By B.Raman

(May 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The dilemma posed by Pakistan to US policy-makers and opinion-moulders is reflected in an editorial titled “Dealing With Pakistan” published by the “New York Times” of May 28,2010. Its text is annexed.

Terrorists are the main foreign exchange earners of Pakistan. The more the terrorists operating from its soil, the more the aid from the West to deal with them. The more the aid from the West, the more the terrorists on its soil.

The Pakistani leaders----military and political--- feel that as the main source of threat to the security of the US and other countries of the West, the terrorists on its soil have brought for it a strategic importance and attention which it would not have otherwise secured.

When Pakistan was born in 1947, it had a two-commodity economy--- cotton and cotton-based textiles and leather goods. It continues to have a two-commodity economy. It has not been able to diversify it. In the past, what it earned from the export of these two commodities was sufficient to keep it going and to meet its imports bill. Today, it is not.

Today, it needs a substantial extra source of income to be able to meet its imports bill and service its external debt. In the absence of any significant economic development, it is dependent on assistance from the West---mainly from the US--- to keep the economy and the State going and to avoid bankruptcy.

During the cold war, its willingness to let its territory be used by the US for its campaign against the erstwhile USSR brought it the required aid flow from the US. The end of the cold war saw its importance in the eyes of the US decline. This was accompanied by a decrease in cash flow.

Pakistan’s value as the surrogate of the West in its campaign against the USSR was replaced by the spectre of its becoming the main source of threat to the security of the US and other Western countries from the terrorists operating from its soil. The cash flow was resumed and it kept increasing----this time not for assisting the US in fighting against the USSR, but for its supposedly collaborating with the US in its efforts to contain and neutralize terrorism originating from its soil.

A two-pronged policy of collaboration became its new strategic weapon---- seeming collaboration with the US against the terrorists in return for the cash flow and collaboration with the terrorists against the US for keeping the US fears of a terrorist attack on the US homeland alive and for preventing any threat to its own security from the terrorists.

If terrorism emanating from the Pakistani soil dries up, its importance in the eyes of the US will again decline just as it happened when the threat from the USSR ended. It is in its interest to keep terrorism alive so that the fears of the US remained alive and money continued to flow from the US for keeping the terrorists under control.

The US finds itself in a thankless situation. The more the aid it gives to Pakistan to deal with the terrorists, the more the incentive for Pakistan to keep the terrorists alive and active to keep alive the fears of the US. If it reduces its aid to Pakistan, there is a danger of Pakistan not doing even what it is doing now to deal with the terrorists.

The only way the US can get out of this vicious circle is by taking in its own hands the responsibility for destroying the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory instead of depending on Pakistan for this.
This policy has many risks:

* An increase in anti-Americanism in Pakistan and a consequent rise in the flow of volunteers to the terrorist organizations.

* An increase in the influence of Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan.

* A spell of political instability in Pakistan with a further weakening of the mainstream political elements.

* The emergence of another Afghanistan, which cannot be easily brought under control.

One way of avoiding a risky direct role by the US will be by assisting elements in Pakistan such as the Balochs, the Sindhis and the Mohajirs, which have been unhappy over the state of affairs in the country and over the increase in the activities of the fundamentalists and other Talibanised jihadis, to achieve their political objectives ---- whether those objectives are independence or autonomy.

Terrorism is unlikely to end in Pakistan as it is constituted today. A Pakistan reduced to its fundamentalist Punjabi core surrounded by non-fundamentalist liberal Islamic states of different ethnic origin may not be able to exploit the terrorist weapon in the same way as the present-day Pakistan has been doing.

Pakistan of the 1971 vintage is becoming an increasing threat to the homeland security of many nations of the world----in the West as well as the East, in the Ummah as well as in the non-Islamic world. One has to work for a reduced Pakistan to make this threat manageable and ultimately eliminate it.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

ANNEXURE

NY Times Editorial
Dealing With Pakistan | Published: May 28, 2010

Nine years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States is still trying to figure out how to manage relations with Pakistan — and what mix of inducements and public and private pressures will persuade Islamabad to fully commit to the fight against extremists.

The Obama administration is working hard to cultivate top Pakistani officials. There are regular high-level visits. In March, a senior Pakistani delegation visited Washington for a strategic dialogue with the Americans that seems to be building trust and cooperation across a range of government agencies.

An April visit to Islamabad by the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, and Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was a reminder of the limits of American power. They warned officials of severe consequences if an attack on American soil is traced back to Pakistan. Given Pakistan’s proximity to Afghanistan, its nuclear arsenal and the fragility of its government, it is not clear how much punishment Washington would ever mete out.

Pakistan has its own horrifying reminders that the fight against terrorism is not just America’s fight. On Friday, gunmen and suicide bombers stormed two mosques in Lahore, killing at least 80 worshipers.

Pakistan’s Army has mounted big offensives against Pakistani Taliban factions in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. It has hesitated in North Waziristan where Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed Times Square bombing, reportedly received support and training. Intelligence-sharing has improved, but there is a lot more to be done as the Shahzad case showed.

So why isn’t Pakistan doing all it needs to?

Part of that is the strategic game. Islamabad has long used extremist groups in its never-ending competition with India. Part is a lack of military capability and part political cowardice. While some of Pakistan’s top leaders may “get it,” the public definitely does not.

The United States still does not have a good enough strategy for winning over Pakistan’s people, who are fed a relentless diet of anti-American propaganda.

As The Times reported on Wednesday, the United States is often blamed for everything from water shortages to trying to destroy the Pakistani state. The Obama administration came in determined to change that narrative. When he was in the Senate, Joseph Biden, now the vice president, worked with Richard Lugar on a $7.5 billion, five-year aid package that would prove American concern for the Pakistani people (not just the military) by investing in schools, hospitals and power projects.

