PEACE TALKS AND THE TWO STATE ISLAND

By Adrian Wijemanne

1.     The LTTE’s insistence on a ceasefire as a preliminary to, and the context for, peace talks has been accepted by the government at long last after much foot-dragging. It is an encouraging sign of rationality and realism. It is fervently to be hoped that the talks themselves will lead the government further on the road to realism and away from the baseless triumphalism of the recent past.

2.     The fourth round of talks with the LTTE will be utterly different qualitatively from the three earlier ones. This time the two sides meet after nearly 18 years of continuous war (from July 1983 to the present) except for 14 months of talks from April ’89 to June’90 and 6 months of talks from October ’94 to April ’95. Taking the 18-year period as a whole the battlefield outcome has been in favour of the LTTE overwhelmingly. As against the long series of the LTTE’s successes the Sri Lankan government forces can claim only two successes – the relief of the Elephant Pass Camp in 1991 and the taking of Jaffna in December 1995, the latter without serious resistance from the LTTE. So across the negotiating table there will face each other the proven battlefield winner from the north and the proven battlefield loser from the south. That is the underlying reality which will govern both the tone and content of the talks. No amount of triumphalistic hype can gainsay that reality.

3.     The inability of either side to overwhelm the other militarily dictates an armed co-existence for the foreseeable future. A single state cannot encompass two such formidable entities within it. It is the attempt to hold them together within the single all-island state that has produced a long war and a military stalemate. So the path to peace is away from that course of proven failure, away from the quixotic, and now manifestly impossible, attempt to preserve the single all-island state. The Sri Lankan government is all too well aware that there are large areas of the northeast province where its writ does not run and where it is the LTTE’s writ that runs. All attempts to reverse that state of affairs have failed.

4.    A two state island is, therefore, no longer a matter of speculation but a de facto reality. Ignoring that reality or denying its existence will not make it go away. It is a reality that has to be faced and accommodated in the quest for peace. There is no way round it. As always, a long war has changed irrevocably the status quo ante bellum.

5.    There has never been, and there is not now, a rational examination of the possibility of, and the prospects for, a two state island. Without any such examination it has been dismissed out of hand as devastatingly destructive of the national interests of the Sinhala nation. So much so, that war and its concomitant sacrifices of lives and treasure are regarded as perfectly justified to avert so dire a fate. Whenever a reason is advanced as to why such a prospect cannot even be considered, such a reason is accepted without rational examination.

6.    For example, the commonest reason advanced is that the island is too small for division into two states. The facts, however, are quite the opposite. The seven Sinhala majority provinces will constitute a state larger than 61 member states of the UN, larger than 18 states of Western Europe including some of its richest and most prosperous states such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium. On the other hand, the north-east province constituting the new state of Tamil Eelam will, at around 7,300 sq. miles be larger than 37 member states of the UN.

7.    At other times it is urged that the “loss” of two-thirds of the coastline and one-third of the land area will disadvantage the Sinhala people very seriously. The conception of “loss” implies that we possess now that which is going to be lost by separation. The reality, however, is the opposite. The indigenous Tamil people are living in the one-third of the land area referred to and its adjacent coast line. This is the plain demographic fact verifiable by anyone at any time. To believe that the area of another peoples’ domicile belongs to us and must be recovered by us is a form of madness that must lead directly to war as it has done. The conception of “LOSS”, however, in reality means the loss of the right to rule over that area as part of the state which we control. This is an even more crazy idea for it means that the people living in the north-east province and constituting the majority of the population of that area have no right to rule themselves in any manner of their choice but that we are invested with the right to include them and the area of their domicile in the state which we control. This too is a thoroughly immoral, insane and dangerous idea which too must lead directly to war as unsurprisingly it has done.

8.    There is next the sacramental conception of the island as a divinely instituted single entity with the Sinhala race as its guardian. That the deities of other people may give them a different conception of the island is wholly disregarded. Only the divine mandate to us matters and must be upheld even on pain of war and its concomitant sacrifice of lives and treasure. Such an idea is founded upon an unquestioned assumption of the supremacy over all others of our Gods and ourselves. Such ideas must inexorably bring to great grief any people which is misguided enough to hold them. The Germans held exactly the same views in the thirties of the last century and pursued them to blazing disaster. Our nemesis could come even more complete.

