Such complexities would not need to overrule principle, but they do in Sri Lanka. The policy divergence was evident in the face of Blake’s personal knowledge of the underlying issues from his time as an ambassador. If the Tamils supported the Tigers, they did so because their circumstances gave them no alternative. They expected better from them than from the Sinhala majority-empowered officials in Colombo. Prior history had given them reason to fear the government’s power against them, so they needed a protector, even if they had no choice about who assumed the role. They were not helped by the British favoritism shown to the Tamils on the island during the colonial era prior to 1948. That was another complicating factor from the past, and little could be done about it in the present.
The Tamil people needed some way to protect themselves from the depredations long feared and finally documented brutally during the spring of 2009. Many other minority peoples would have hoped for help from whoever was available in the face of similar powerlessness. They were not in a position to choose the ideal protector. Many people may wish for the ability to choose a different defender, but they do not often get that chance. Many in the United States who voted in Tea Party members of the Congress now express remorse for what they did, and polling records their sentiments. Apart from these views, public regard for the U.S. Congress would not now be at 11% with public support for the Tea Party element of the Republican party now also diminished in the polling.
At the University of Virginia, Blake asserted the Tigers had never seriously engaged in the peace process during almost a decade prior to 2009, but this contention is disputed by the Norwegians most directly involved with facilitation of the process. An analysis of their peace efforts was released during the week preceding Blake’s and Kumaratunga’s Virginia appearances. The Norwegians note the peace process was begun at the peak of Tiger power, and thus they directly reject the Blake view. Time was not on the Tiger side, and they needed to try to consolidate their advantage through some settlement while they were in a strong position. They could not afford to show weakness through the way the process was engaged, but they were motivated to try to nail down a permanent resolution according to the Norwegian view of events, and no one was closer to the Tiger leaders.
Faulted by the Norwegians is the failure of many in the international community to give the Tamil leadership a stronger incentive and more support toward reaching an accord. They cite the international isolation of the Tiger leaders as a threat to the success of the process. Against this view, the U.S. position treated talks with Tiger representatives as a reward for good behavior, but the Tigers were not rewarded when they did cease their bombings. They only restarted the violence again in response to government attacks.
According to the Norwegian testimony, the Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, remained isolated from almost everyone but the Norwegians, who were not able to engage him for more than about 30 hours total over seven years; but the Norwegians were themselves isolated unconstructively from the Sinhalese majority just because they were prominently seen talking to the Tigers when no one else was. No public relations effort was launched to help protect the Norwegian role as intermediary when the Sinhalese saw them as facilitators of the Tamil interests. They admit this as a flaw in their conduct of the process.
The goal of the process was acceptance of a federal model, but the more moderate Tamil strategist most favorable to this solution and possessing the confidence of Prabhakaran, Anton Balasingham, died of cancer in 2006 just as peace talks reached a critical time. The resurgence of violence by government forces was a handicap promoted by the building of increased military capacity, but it stimulated Tiger reaction, thus undermining the peace process from both sides. The Norwegians needed international help they did not get. They could not have succeeded by themselves even if they could have maintained positive bridges with both sides throughout their years of effort. International support was needed.
Also denied by Blake was an assertion the U.N. had abandoned the Tamil people during the final weeks of the conflict in 2009, effectively allowing them to be slaughtered without any international observers to prevent it, but U.N. withdrawal from the Tiger-controlled area following a warning from the Sri Lankan government (announcing it could not be responsible for the safety of the U.N. team) was documented by U.K.-based Channel 4 in their film, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.” The portion of the film on this subject was based on interviews with U.N. personnel, and it shows Tamils hanging on the gates of the U.N. compound begging the U.N. team not to leave. The directly-involved U.N. officials tell their story on camera with remorse and even personal sense of shame over the withdrawal.
Some of the reports in the film were gathered from cellphone footage, but they have been evaluated by experts and deemed reliable. The cellphone video documents events deemed as war crimes, based on the video footage obtained from unidentified Sri Lankan soldiers. The film accurately portrays the Tigers as terrorists with reports telling of Tiger abuse of their own people. They are well-known to have kidnapped Tamil young people, conscripting them as child soldiers and using their own people, in the end as hostages and as a collective human shield, even shooting them when they tried to escape the imposed containment and from the Sri Lankan government attacks against them.