Congress approved the first $1.5 billion for 2010, but the State Department is still figuring out how to spend it. The projects need to move as quickly as possible. And Pakistani leaders who demand more help, but then cynically disparage the aid, need to change their narrative.

The State Department also needs to move faster to implement its public diplomacy plan for Pakistan. Officials need to think hard about how to make sure Pakistanis know that aid is coming from the United States — like the $51 million for upgrading three thermal power plants announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in October. It is a delicate issue, but the “made in America” label has to be affixed.

The State Department has committed to spend $107 million over two years to help Pakistanis better understand the United States. Plans include bringing 2,500 Pakistani academics and others on exchange visits and expanding after-school English classes in Pakistan. There also are proposals to bring more American academics to Pakistan and to reopen cultural centers. They should move ahead. An initiative to make more American officials available to speak directly to Pakistanis has shown promise.

Changing Pakistani attitudes about the United States will take generations. The Shahzad case is one more reminder that there is no time to lose.

Story Highlights

* Confrontation took place in international waters
* IDF: Passengers attacked lone commando with iron bars, opened fire
* Flotilla had reportedly changed course to avoid confrontation

IDF says 10 killed, 2 commandos wounded as troops tried to board; ships towed to Ashdod port.

By Avi Issacharoff, Anshel Pfeffer, The Associated Press and Reuters

(May 31, Gaza, Sri Lanka Guardian) Israel Navy troops opened fire on pro-Palestinian activists aboard a six-ship flotilla carrying aid destined for the Gaza Strip before dawn Monday, killing at least 10 people and wounding several others, after the convoy ignored orders to turn back. The Navy later towed the ships to Ashdod port.

The Israel Defense Forces said 10 activists were killed after its troops came under fire while intercepting the convoy. Unofficial reports put the death toll at between 14 and 20.

"Our initial findings show that at least 10 convoy participants were killed," an army spokesman said.

The military said in a statement: "Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) ... During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire."

Turkey's NTV said over 60 were also wounded after IDF vessels stormed the flotilla in international waters.

The IDF earlier confirmed that two navy commandos had been wounded in fight, which apparently broke out after activists tried to seize their weapons.

According to the IDF, commandos who stormed the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, the largest vessel in the convoy, encountered violent resistance from activists armed with sticks and knives.

Activists attacked a commando with iron bars as he descended onto the ship from a helicopter, the army said. The IDF said its rules of engagement allowed troops to open fire in what it called a "life-threatening situation".

Elite troops from Shayetet 13, a naval commando unit, boarded the protest boats at around 4:00 A.M. Earlier Monday, Al Jazeera reported that the Gaza aid flotilla had changed course to avoid a confrontation with Israeli warships.

The Israeli naval vessels reportedly made contact earlier with the six-ship flotilla, which is carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza.

Some 700 pro-Palestinian activists are on the boats, including 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, European legislators and an elderly Holocaust survivor.

The Israeli navy was operating under the assumption that the activists manning the boats would not heed their calls to turn around, and Israeli troops were prepared to board the ships and steer them away from the Gaza shores and toward the Israeli port city of Ashdod.

Huwaida Arraf, one of the flotilla organizers, said the six-ship flotilla began the journey from international waters off the coast of Cyprus on Sunday afternoon after two days of delays. According to organizers, the flotilla was expected to reach Gaza, about 400 kilometers away, on Monday afternoon, and two more ships would follow in a second wave.

The flotilla was fully prepared for the different scenarios that might arise, and organizers were hopeful that Israeli authorities would do what's right and not stop the convoy, one of the organizers said.

"We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us," Arraf said. "They are going to have to forcefully stop us."

After nightfall, three Israeli navy missile boats left their base in Haifa, heading out to sea to confront the activists' ships.

Two hours later, Israel Radio broadcast a recording of one of the missile boats warning the flotilla not to approach Gaza.

"If you ignore this order and enter the blockaded area, the Israeli navy will be forced to take all the necessary measures in order to enforce this blockade," the radio message continued.
The flotilla, which includes three cargo ships and three passenger ships, is trying to draw attention to Israel's three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. The boats are carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials.

The activists said they also were carrying hundreds of electric-powered wheelchairs, prefabricated homes and water purifiers.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said that after a security check, permitted humanitarian aid confiscated from the boats will be transferred to Gaza through authorized channels. However, Israel would not transfer items it has banned from Gaza under its blockade rules. Palmor said that for example, cement would be allowed only if it is tied to a specific project.

This is the ninth time that the Free Gaza movement has tried to ship in humanitarian aid to Gaza since August 2008.

Israel has let ships through five times, but has blocked them from entering Gaza waters since the three-week military offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers in January 2009. The flotilla bound for Gaza is the largest to date.

The mission has experienced repeated delays, both due to mechanical problems and a decision by Cyprus to bar any boat from sailing from its shore to Gaza. The ban forced a group of European lawmakers to depart from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot northern part of the island late Saturday.

Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade on Gaza after Hamas militants violently seized control of the seaside territory in June 2007.

Israel says the measures are needed to prevent Hamas, which has fired thousands of rockets at Israel, from building up its arsenal. But United Nations officials and international aid groups say the blockade has been counterproductive, failing to weaken the Islamic militant group while devastating the local economy.

Israel rejects claims of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying it allows more than enough food and medicine into the territory. The Israelis also point to the bustling smuggling industry along Gaza's southern border with Egypt, which has managed to bring consumer goods, gasoline and livestock into the seaside strip.

Israel has condemned the flotilla as a provocation and vowed to block it from reaching Gaza.
Israeli military officials said they hoped to resolve the situation peacefully but are prepared for all scenarios. Naval commandos have been training for days in anticipation of the standoff. Military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under official guidelines, said the forces would likely take over the boats under the cover of darkness.

Palmor said foreigners on the ships would be sent back to their countries. Activists who did not willingly agree to be deported would be detained. A special detention facility had been set up in Ashdod.