9.    Another argument is that if we give in to one minority other minorities too would want to secede. This idea is based upon a serious and fundamental flaw in conception as to what a minority is. The Tamil people living in the northeast province are not a minority; they are the overwhelming majority of the population of that area. Our calling them a minority does not make them one. Contrariwise, the Tamil people who have chosen to live among the Sinhala in the Sinhala majority provinces are a true minority for they are there by their own free choice. A minority is essentially a minority by choice. Such minorities do not ask for self-determination in a separate state. On the other hand the Indian-Origin Tamils of the Central and Uva provinces are not a minority of choice but by colonial action and they do constitute a large and compact enclave in the very heartland of Sinhala society. A rational and humane accommodation of the Tamil nationalism of the Tamil population of the north-east province rather than promoting secessionism on the part of the Indian Origin Tamils could well encourage them to stay within the Sinhala state if their legitimate aspirations for voting rights and other entitlements are respected in exactly the same manner as the rights of their Sinhala fellow citizens of Sri Lanka.

10. Then there is the lebensraum argument i.e. that the northeast province is the only available land to which the growing Sinhala population could be funneled. Underlying this gut feeling is the assumption that it is by agriculture that the future generations of the Sinhala people will make their living. Once again, nothing could be further from the truth. In a rapidly industrialising society such as Sinhala society is today, as agriculture becomes ever more commercialized and market oriented it will shed the number of people engaged in it until, perhaps, no more than 10% of the population will be employed in agriculture. It is subsistence agriculture that employs masses of people but subsistence agriculture cannot provide the cheap food and the capital accumulation needed by an industrial society. Subsistence agriculture is a “sunset” industry due to disappear before long in response to inexorable market forces. The lebensraum argument which was relevant in bygone centuries is totally irrelevant today.

11.Another argument is that separation into two independent states will perpetuate war between them rather than usher in peace. This fear is appropriate to earlier centuries rather than to the present time. History shows clearly that in the great majority of the separations that took place after wars of secession there has been unbroken peace between the erstwhile combatants. Examples go back to the 19^th century separation of Belgium from The Netherlands in 1831; in the 20^th century the separation of Norway from Sweden in the first decade, the Irish Free State from the UK in 1922, Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, the Turkish Cypriot Republic from Cyprus in 1974. The separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1992 was marred by a brief resumption of warfare now thankfully ended. In the present century the independence of East Timor from Indonesia last year has resulted in peace with Indonesia so far.

12.The most important point to remember is the UN’s mandate to preserve peace among its members and its corollary the organisation’s growing peace-keeping role. In Cyprus an UN peacekeeping force, - UNFICYP- patrols the border between the two states and keeps the peace. The UN was involved crucially in ending the recent war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. In East Timor the Australian-led UN organisation both monitors the peace and engages in rebuilding and restoring the country’s infrastructure and facilities. The maintenance of peace between the member states of the UN is now an international responsibility and not one abandoned to the law of the jungle. This is one of the greatest advantages of securing peace by separation into two independent states on the island of Sri Lanka with each new state having full membership of the UN. We have failed spectacularly to preserve the peace within the single all-island state. Securing peace by separation into two independent states will bring in the international community into the work of preserving peace on the island between the two new states.

13.Finally, there is the fear of economic decline and impoverishment if the Sinhala state shrinks from 9 to 7 provinces. The French have a term – folie de grandeur – for this correlation of size and prosperity. The briefest of glances around the world will show how utterly fallacious such a correlation is. There are very small states which are vastly more prosperous than big ones. Our nearest neighbour to the east, Singapore, which is well known to hundreds of thousands of Sinhala people, is a striking example. A minute fraction of the size of the island of Sri Lanka as an whole and also of the 7 Sinhala-majority provinces it is the second richest country of Asia (after Japan) and one of the richest in the world. To our west our nearest neighbour, The Maldives, is another case in point. Less than half the size of Singapore it is now well ahead of Sri Lanka in average annual per capita income and the gap is growing in their favour. Size is irrelevant to prosperity. Many other factors determine the wealth of nations but none is more important than peace. To engage in war in the hope of extending our rule over an area and a people which asserts its right to self-determination and independence is an attempt to return to the failed verities of earlier centuries closing our eyes to the experiences of others around us. It is a policy which can be described only as insane. Its failure is there for all to see.

14.The next round of peace talks with the LTTE must aim to secure peace for both our peoples taking into account the new realities that have emerged from a long period of warfare in the last five years of which the state’s forces have suffered an unbroken series of staggering military defeats. There must be a clear understanding that the status quo ante bellum is now gone forever and is beyond restoration. The existence on the island of two nations, each with an army and navy and a territory of its own needs to be acknowledged. It is only with that acknowledgement that a realistic and viable peace negotiation can commence and be carried to its desired conclusion – peace and good neighbourly relations between the two new states on the island.

CAMBRIDGE, UK.
7^th September 2001