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April 22, 2006
Negotiating with Armed Groups: Sri Lanka and Beyond - Follow Up
“What is the difference between legitimate struggles by a people on the one hand, and terrorism on the other?” This complex question formed the heart of the discussion between the Ambassador of Sri Lanka and a Sri Lankan MP from the Tamil region of the country at The Fletcher School on April 6, 2006.
The Ambassador of Sri Lanka, Bernard Goonetilleke and Mr. G.G. Ponnambalam, MP were invited to speak at a symposium titled “Negotiating with Armed Groups: Sri Lanka and Beyond”, organized by the International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Club. Fletcher Professors Adil Najam and Eileen Babbitt moderated the discussion.
Ambassador Goontilleke began the discussion by stating the position of the Sri Lankan government. He said that while terrorist groups argue their actions are permissible in their quest for self-determination, resorting to these acts is not legitimate, he argued. “Self-determination could be pursued on in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations”, he said, and that this is the context the question of the question of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) should be seen in.
The LTTE is a military organization that is fighting for a sovereign Tamil State in the Tamil-majority North-Eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE has widespread support from Sri Lankan Tamils and claims to be the only legitimate representative of the Tamils in this conflict. Like similar organizations the LTTE has struggled to gain international legitimacy in what it terms as a struggle for freedom. However, the movement’s assassination of Indian and Sri Lankan leaders has caused it to be marked a terrorist organization by several nations including India, USA, UK, and Canada.
The Tamils in Sri Lanka have been fighting for several decades for their own state, but their struggle took a military turn in the mid-1970s as LTTE became powerful and became the primary leader in the struggle.
The Sri Lankan government has been in negotiations with the LTTE since 1987, but there is still a long way to go, the Ambassador said.
Ambassador Goontilleke said that there were two main reasons that the Sri Lankan Government entered and continued negotiations. “The first was the consistent belief of successive Sri Lankan governments that there was a need to address the real and legitimate grievances of the Tamil people. The second was that after many years of armed confrontation which ended in a stalemate, the realization that resorting to military means was not an option”. There are a few primary reasons for the failure of talks with the Ambassador, said. First, he argued, “the agreement to pause fighting [by the LTTE] was due to tactical reasons and not with the intention of reaching a negotiated political solution”.
Second, he said the LTTE is not really open to actual negotiations because its thirst for the Tamil “Eelam [homeland] had to be quenched at any cost,” and this stance led to the failure of negotiations.
Third, “the LTTE is not yet ready to transform itself from what it is today to a democratic entity, and seek to represent the Tamil people after having obtained a democratic mandate”.
“The international community has a special responsibility to ensure that the LTTE makes that historical transition”, he said, explaining that, “It would be unthinkable that the international community, which insists on transforming autocratic states into democracies, should persuade Sri Lanka, and old democracy, to change its democratic practices with a view to accommodating an authoritarian organization”.
Finally, he said the failure of the LTTE to take the international community seriously, but instead view it as a “malleable entity” has seriously harmed the peace process.
MP. GG. Ponnambalam, MP of the Tamil National Alliance, which is a coalition of several Tamil parties., and a sympathiser of the LTTE, presented the perspective of the Tamils. Mr. Ponnambalam said that main reason for the failure of the peace talks was the unwillingness of the Sinhala majority is unwilling to recognize the inalienable rights of the Tamils.
He claimed that their struggle started with non-violence explicit rejection of separatism was transformed into an armed struggle due to the intransigence of the Sri Lankan government.
He said that the transition to a post-conflict state would require the Sri Lankan government to create a new political order that would allow peaceful mutual co-existence of the Sinhala and Tamil States, but the Sri Lankan government is not ready for such a transition.
The two also took a different position on the role of military force in the start of negotiations - Ponnambalam argued that several military reversals suffered by the Sri Lankan military actually created a credible threat of secession, and it was this threat, rather than a true willingness to share power that brought the Sri Lankan government to the negotiating table.
He also held the international community responsible for viewing the LTTE as being “hell-bent on the creation of a separate state”, despite the LTTE’s proposals to stop short of full independence.
Ponnambalam argued that “The Sri Lankan state must be made to understand that the international community’s commitment to its territorial integrity is conditional on the Tamil Nation’s legitimate aspirations being met. A failure to do so will . . . can only result in one thing and that is the serious escalation of the conflict and nothing else”.
During the long question and answer session both the Ambassador and the MP conceded that the ceasefire agreement (that was the result of the last round of talks) must be reinstated immediately, in order to proceed with peace talks. They also agreed that although the struggle may appear to be one of Hindus against Buddhists, it is not a religious conflict and should not be misunderstood as one.
By Shinjinee Chattopadhyay, MALD '07
Posted by fletcher at April 22, 2006 03:46 PM