"I don't think they are going to be submissive or go away. The present president of Sri Lanka believes he has settled the problem; Tamil Tigers are killed and that is that." [ Cartoon by: Indika Dissanayake ]
___________________

By A Special Correspondent

(May 31,Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a new book entitled ‘Citizen Singapore: How To Build A Nation - Conversations with Lee Kwan Yew’ by Prof Tom Plate, published by Marshall Cavendish, a subsidiary of Times Publishing Ltd, Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew has expressed his opinion on Sri Lanka after the war.

Lee Kwan Yew is acknowledged as one of the architects of modern Asia and a pioneer of the Asian economic miracle, which has set in motion a historic power shift from the West to the East. Singapore was just rated as having the most competitive economy in the world and Lee Kwan Yew is regarded as the epitome of a successful and visionary leader. He is credited with being one of the first to predict the new rise of China. His views are highly regarded and influential in governing circles and among policy elites around the world.

Sri Lanka “is not a happy, united country” he says, and is not optimistic about its post-war direction. “The present president of Sri Lanka believes he has settled the problem; his Tamil Tigers are killed and that is that.” In what is probably the most controversial remark on the subject by a world famous political personality who has never fought shy of controversy, Lee Kwan Yew refers to the Sri Lankan President’s ideology: “ I’ve read his speeches and I knew he was a Sinhalese extremist. I cannot change his mind”.

Though wielding a well-deserved reputation as a ‘forceful’, ‘hardnosed’ and ‘tough-minded’ leader, Lee Kwan Yew had almost ‘cringed’ at any analogy with today’s Sri Lanka, leading interviewer-author Tom Plate to observe to Lee that his system of government was ‘much softer, consensual and intelligent’ than that in Sri Lanka.

Lee Kwan Yew’s views have been sought after by leaders the world over, with Henry Kissinger saying that two generations of US Presidents have benefited from his advice. He is known to have influenced the thinking of China’s leader Deng Hsiao Peng and India’s Prime Ministers leading to India’s ‘Look East policy’. Malaysia’s Dr Mahathir Mohammed writes that Lee Kwan Yew “will go down in history as a very remarkable intellectual and politician at the same time, which is not a very often thing”, while Prof Samuel Huntington says that he “has made Singapore absolutely unique in this part of the world, by making it as one of the least corrupt political systems in the world...Now that is a tremendous achievement”.

The full text of his remarks on Sri Lanka follow:

"Another example is Sri Lanka. It is not a happy, united country. Yes, they [the majority Sinhalese government] have beaten the Tamil Tigers this time, but the Sinhalese who are less capable are putting down a minority of Jaffna Tamils who are more capable. They were squeezing them out. That's why the Tamils rebelled. But I do not see them ethnic cleansing all two million-plus Jaffna Tamils. The Jaffna Tamils have been in Sri Lanka as long as the Sinhalese."

"So what Asia saw was ethnic cleansing?"

"That's right."

"They will come back, you think?"

"I don't think they are going to be submissive or go away. The present president of Sri Lanka believes he has settled the problem; Tamil Tigers are killed and that is that."

I look up from my notes and with a sense that here we might be seeing a side of LKY that is under-reported, I say: "See, that's really fascinating point, because to the extent that we have any sense of who you are at all, we think of you as this hard-boiled force¬ first guy. But in fact your system of government is much softer, consensual and intelligent, whereas what the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka are doing is a caricature of an LKY who never existed."

Lee fights a cringe, as if fighting off a bad memory-or my bad analogy. He starts to say something, then stops, then leaves it at referring to Sri Lanka's president: "I've read his speeches and I knew he was a Sinhalese extremist. I cannot change his mind."

Undertaking battles that cannot be won is not a particular trademark of LKY's pragmatic success formula. Neither is a religious obeisance to so-called pure democracy as the form of preferred government. He does not mention that Sri Lanka is a democracy, based on one-citizen, one-vote. He's not against democracies when they work. He's against defending them just because they are democracies. This position strikes me as more consistent than the U.S. relationship with other democracies: we support them only when we approve of them, denouncing them (or worse) when we don't.

He is also opposed to defending propositions that have little factual foundation simply because they are politically correct. He does think, by and large, Chinese people work harder than many other nationalities or ethnicities (though not, for example, more than the Japanese). In fact, he suspects the 21st century will be a Chinese or Asian one. He thinks the Tamils deserve more respect than the Sinhalese have given them. He doubts the average Malay will ever become a hard-charging workaholic, as are many Chinese ... as are (as we will see later) many Israelis ... and as are the Japanese. In fact, the Japanese are so driven that they serve to underscore the point that even an inefficient democratic system of government is not necessarily an impediment to economic growth." (pp. 55-56)

The book, the first in a series ‘Giants of Asia’, is a set of lengthy interviews conducted by Los Angeles based scholar-journalist Prof Tom Plate, a respected American commentator on Asia, whose Op-Ed column in the Los Angeles Times is the longest running column in the US press on Asia-America. A lecturer at the US Pacific Command (Hawaii), Tom Plate has been consistently and sharply critical of the Tamil Tigers in his writings.

"The battle of the regime in the economic front at home is just as lethal as her travails with the international community – and particularly the powerful governments of the West. By its own action GoSL finds itself isolated by many diplomatic setbacks."
_____________

By Luxman Arvind

(May 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It was a formal interview in which Fauzia Ibrahim of the increasingly popular global TV Channel Al Jazeera (101 East) was conducting. In the process of the event President Mahinda Rajapakse, generally a smiling, courteous and collected man, lost his cool and demanded “You don’t ask that from the Americans. You don’t ask that from the British…Don’t treat Sri Lanka like that” that clearly shocked Ms Ibrahim.

