The book, “A Powderkeg in Paradise”, is not a historical account of the Tamil separatist campaign that bled Sri Lanka for a quarter century before the military finally decimated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009. In nearly 250 crisp and easy to read pages, Jon Oskar Solnes delves into his rich and intimate knowledge of the conflict, gained as an official of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), to tell the world why and how the once seemingly indestructible Tamil Tigers lost it so badly.
On that score, the book is an invaluable story of the Norwegian-sponsored and internationally backed peace process that took the most dramatic twists and turns before collapsing amid bloodshed.
Unlike many Westerners, Jon does not hesitate to apportion most of the blame for the fracture of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) of 2002 on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its anarchist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. This is the result of the intimate opportunities he got to study the LTTE closely on behalf of the SLMM, the Nordic body whose mandate was to oversee the truce. But he shows no bias for Colombo. He details the vanity of different interlocutors, the many terrible incidents that derailed peace, and “the appalling and often cynical lack of concern for civilian casualties on both sides of the (ethnic) divide”.
Yet, it is Prabhakaran whom he calls “a very difficult interlocutor in (the) quest for peace”. Referring to the resumption of hostilities after Mahinda Rajapaksa became president in November 2005, the author is clear that “the return to more heavy-handed search operations was to a large extent sparked by and was a consequence of the tactics of the LTTE”. These included the killings of senior Sri Lankan military and civilian figures, including Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, “which made the peace facilitation of Norway even more difficult”.
International actors seeking to end the conflict became frustrated because the LTTE “basically wanted administrative powers for the whole of the north and the east to be handed over to them on a silver plate and without significant limitations”. This was akin to asking for Tamil Eelam from Colombo!
In the process, the LTTE came to be seen as “a fundamentalist organization lacking the will of problem-solving through compromise, led by a deeply reclusive autocratic leader”.
Like everyone, Jon says the LTTE hugely blundered by cutting off irrigation water supply at Mawil Aaru in the eastern province, starving the farms of thousands of mainly Sinhalese farmers. The military grabbed the opportunity to launch a punishing offensive – led by army chief Sarath Fonseka, “a very determined and gifted military man” – that led, first, to the loss of the east and, later, the whole of the north, burying one of the world’s most ruthless insurgent groups. Prabhakaran “bore a large responsibility for the suffering of thousands of Tamil civilians who were being killed and maimed in the fighting”.
Jon makes only passing references to India, which played an overt and covert – as well as controversial — role in Sri Lanka right through the blood-soaked conflict. He strangely remarks that the “LTTE was not well understood by the outside world”. I disagree. Both in and outside of Sri Lanka, many have always known what the LTTE stood for. The author feels that Colombo should “invite international human rights commissions and monitors to bring Sri Lanka back into the fold of civilized democracies”.
Jon may be well meaning but it is such recurring homilies that pushed Colombo to reject the CFA and the SLMM. And it is this western worldview that led countries as diverse as India, Pakistan, Cuba and China to back Sri Lanka when it came under western attack on the human rights issue. Ultimately, no outside power can mould Sri Lanka; only its people can do that. If there is a will, there has to be a way.
Book: “A Powderkeg in Paradise”; Publisher: Konark Publishers, New Delhi; Author: Jon Oskar Solnes; Price: Rs. 750