Tamil civilian rights were abused by everyone they should have been able to rely on for protection, including the U.N. and the governments of many nations with the United States foremost among them by virtue of its superpower status. Now, the same international elites who ignored the Tamil people in 2009 continue to ignore them. The result of this neglect could eventually be more Tamil violence, just as a similarly humiliating and collectively punitive strategy by the Israelis in the Palestinian territories and Gaza has contributed to an attitude among some Palestinians that they have nothing to lose from their violence. Even if a majority wants peace, a tiny minority is enough to act out felt hostility.
The Palestinians, like the Tamils, have been given too little constructive incentive to do differently and some certainly want to drive the Israelis out much as the Crusaders were driven out by Saladin after a century of occupation. They do as tribal attitudes guide them to do, but many more would rather have constructive peace, so they can build an independent nation. Ironically, President Rajapaksa has been a long-time advocate for the Palestinian cause. He should be among those understanding the dangers resulting from repressively treating the Tamils as the Israelis have treated the Palestinians. The continuing ethnic antipathies, circumstances, and mistrust are similar.
Possible correctives are also similar, but they do not come easily. People must have enough to lose in the present to not want to risk losing it. They must be able see a positive future for themselves before they will give up insurgency, but their adversaries do not want to empower them with resources lest they use those resources to empower a new offensive. Before there can be peace, there must first be mutual trust, and the conditions able to build trust. That does not come easily either. The question is whether it is facilitated or retarded.
Assuming the presented findings from May 2009 hold up on full U.N. investigation (if that is advanced), Sri Lankan government forces showed more wholesale brutality than the Tigers, and that is why the international community and the Security Council have been challenged by some, but not by enough, for failing to take follow-up action to investigate the alleged war crimes. When they are not challenged, “the arguments of those wanting to take law into their own hands” are fueled, as Miliband and Kouchner stated among their contentions this past June following their personal investigation. Both sides must be seen as wanting to take responsibility for their part in the abuses and crimes of the past, before trust can build.
Demonstrably, the lessons of Rwanda have not yet been learned in Sri Lanka or by the international community, and the worst of the alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka occurred on the Obama watch, not under Bush, when an ideological preoccupation with the terrorist bogeyman was stronger than it is now. Nonetheless, the core elements of the Bush policy persist under Obama, just as they do also in other places, including Guantanamo. The Obama/Clinton policy toward Burma demonstrates a two-track approach, pursuing diplomacy while also maintaining sanctions, but in relations with Sri Lanka, the U.S. policymakers act as if a similar policy would not be possible.
From Blake’s statements and the other evidence, the Obama administration calculations appear to leave the Tamils to do what they can for themselves, much as powerless people have been left to do recently in Syria, Tibet, Sudan, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere, with the prominent exception of Libya, which is a unique case because of the long 42-year negative history of the former Libyan leader. He had no significant friends even in his own region, and thus he got no help despite the oil, money, and arms he possessed.
The United States does not need to police the world in the face of all injustices, but it could address major human rights abuses and war crimes in the interest of building peace, and by doing that it could set a positive example for the future. This leaves pluralistic, democratic idealism on the ropes because of the poor U.S. example, among other similar and allied examples, caused by partisan tribalism—and ideological polarization and gridlock. Any nation aspiring to be the world’s moral leader during a time when attention to human rights can make a difference in winning the struggle for hearts and minds in many places should want to set a quality example, but Blake showed the United States tolerating, condoning, and even joining in a policy of delay and denial by the Sri Lankan government.
In contrast, former President Kumaratunga repudiated and criticized the leaders of her own political party, the party her parents founded, for failing to build bridges of reconciliation and inclusion with the Tamil people. She set a different standard for both the Sri Lankan government and the United States—if they could hear her. While Blake showed the U.S. dragging its feet on a superpower moral responsibility, because no vital, strategic U.S. interest resides under Tamil-control, Kumaratunga publicly stated her troubled sense of revulsion after viewing the atrocities in the Channel 4 film. Blake seemed to have not seen the film, and in direct opposition to the standard set by Kumaratunga, he covered for the failings of the U.N. and the Sri Lankan government as well as those of the United States.