She did not lose her composure and eventually was to have the day. Diplomatic and media sources in Colombo see this as a further sign of President Rajapakse losing his bearings - as his regime comes under siege in many fronts. Around the same time, mild-mannered new Minister of External Affairs Prof. G. L. Peiris – legal luminary and senior Minister in several administrations in recent times - abruptly cancelled a plan media Conference at the National Press Conference in Washington. Peiris is currently on a visit to the USA in which GoSL places much hopes for a breakthrough to salvage her negative image abroad. He was tasked with repairing much damage in US-SL relations where the US Administration is under pressure to set in motion a War Crimes Trial against the Rajapakse brothers and the Sri Lankan Army. All arising out of events in the recently concluded war against the Tamil tigers where nearly a third of a million Tamil women, children and other civilians were forcibly held in camps widely described as “Concentration Camps” of WW2 vintage. In fairness to GoSL, they vigorously deny the claim although their position is weakened by the continuous refusal of the regime to permit independent local and foreign media to ascertain the allegations. Of equal importance was Dr. Peiris’s meeting with the UN-SG Ban Ki Moon, himself under attack for failing to hold Sri Lanka accountable for gross HR violations last May in the Wanni region of the Tamil-dominated Northern Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the recent recorded comment of a government apologist can bring no comfort to the Rajapakse regime “One may discern a serious danger of growing encirclement of Sri Lanka” – said he who was until recently a front-line trouble-shooter for the Rajapakse government in the UN/Geneva. His sudden removal, while he had about two more years to go under his Contract, was done haphazardly- believed to be at the instance of the Israelis who had complained of this official while in Geneva.

The battle of the regime in the economic front at home is just as lethal as her travails with the international community – and particularly the powerful governments of the West. By its own action GoSL finds itself isolated by many diplomatic setbacks. The US$2.6 billion loan from the IMF was secured after agreeing to many bitter conditions. The first two tranches averted a collapse of the economy and bought valuable time for the gasping economy. The third tranche is long delayed because the government has failed to accomplish reduce the assured budget deficits. Reducing consumption and cutting wastage in the poorly performing public sector – notably petroleum, power and energy - were all agreed to at the time the loan was obtained. The recent stiff hikes in the price of cooking gas, wheat flour, bread, milk powder, daily food essentials are already alienating the regime’s power base in the urban areas where live a large number of the working class. The wider rural electorate - largely of farmers and fisher folk - are not as badly affected as they live frugally with rice and farm produce, catches from the sea, hardly use cooking gas, milk powder and other items associated with the life styles of their cousins in the towns. However, punsihing price increases expected in electricity, fuel, price of medicine and pharmaceuticals will harm them just as well. The large working class base that helped Rajapakse to come to power over and over again finds the increases in wages assured during pre-election times are not forthcoming. They are sharpening their knives – just in case. Lack of management skill and professionalism particularly at a time the regime is going through economic difficulties is patently clear. Square pegs in round holes finding themselves in high Governement positions in a frequent display of music chairs is quite common.

Urgent issues that concern the welfare of the mass of the people, therefore, are hardly addressed to bring relief to the people. The recent change of ministers clearly showed out a series of comedy of errors. The former Ministers of Health, Education and Trade created more problems than what they settled during their tenure. It was no surprise, therefore, they were all moved from their positions in an indirect show of lack of confidence in them by the omnipotent President. When the new Ministers of Health and Education took over, the first announcement they made was to stridently condemn the previous office holders – their Cabinet colleagues nonetheless – suggesting they have “messed up the entire ministry’s running of affairs” It is clear nothing much can be expected from many of these Cabinet Ministers – the External Affairs Minister being one of the rare exceptions. The main claim of all these ministers is that they were elected by popular vote. This is woefully inadequate in running the affairs of a resource-short developing country

where managerial skill and competency often plays a tremendously complementary role.

By far the greatest challenge to the Rajapakse regime will be the issues of their relationship with India that is inextricably intertwined with the settlement of the National Question – the hydra-headed creature. This includes power-sharing issue with the Tamils of the North East, the questions relating to the IDPs of sharply contested numbers and the future of the Lankan Tamils – now agreed by both sides to be a concern of the Government of India as well. The unsettled issue of Lankan Tamils – of whom there are over an estimated 150,000 in refugee camps in India since 1983– is a matter of deep concern to the adjoining State of Tamilnadu, an important Coalition constituent of the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi Government. It is widely suspected the Rajapakse regime have given GoI many assurances to address the problem all of which can be unpopular with his extreme Buddhist Sinhala vote base. Pay time is here – and India is due to go to national polls next year. One indication the Rajapakse regime is buckling in was the inspired leak to the media last week to the effect draft proposals of the settlement will be handed over both to the President and PM of India - while the people of Sri Lanka will be kept in the dark. Now this a big come-down for a regime that impressed the Sinhala electorate with hyperbole and the like to the effect

“we will not be intimidated or cowed down by anyone” Fully realizing there can be a backlash the regime is believed to have let loose their henchmen on an anti-Indian tirade. Wilmal Weerawansa – the former JVP rabble rouser - was given a powerful Cabinet Portfolio recently although his administrative or managerial skills are virtually nil. His attack personally naming the Indian Foreign Secretary Smt. Nirupama Rao violates the basic norms expected in the behaviour of a Cabinet Minister in naming a senior official of a friendly neighbour out of protocol– albeit a regional power. India would have taken careful note of Weerawansa’s threat “Nirupama Rao has no business to tell us what to do” This ill-educated man is ignorant the many visits the President and his 2 brothers and other close officials undertake to India is merely to seek their advise exactly what Sri Lanka should do to overcome our many crises. Yesterday’s brutal attack by lawyer S.L. Gunasekera, with the dubious reputation of having been in almost all the major parties where he was shown the door – in poor taste names most of the current Indian leaders. The timing of both these inspired attacks by men close to the top of the regime to coincide with President Rajapakse’s uneasy visit to Delhi due June 08 is aimed to cushioning the hardliners within the country.

However, this can well be counter-productive with an Indian administration that has, in more ways than one, told the Rajapakses the game of procrastination now must end.

Yet another area in which the regime will find it tough convincing Delhi of their good intent is that in which they are engaging the TNA. That India has counselled the President to work closely with the TNA – who enjoy a large popular measure of electoral support of the Tamil people in the NEP – is hardly a secret. President Rajapakse called for “the cooperation of the Tamils to settle the National Question” in a great deal of fanfare. Senior Parliamentarian and leader of the TNA was to assure this in unequivocal terms “if lasting and sustainable peace and unity is what you sincerely look to, you will not find us wanting” is the substance of the TNA reply. Yet, when the entire delegation of TNA MPs under Mr Sampanthan’s leadership went to the Chettikulam IDP camp to meet, speak to and console the thousands of IDPs involuntarily held there, he was horrified the lower level army officials there have been given orders not to let them in. This after the delegation noticed the President’s office well in time of the visit and were assured all was well. This is not the first time orders in such sensitive affairs given by the President are counter-manded. By whom and why does not bode well for the President’s grip on the power apparatus is the view of these MPs and those in the know.

While Sri Lankan businessmen and industrialists have many other channels through which they can express their dissatisfaction to the CEPA, which the media makes out is being pressed on by GoI sources, the fact such influential millionaire industrialists like Mickey Wickramasisnghe of MUNCHEE Biscuit factory and Ariyapala Wickramanayake of Master Divers-MILCO coming out at Lipton Circus a week before the President’s visit to Delhi might not impress the Delhi Brahmins. Many in trade circles say the Government’s hand in this inspired anti-Indian demonstration is all too clear but puzzling.

There can be little good tidings from Europe in the regaining of the GSP+ simply because the EU is in a serious economic crisis. Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal are shaking the foundations of the EU financial structure. If England, Ireland and Germany were to fall even marginally then placing Sri Lanka’s GSP issue will have to be pushed lower down their agenda.

The ill-advised 2nd mega show of the “Victory against the Tamil Tigers” that was due to be flagged off on May 18 was called off. The first as we all know was in the weeks after May 19 last year. In the words of another columnist, “the war lords were beaten by the weather gods” This calculated move to rub into the wounds of the Tamil civilians (the LTTE leadership is long dead) in the country was frowned down by India and the international community. But the government was insistent on further propaganda gains to keep the focus of the Sinhala South from the spiralling Cost of Living issue. Now the whole thing has blown off in the face of the government as the Trans National Government of Tamil Eelam matter is back in the agenda of the global press. Local analysts are carefully noting our own spin doctors now cotton on to the "diaspora"bogey now that LTTE, Terrorism, Separate State have all lost their venom in the Sinhala psyche. Hilary Clinton, the US Senate, the Canadian government, Anne Arbour and associates, powerful sources in British and European politics are all back speaking of “HR violations and War Crimes in Sri Lanka” which could have been totally averted. With the Noreiga and Sudan’s Bashir issues catching the attention of the world press leaders in countries with suspect HR records are in fear of travelling to Europe and North America. Ban Ki Moon is under attack for doing a poor job and being weak to act in areas where the writ of the UN should have been more visible and forthright. Prof G.L. Peiris leaving the NPC press briefing in Washington in a huff is said to be related to the fact UNSG Moon has now turned course and is insistent on an international impartial fact finding mission.

Post June 08 can be a difficult month for the Rajapakses of Sri Lanka. July, decidedly so for many years, since 1983 so has been so.

Some Gave All; Some Truly Did Not What To Do; Some Gave Nothing But Profited A Lot!

Written by Day

(May 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Today, 31 May 2010, is Memorial Day and we remember the Fallen, the Soldiers who made the Supreme Sacrifice or paid the ultimate price.

Let us think of what Aristotle said once upon time, and its relevance to present day Sri Lanka 'We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.'

As young men we decided to join the military and there were so many reasons other than earning a monthly paycheck. The combination of reasons included but not limited to; family tradition or it runs in the family; status; as a livelihood; imitating (as seniors in the school joined the forces); patriotism. There was not a singular underlying reason but all of the above reasons and some in certain or varying percentages, depending on one’s strength of moral fiber, integrity or school of thought.

When the going got tough due to the scourge of Tamil terrorism and the JVP insurgency in late 80 and the near and dear ones pleaded with us, day in day out, to quit, the tough got going as somebody had to do it or ensure the freedoms that Sri Lankan citizenry would like to enjoy were intact. We were under obligation assiduously to do it as we were fed, paid, kitted up, billeted, armed and equipped by the taxpayers’ money. We were meant to kill as many as Tamil terrorists or Sinhalese insurgents possible in the name of national defence, before being killed. We were all for it and there was no two words about it. Because of or as our children need and deserve a peaceful and safe and stable and secure country to live in and realize their full potential.

But shamelessly the weak deserted the ranks and fled overseas being the sons of the rich and powerful, or left the services, with the family connections to the powers that be or the influential, after receiving valuable military training free of charge or at the taxpayer’s expense, without giving at least some service or the taxpayers money’s worth back to the Nation or Mother Lanka. One joined a military academy with the help of a Chief of Staff named ‘Psycho’ N’wela and another because his father had taught a service’s military Secretary in school, to cite a couple as examples. They both have Ph. Ds now, without serving a single day in the front or forward areas during the last three decades of turmoil in Sri Lanka. Every one of them was required to serve more than 10 years for the education and training they received. Still there were others who joined with the help of Kirindes and Vithanes but whilst in uniform, without a bit of shame and disgracefully, stole property from the Colombo harbour during the Reign of Terror. There are some more that have been just getting by. I call all of them and all these rascals who helped them to enlist into the military, without an iota of regret, the sons of bi*ches!

Please remember on this Memorial Day the unsung heroes of Sri Lankan military, who did the right thing by rising to the occasion to face a hail of enemy gunfire, a wall of claymore ball-bearings, Rocket Propel Grenades (RPGs)’ or walk across mine-fields and walk by booby-trapped buildings when Mother Lanka needed them in the moment of truth or in the hour of need. ALWAYS Keep them in your prayers at temple, church mosque or kovil as they are no more with you Sri Lankan citizens and their loved ones. In nowadays Sri Lanka, It is very sad, only the widow and the children miss the ‘daddy’ or ‘appachchi’!

They were the ones who were manning the ‘OPs’ (Observation Posts) in the thick Wanni jungles in the enemy territory while you were ‘sweet dreaming’. They were the ones who used their reflexes, while pulling duty, to catch a glow-worm (insect) in order to read the time on the watch rather than activating the ‘indiglo’ light on their wrist-watches not to ‘give out or give away’ their position to the enemy. How many of them, I mean, how many of them pulling that ‘Grave Yard Shift’ (that is what we call midnight to 4 am shift in the military) came down with malaria as mosquitoes had a field day or a free feast on these poor Soldiers acting as GOSL sent ‘blood banks’ in the Wanni jungles . Or because of poor Sri Lankan military could not afford to issue ‘Larium’ tablets to each and every Soldier (Mefloquine) before their deployment to the malaria suspected areas, like other western militaries do.

They were the ones who were wading through the mud and floods caused by monsoon rains while you were having fun and sun and enjoying the surf at the Unawatuna beach. You went there with your families for a week-end buffet to release some family or work related stress and for ‘family building’, or else you took a ‘date’ for a ‘week-end getaway’ to have some ‘rest, sex and recreation’ to your heart’s content while Soldier was eating ‘rice and dhal’ and doing ‘monkey runs’,’ high crawling’, ‘low crawling’ to close on the enemy in order to kill him.

They are the ones who created the atmosphere or gave human rights or freedom of speech to ‘Paki to dance in discotheques and write to discredit Sri Lanka, Jehan to appear on TV and talk about human rights violations, DBS to sympathize openly with Tamil terrorists, Vany K to act as a medic to terrorists to and go back alive to UK to pillory GOSL on BBC, MIA to seek asylum alive and rap and hurl barbs and bad mouth Sri Lanka where her father received free food, education, medicine and above all procreated resulting in her birth, ‘Bahu’ to be on the same stage with terrorists or ‘brothers in arm’, for Fawning Free Media Movement (FFMM) to write against the national security operations , for businessmen to amass wealth, and nepotistic politicos to profit and profligate.

They are the poor ones who paved the way or created the conducive and peaceful conditions or environment, with unselfishness and their sacrifices, for you to go to work and earn a living, your children to go to school and come back home safely every day since 18 May 2009 for the first time in the last three decades. Hope this peace lasts forever unless MR, SF, S and W Wansas, RW and their ilk f*ck it up again in a right royal way.

I can go on and on and on……………………………….

So, please, have a soft corner for a Soldier when he commits an infraction, make a mistake or cause a judgment error due to a human foible than crying ‘blue murder’! When a Soldier is alleged or accused, arraigned and found guilty of a ‘criminal offence’ please always remember what Napoléon Bonaparte said a couple of centuries ago ‘There are No bad Soldiers but Bad officers’.

On this Memorial Day it is apt to remember here or let us all reflect the following;

1. As a young British officer, William Slim, later Field Marshal the Viscount Sir William Joseph Slim of Burma, provided "Military Aid to Civil Power (MACP) l" in India during ethnic clashes between Hindus and Muslims. On one occasion, police attempted to restore order in the face of mob violence, but they were in danger of being overwhelmed and killed. Slim made the decision to warn the surging mobs, both Hindu and Muslim, that his troops would fire if the disorder continued. When his warning was ignored, Slim ordered four members of his platoon to fire, two into the Hindu mob and two into the Muslim crowd. Had the violence continued, the police would most likely have perished, along with many civilians as well.

But Slim’s Soldiers killed five civilians and wounded several others. In his charming memoir, Unofficial History, Slim reflected on the incident and its likely aftermath.

The Soldier always knows that everything he does on such an occasion will be scrutinized by two classes of critics—by the Government which employs him and by the enemies of that Government.

As far as the Government is concerned, he is a little Admiral Jellicoe and this his tiny Battle of Jutland.

He has to make a vital decision on incomplete information in a matter of seconds, and afterwards the experts can sit down at leisure, with all the facts before them, and argue about what he might, could, or should have done.

Lucky the Soldier if, as in Jellicoe’s case, the tactical experts decide after twenty years of profound consideration that what he did in three minutes was right.

As for enemies of the Government, it does not much matter what he has done.

They will twist, misinterpret, falsify, or invent any fact as evidence that he is an inhuman monster wallowing in innocent blood.

2. The Soldier and His Service ( A rearranged poem belong to unknown )

It is the Soldier, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer,
who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier,
who salutes the flag,
who serves under the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
who allows the protester to burn the flag.

A protest raged on a courthouse lawn,
Round a makeshift stage they charged on,
Fifteen hundred or more they say,
Had come to burn the Lion Flag that day.

A boy (podiyan) held up the folded Flag,
Cursed it, and called it a dirty rag.
A SOLDIER pushed through the angry crowd,
With a T-56 shouldered proud.

His uniform jacket was pressed and tight,
He had polished each button, shiny and bright.
He crossed that stage with a Soldier's grace,
Until he and the boy stood face to face.

"FREEDOM OF SPEECH", the BRAVE SOLDIER said,
"Is worth dying for, good men are dead,
So you can stand on this courthouse lawn,
And talk us down from dusk to dawn,
But before any ‘Lion Flag’ gets burned today,
This BRAVE SOLDIER IS GOING TO HAVE HIS SAY!!

Many a father died on the Wanni battle front,
In a war they said would end all war.
But Lalith and I weren’t even full grown,
Before we fought in a war of our own.
And Lalith died in Oddusudan jungle,
next to a stream he couldn't quite reach
Where six good men carried his dead body to be draped with a ‘Lion Flag’.

And bury him with full military honours.

We lost a lion; a nation is in perpetual mourning,

As men of Lalith caliber are hard to find but are sure to be born

And to fight in a future date for the unitary State

And to prevent a separatist terrorist in Wanni again!

By N.S.Venkataraman

(May 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The supply of adulterated food and spurious / outdated drugs is a heinous crime. It can be justifiably said that those who indulge in such supply practices are mass murderers, as the impact of such misdeeds on the innocent consumers is severe and often life threatening.

While it is obvious that those who indulge in such practices are unscrupulous and greedy elements, the question is as to how they dare to indulge in such practices, inspite of the severe legal measures that can be enforced against them. It is very difficult to carry out such practices , without the knowledge of the concerned officials and all powerful government machinery. Obviously, such practices are the result of collusion between the criminals who indulge in such practices and the corrupt government officials. In the government machinery, it is difficult for any one individual employee to collude with such criminals without the knowledge of the other government employees in the department at the lower and higher level. It goes without saying that the root cause for such adulteration practices is the collusion between the group of government employees at various levels in the concerned departments and the unscrupulous persons who adulterate the food, make spurious drugs and sell the outdated drugs in the market.

One of the pre requisites to totally curb such obnoxious practices is to ensure corruption free administration in the government machinery, which is supposed to be the watchdog. The ministers and top bureaucrats and senior police officials should have the will to do so. One cannot but say that the prevalence of the adulterated food and drug in the market is a reflection on the character and quality of the overall administration.

Subtle and crude ways of adulteration

Adulteration of food takes place in many ways and some of them are subtle and some of them are very crude.

Even the liquor sale outlets are reported to be selling the liquor that is well diluted with water at retail level, with specification of the sold liquor far different from the prescribed norms. One would not even know as to what quality of water would be used for diluting the liquor meant for human consumption.

It is reported that cow dung powder are mixed with dhania powder or other flour, to increase the weight. Well designed stones being systematically mixed with the rice and wheat are also not uncommon. Even use of blotting paper in the preparation of ice creams have been reported.

Artificial ripening of the fruits with harmful chemical like calcium carbide has often been reported.

There are number of chemicals that are used as additives in food products and sugar. Such chemicals used should be of food grade in specification which is high purity level. Often the food companies use technical grade chemicals instead of food grade chemicals to save cost , as the price of technical grade chemical with lower specification would be less compared to food grade chemical. For example, the sugar industries are supposed to use food grade phosphoric acid that would contain no arsenic or sulphur. But, several sugar units are said to be using technical grade phosphoric acid and such practices go largely unnoticed.

Use of artificial colours

There are many synthetic colours which are produced and now extensively used for colouring the food products as well as the fruits. Most of these chemicals can be undesirable additive.

While natural plant extracts were largely used in the food colourings earlier, the synthetic colours have replaced the natural plant extracts in recent times to a considerable extent.

With imposition of ban on use of several synthetic dyestuffs (colours) particularly in Europe in recent years, the natural colours are gaining importance around the world. But, this is not the case in Asian countries.

However, not all the natural colours are safe to use. Although plants exhibit a wide range of colours, not all of these pigments can be used.

* Some do not dissolve in water
* Some cannot be adsorbed on substrates
* Some others fade when washed or exposed to air or sunlight.
* Therefore, the use of plant materials as natural colour have to be selective. In the case of natural colour, there is lack of standardization and consistency in specification and product quality. There is need for the use of a mordant for enhancement of the fastness properties of natural colours in some cases.

Regulation default of ayurvedic drugs

According to the Health Ministry of Government of India, over half of the companies in the Rs 80,000 million Indian Ayurveda industry default when it comes to compliance with the regulatory requirements of domestic manufacturing standards. The data was compiled in collaboration with state drug regulators of India.

Shelf life and storage

Apart from the quality of ingredients used in the product, the shelf life of the products and conditions in which they are packed and stored are also vitally important. We often see food items being sold in public places and mutton shops operating in open and in unhygienic surroundings. Several shops do not maintain proper refrigerated conditions for storage of food items and meat products and it is not uncommon to see foul smell emerging in such shops.

Food products from tiny entrepreneurs

There are several tiny entrepreneurs who make food products like pickles, papads in the household and distribute it to the consumers. These pickles and papads are not subjected to any test or certification procedures and one would not know as to what would be the content. There are umpteen number of shops who make snacks and no one would know the type of oil used for cooking the product and other additives added. Many examples can be readily cited.

While the producers in the organized sector could be indulging in deliberate adulteration to multiply their profit , it is possible that the tiny entrepreneurs make the products with a level of innocence and they themselves may not be knowing the extent of contamination in the ingredients. As these products are consumed by people of various age groups and health conditions, any harmful impact can be even life threatening.

Has eating become a calculated risk?

The fact is that we have army of food inspectors and drug inspectors in the government and they are conspicuous by their lack of vigil and lethargic attitude and perhaps willful collusion with the adulterators in some instances.

The citizens seem to be living today in conditions where they really do not know the quality of the product that they consume and eating has become a calculated risk.

"Each man is his own helper, each his own host; therefore, curb thyself as the merchant curbs a spirited horse."
___________________

By Prof. Shelton Gunaratne

(May 31, Washington, Sri Lanka Guardian) Samangie WETTAMUNY in the feature titled “See Buddha through His Dhamma” (Sunday Observer, 23 May 2010) summarizes his/her view of Buddhism in the lead sentence:

Man is supreme, according to Buddhism. He is his own master.

