The love that the British have for Sri Lanka is of such magnitude that one wonders if Sri Lankans should bother to love their country. They so loved this island, let us not forget, that they pillaged, burnt, robbed and perpetrated genocide and ethnic cleansing of a kind that even the LTTE in its most terrible days couldn’t come close to matching.
And so when the likes of David
Miliband, David Cameron and Hugo Swire wax lyrical about island-love, it’s
quite normal to shrug and smile.
Just the other day, Hugo Swire, the
Britsh Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth, made a speech in Parliament
about Sri Lanka: ‘Though military drawback is evident in some areas, we are
concerned at military involvement in commercial and other civil activities,
such as education, tourism, and agriculture, and the occupation of land in high
security zones. We will continue to raise this issue with members of the Sri
Lankan Government, and press the need for the military not to partake in civil
activities.’
If Swire really wants to know the
truth about militarization and de-militarization, then he should do two things.
First, he should compare the ‘what was’ with ‘what is’. Here, in Sri Lanka, people know both. There in Britain, Swire doesn’t have a clue
and if the picture he has is what’s offered by Tamil chauvinism, then we can’t
really help him. If he is ignorant and wishes
to remain so, that’s his problem. If
he’s pretending to sleep, nothing will wake him up. If he listens to the TNA, which claims that
the Governor of the Northern Province knows about ‘war crimes’ and not about
‘constitution’, and doesn’t bother to ask what the TNA knew, knows and will not
reveal about complicity in terrorism, that’s again his problem.
Secondly, he should read a bit of
history about post-conflict situations.
He could scan the globe and start counting the number of military bases
operated by Britain’s mother country, that’s the USA, in countries they have been
at war with. He could check how many
British troops are stationed outside his country and ask himself why. He will
come up with a single word (an excuse, really): threat. Then he could ask himself a question about
the goose, the gander and sauce.
Not everyone in Britain thinks like
Swire of course. Lord Tim Bell put it
well: ‘It's a fashionable thing to criticize the way the Sri Lankan government
has behaved. David Cameron had one meeting in the north of the country with 200
people who have lost relatives. You have to remember there was a 30-year civil
war. The Tamil Tigers weren't exactly gentle, nice people. And for Britain to
ponce around the world talking about human rights after what we did in
Afghanistan … It's what Winston Churchill called 'our usual export': hypocrisy.’
So let’s leave Swire to his fancies
and instead address the issue of the military and its involvement in commercial
and other civil activities.
Sri Lankan security forces fought a
ruthless terrorist outfit. Sri Lanka is plagued
by the operations of LTTE remnants as well as outfits loath to say anything
wrong about the LTTE or other representatives or tacit supporters of Tamil
chauvinism and extremism. Sri Lanka has
learned the hard way that it is better to be safe rather than sorry. Sri Lankans and not the likes of Swire have
to decide where to station her troops. Indeed, Sri Lankans and not Swire have
to decide how best military personnel should be deployed in a post-conflict
scenario.
It’s nice for countries like the UK
and USA that are perpetually engaged in military operations in some corner of
the world. Sri Lanka doesn’t do
‘invasion’ and perforce must either go for a considerable downsizing of numbers
(not safe, yet) or find alternative activity for military personnel.
Throughout history, victorious
armies have been dispatched to fight new ‘enemies’ (that’s what the US/UK has
done and does even today). Sri Lanka
lost close to 200,000 people over the last 40 years to two insurrections, the
struggle to overcome the terrorist threat and the debilitating tsunami. An equal or larger number are employed
overseas. There’s a huge human resource
problem. There’s also a relatively idle
set of able-bodied young men and women who have acquired specific non-military
skills during the conflict and in post conflict relief and rehabilitation
work. Nothing makes more sense that for
these people to be deployed in non-military activity. We could have that, or we could start another
war (like the USA/UK did and does as though it’s part of their national
cultural ethos). Considering the very
real problem of ex service personnel taking to crime, we could opt for that
lovely eventuality too.
We are in transition from military to civil. Does not and should not happen overnight and
certainly not because some lackey of terrorism (certain elements within the TNA
for example) want it and certainly not because some ignorant man in Britain is
suffering from post-colonial angst.
So, thank you Hugo Swire, but no.
msenevira@gmail.com
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