The discarded accord and the unwanted war

R. Hariharan
The Hindu, August 7

The reason why the India-Sri Lanka Agreement did not deliver fully was simple: political expediency tookover in both countries.

It is 20 years since the India-Sri Lanka Agreement was signed. This, along with the 50th anniversary of the Bandaranayake-Chelvanayagam pact and the 30th year of the founding of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, form important milestones in the history of Sri Lanka’s troubled relations with its Tamil population. Undoubtedly, the accord signed between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President J.R. Jayewardene on July 29, 1987, was the most significant turning poin t in India-Sri Lanka relations.

India inducted its armed forces into Sri Lanka immediately afterwards. A well-intentioned gesture to ensure the accord was implemented in the spirit it was signed. However, good intentions were not enough; political directions morphed the role of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from peacekeeping to counterinsurgency warfare. As a result, the acronym IPKF ended up as a kind of oxymoron after the force was locked in a bloody war with the LTTE.

The IPKF’s history, written in blood, is intertwined with the story of how the two countries mismanaged a golden opportunity the accord offered to usher in peace to the island nation. In the last two decades, both the countries appear to have wished away the accord and the hard lessons it taught them. For this amnesia Sri Lanka is paying heavily. At least 64,000 people have died since the IPKF sailed off for good from Khoddiyar Bay in 1990. And India, busy with its other major foreign policy preoccupations, appears to be simply watching the situation.

The 1983-1990 period was one of active Indian intervention, triggered by the 1983 pogrom against Tamils in Colombo and in other places. In this period, India tried out all possibilities — supporting the Tamil cause and militancy, helping the Sri Lanka Government and the Tamils to resolve their differences across the table, working with Sri Lanka to help evolve a consensus on devolution for Tamils, and, lastly, underwriting an acceptable minimum package for Tamils in Sri Lanka through the accord. During these swings of policy, India on different occasions courted the antagonism of the Sri Lankan Government, Sinhala political opposition, and Tamil separatist segments, notably the LTTE. The accord was also used as a political foil by opposition parties in India, to fight the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi.

The perceptions of India’s role and the India-Sri Lanka accord differ widely. A few weaknesses made the accord self-defeating. Yet it opened a new chapter in the relations between the two countries with cooperation rather than confrontation being the key element of policy, which continues to this day. India’s role is now better appreciated by most Sri Lankans than in 1987 only because the IPKF men fought and died to uphold the accord and ensure the unity of a country that was not their own. This recognition is a small but fitting tribute to the 1,255 Indian soldiers who died on Sri Lankan soil.

Was the IPKF a success? The operation which started off as a conventional one in 1987 quickly changed into a full-fledged counterinsurgency campaign. In such an environment, how do you measure success? The popular perception of success in wars is in terms of territorial gain and body counts. In insurgency wars these yardsticks are flawed, because the battles are for the mind of the people. If territorial gain and body counts were the only yardsticks of victory, the Americans would be considered victorious in Iraq. However, even on this count, the IPKF proved itself. By August 1988, it had confined a depleted LTTE to the Vanni jungles. Within a year of the IPKF completing Operation Checkmate-I (Battle of Nithikaikulam) in August 1988, normal life was restored in the northeast. The IPKF, despite some aberrations and limitations imposed by political dispensations, gave the people there a feeling of security and gained their trust; both of these are absent there to this day. The people of Colombo, without a conscious thought of the war in the northeast, have a good night’s sleep!

The accord did fail to fully provide the equal rights for Tamils that it promised. Though the IPKF reduced the LTTE to a spent force, its ill-timed exit before the administration could consolidate itself in the northeast ensured the resurgence of the LTTE. The reason why the accord did not deliver fully was simple: political expediency took over in both countries and warped the goals. As a result, Sri Lanka did not put its heart and soul into making the accord a success. India fared no better, with its political priorities clouding its responsibilities in Sri Lanka following a change of rulers in South Block.

It is good to learn from the India-Sri Lanka experience of that era because war hysteria is riding high in Sri Lanka and India is being repeatedly called upon to intervene in the island. The setting in Sri Lanka is now bizarre with a “peace-less peace process,” and Eelam War IV riding on the shoulders of a desecrated ceasefire agreement. And political expediency is very much alive in both countries.

Both India and Sri Lanka implemented the accord with many political compromises due to internal political compulsions. These made them forget three cardinal requirements — openness, transparency, and inclusiveness — for any public policy to succeed. These were markedly absent in both India and Sri Lanka from conception to execution of the accord. As a result, the accord conceived to bridge the huge ethnic divide between the Tamils and the Sinhalas actually aggravated the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust about India’s intentions among many Sinhalas. They had earlier seen India giving refuge and training to Tamil militants. India had laid great emphasis on its regional security interests in Sri Lanka in the accord. Many Sri Lankans, including the LTTE, saw the arrival of Indian troops as a move to make the Indian writ run on the island. While this hurt the national pride of sections of Sri Lankans, it provided an excuse for the LTTE to denounce the accord as an instrument of Indian hegemony.

On the other hand, many Tamils nurtured a deep distrust of the Sri Lankan leadership’s commitment to the accord, based on the history of Sinhala-Tamil relations strewn with broken promises. Some Tamils had high expectations of India delivering a virtual “Eelam” just as independent Bangladesh was created in 1971 with the help of Indian armed forces in East Pakistan. They were disappointed when this did not happen.

In this charged atmosphere, the style of working of both Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President Jayewardene even within their own political ranks was not consensual. This resulted in a lack of goal clarity and critical analysis of issues among the politicians and bureaucracy down the line.

There were other unanticipated problems. The Indian leadership grossly underestimated LTTE chief Velupillai Prabakaran’s commitment to the cause of Tamil Eelam and his overwhelming desire to become the sole arbiter of the Tamils interests. To preserve its turf, the LTTE was probably looking for reasons to go to war regardless of India’s promises. According to a recent statement of the chief of the Research and Analysis Wing of that period, A.K. Verma, the Indian Prime Minister had ignored the agency’s advice against the use of military force to disarm the LTTE. On their part, Indian intelligence agencies probably overestimated their ability to influence Mr. Prabakaran.

To be successful in counterinsurgency, a political strategy with a matching military strategy will have to go hand in hand. This requires strong leadership commitment to a vision. These were absent in Sri Lanka and political success became the major consideration. Prime Minister Premadasa used the ploy of sending back Indian troops to win the Presidential poll. In India, the political opposition played the same game.

The LTTE was clearly a gainer. The change of leadership midstream in both countries made it difficult for the IPKF to meaningfully operate in the absence of a clear political agenda. And the LTTE took full advantage of President Premadasa’s antipathy to the Indian dispensation that made him supply arms to the LTTE even as India was fighting his war! This was not a new phenomenon. The LTTE had used Indian public sentiment after 1983 to gain arms and funds from India, but did not hesitate to fight India to preserve its turf. So it was not surprising when it turned against Premadasa after using him to its advantage. What is not amusing is that the LTTE has continued to use “democratic political aberrations” in Sri Lanka and India to its advantage to this day.

However, the India-Sri Lanka accord clearly redefined India’s role as an essential factor in ensuring stability and security in the region.

(Colonel R. Hariharan is a retired Military Intelligence officer who served as the head of intelligence with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90. E-mail: colhari@yahoo.com