This translation of the Pali verse 380 from Bhikkhuvagga (Dhammapada Sutra, Chapter 25) is misleading because it contradicts the crux of Buddhism embedded in the doctrine of dependent co-arising (paticca samuppada):

This being, that becomes;
From the arising of this, that arises;
This not being, that becomes not;
From the ceasing of this, that ceases.

Thus, nothing can be supreme/independent; everything is dependent. Buddhism doesn’t accept the supremacy of the individual because it asserts anatta (no-selfness) as one of the three truths of existence. It rejects the concept of soul (atta).

Acharya Buddharakkhita provides a more accurate translation of the Bhikkhuvagga stanza:

380. One is one's own protector; one is one's own refuge. Therefore, one should control oneself, even as a trader controls a noble steed.

This doesn’t say that man is supreme; it implies that man has control over his own destiny in the cycle of rebecoming. He has the freedom to choose between a good or bad destiny based on his volitional action (karma).

Below are three early translations of Verse 380 (25:380)

380. You are indeed, the protector of yourself. You are, indeed, your own refuge. Therefore, control your own self as a merchant controls a noble horse. (Narada, 1959)

380. Each man is his own helper, each his own host; therefore, curb thyself as the merchant curbs a spirited horse. (Wagiswara, 1912)

380. For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse. (Muller, 1881)

If anatta (no-selfness) is the truth of existence, then the use of the English term “self” in each of the above translations, particularly that of Muller, is misleading. A sentient being is the composite of five ever-changing and interacting elements; therefore, no self can exist beyond a single moment. This elucidates the second truth of existence: impermanence (anicca). From the Buddhist perspective, then, a human being is a stream of consciousness (conditioned by the interaction of the five elements or panca-skanda), not a self as such. English is incapable of capturing the exact meaning of significant Pali words like dukkha.

The article goes on to describe the event of Gautama Buddha’s birth 2625 years ago:

Amidst the thunderous ovation of millions of people and gods, the new born prince walked seven steps to the North and uttered thus:

“Aggo Hamasmi Lokassa,
Jetto Hamasmi Lokassa,
Setto Hamasmi Lokassa,
Ayamanthi Majathi
Naththi Dhani Punabbavo”

(I am the greatest of all, I am the most senior of all, This is my last birth.)

I doubt the veracity of the English rendition of this Pali stanza. The translation connotes a certain braggadocio associated with self, which contradicts the Buddhist belief in anatta. Pali experts should produce an English translation that is consistent with anatta and avoids egocentric words such as “greatest” and “supreme.”

Sunday Observer should have edited Wettamuny’s feature for accuracy prior to publication.

(The writer is a professor emeritus at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Opinions expressed here are solely his.)

"Should India have agreed to go along with this charade? Should the Manmohan Singh Government have literally colluded with the Obama Administration in playing a fraud on the Indian people by creating an illusion of Mr.Obama’s cooperation when the US has not been co-operating with India as it expects others to co-operate with it?"
_________

By B.Raman

(May 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) A day before the start of the Indo-US Strategic Dialogue at Washington DC and three days before President Barack Obama’s appearance at a reception to be hosted for the Indian delegation by Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, one more charade in Indo-US cooperation will be enacted with the departure of a four-member team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of the Government of India for Chicago to interrogate David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) on his secret visits to India at the instance of the LET to collect operational information that would facilitate one more terrorist strike by the LET in India----this time directed mainly at Israeli and other Jewish targets.

On May 1,2010, Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, tried unsuccessfully to cause an explosion in the Times Square of New York. He was identified and arrested on May 3 as he was trying to flee to Pakistan. Within a week, the US made the Pakistani authorities detain for questioning over 15 persons in Karachi, Islamabad and other places in this connection and US officials including Gen.James Jones, the US National Security Adviser, Mr.Leon Panetta, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) flew to Pakistan thereafter to insist on follow-up action by the Pakistani agencies and to warn the Pakistani leaders of the consequences of their non-cooperation.

One admired the seriousness and the sense of urgency shown by US officials for protecting American lives. If the protestations of President Barack Obama and his officials of friendship for India and their repeated assurances of the high priority attached by him to the US relations with India were sincere and honest, one would have expected from them a similar seriousness and sense of urgency in protecting Indian lives by facilitating immediate access to Headley for Indian investigators.

The immediate follow-up which they insisted upon from Pakistan to protect American lives, they did not concede to India to protect Indian lives. Headley was arrested by them in the beginning of October, 2009. It has taken them eight months to grant access to the Indian investigators. Even the access which they have now agreed to give after a delay of eight months is a limited one. During this delay of eight months, the LET would have been able to cover up its trail in India, withdraw from India those of its cadres whose identities were known to Headley and reorganize and relocate its sleeper cells.

The Indian investigators, it has been reported, will be allowed to question Headley in the presence of his lawyer and an official of the FBI. Do you call this interrogation? What is interrogation? It is not just questioning a person and typing out his replies. It is much more than that. It is a psychological process by which you make the suspect contradict himself by confronting him with evidence which you have been able to collect independently. Ultimately, he realizes the game is up and comes out with the truth.

With Headley’s lawyer and the FBI officer sitting there all the time, will the Indian investigators be able to do it? No. Headley will just give proforma replies to the Indian questions and these replies would have been rehearsed with his lawyer and got approved by him. Of what use, his proforma replies? Will we be able to prosecute him in India? If we decide to do so, will the US extradite him to India?

The departure of the Indian team to the US just before the Strategic Dialogue and the appearance of Mr.Obama at the State Department to talk to the Indian delegation is meant to prevent this issue from casting a shadow on the dialogue.

Do you remember what we were told after the so-called State visit of our Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh, to Washington DC in November last? We were told of a counter-terrorism initiative which the two countries have embarked upon. We were told of the personal interest taken by Mr.Obama in the Headley case. We were told of his instructions to the FBI chief, Mr.Robert Mueller, to visit India and reassure his Indian counterparts of the FBI’s readiness to co-operate with India in this matter. