your quick descend to moral bankruptcy.
Poor Dyer may not have had the desire and time to study the background of Tamil militancy; but, you certainly do. Come on. Be a man. Be a true journalist. Help Dyer to understand the backdrop of the recent and not so recent events of Sri Lanka.
Winner set the discourse and write the history. Then ? is there a winner,then who. Time will tell.
One does not need to read these high octane professorial writings or English classics to understand the current ground situation and the future for evryone in Srilanka post Praba and the LTTE
A few positives worth loking at are,
* Tamils can now express their own views without the fear of LTTE censorship.
* Poor people even can travel to Colombo from Jaffna with a fare as low as Rs 500.
*Farmers and Fisherman in the North sell their products to consumers in the South.
*Tamils in the East have been LTTE free and looking after their own affairs for the past two years.
The irony is no body seems to talk about these developments.
Now let us look at the credentials of the Pretender.
* Fonseka was not happy with 10 perches in Kurunduwatta where some of the contributors to this column live. He demanded and got 25 instead. All compliments of the tax payer.
* Imagine what he would do if he has his hand in the kitty.
* His main leutinant Anura Dissanayake is threatening and ridiculing the Editor of Sunday Leader to falsify the interview where Fonseka made war crime allegations against the Srilankan Armed Forces.
Imagine this gentleman's attitude to the journos ,if he is in power.
So much for the mantra of corruption against Rajapaksa and the promise of Press freedom.
According to the ground reports, Rajapaksa will win and win handsomely with or without the pro Tiger and elite Sinhala vote.
The same people who belittle these learned men for discussing the reality,gloated and carried on when the LTTE was subjecting the Srilankans of all ethnic origins to misery and death.
Now they are desperately hanging on to their new found savior Fonseka with similar enthusiasm.
Fonseka in his own words killed at least 12000 LTTE cadres in 12 months. Many times more civilians were killed ,if we are to believe the figures put out by the diaspora.
Ranil's UNP killed more Sinhala youth over two years,than the LTTE managed to kill over 30 years.
Somawasa's JVP subjected the Sinhala people in far south to the most humiliation and suffering in 1888 and 89.They did not even allow the victims for a descent burial.People could not use lighting in their own houses..Anyone dobbed in even by enemies were taken away and killed. Families of poor soldiers were threatened with death.
Now this this is the Troika that the Tamils,mainly the overseas based and the well off Tamils in Srilanka have embraced to lead them to their paradise.
After the election these people will be disappointed again the same way they felt after the demise of the LTTE.
One consolation will l be that the Rajapaksa brothers will implement their next goal to develop Srilanka so that every citizen will be able to live a peaceful and safe life in any part of the Island.
Gwyyn Dyers mirror has several blind spots. He covers only the war and political viewpoint but is silent on the rampant corruption, nepotism and violation of human rights. So can a nation progress only on a political agenda? As Dr DJ rightly points out
"As a commentator on international affairs Gwynne Dyer rightly raises the prospect which well read but emotionally overwrought local commentators fail to address, a prospect which is far more dangerous than dynastic rule or endemic corruption, which incidentally does not occur at all in his essay. He mentions instead, in a cautionary aside, the T word: “tyranny”
I wonder if Dr DJ means that the current regime is not guilty of Tyranny. In my view the abuse of state power, the illegal detention of people, the abduction of people by the STF in the middle of the night later to be arrested, aren't these actions those of a Tyrant.
The Ostrich-like attitude to fail to engage Tamil representations was responded with the Sinhala side present their gullibles with the bogey of 50/50, then shifted gears Language of the Courts and Administration in the NEP, then to Federalism, to District Councils, then to "all Tamils are Kotiyas", then to refusal to Devolve local administration to the Tamil areas (allowed to all other PCs) and then the Merger. The LTTE was given forced birth in between. And now all that is over, they discover "the diaspora Tamils" What a pathetic lot? When are you going to come to grips with the fact that the NEP is Tamil-majority land and they cannot far too long be denied the right to run their affairs themselves. That Sinhala supremacist creation Sarath Silva, who took the judiciary into the politicial arena cavalier-fashion, in his latest press interview yesterday leaves enough room for the re-merger for anyone with some sense can drive a locomotive through. For those legal eagles like Gomin Dayasiri who cling to this flimsy rope please note no less a person than the present CJ of India Justice Balakrishnan has studied the Pact sufficiently to feel
the theatrics in Court lead by an eminent jurist (now deceased) of great respect that resulted in the de-merger was bad in law and purely to satisfy internal
political apetite.
ISS
DEAR Dayan Jayatilleka,
YOUR WRITING IS LIKE AN IMATURE BOY WHO IS PARTIALLY BLIND AND HAS SELECTIVE AMNESIA (MEMORY LOSS) TRYING TO SING/BEG/CRY FOR YOUR PAY MASTER TO BY YOU THAT ICE CREAM YOU FANCY.
STILL IF YOU WANT TO WRITE SOMETING SENSIBLE TO PASS TIME WHY DON'T YOU GET SOME LESSIONS FROM SO MAMY PROFESSORS IN MRs CLAN. GLP-law,RAJIVA-English,KOHANA-?,ANY ONE WITH-History?
Do you thing Sinhala people of your caliber can get even uglier than You have been since 1956 to December 2009.
What does it matter to you or Tamils weather if SF or MR is going to exterminate Tamils.
"Not only that, but it is going to hold a free election next month–so free that the ruling party might even lose it.” FREE ELECTION !!!!!?
While the Tamil political parties have been busy forming alliances and discussing whom to support, over 50% of the citizens of the North will not be able to exercise their franchise at the upcoming presidential election due to proublems of voter registration. News item.
UNP office burnt down in Katana
The Katana political office of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) was burnt down Monday morning believed to be by supporters of the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA). A gang arrived at the site first attacked the office with petrol bombs and later set on fire, according to the complaint lodged by the Katana UNP organizer Ms. Rosy Fernando with the Katana Police. -4.1.2010
Ruling UPFA supporters attack children street drama-4.1.2010
A group of persons believed to be supporters of a minister in the President Mahinda Rajapakse led United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government Sunday evening attacked a political street drama staged by a group of children in Hiriyala in Kurunagala district. -4.1.2010
Tyranny”!! ?? Mahinda ragim?? never He is a devoted BUDDHIST follows Buddha dharma he even doesn't hurt an ant.Only his agents do the crime. He is beyond Tyranny War criminaland criminal against humamity.
Dear Dayan
If you think Mahinda has good intentions to help to solve the ethnic proublem Then why did not he order the implimentation of already what is written in the constitution and even why he ignored the APRC report, Does he need Tamils or any one els's concent to do it , if he would have given even any hint of It although before the war ended he told that his plane on devolution.Once war ended you know what he said Ther are no minorities in the country he went one step ahead of SFand told this. his aim is to consolidate ascimilation, ethinic clensing, and eventaal Genocide. That is what you say the consolidation of power which will help with people like you to justfy it to the unsuspectiong people.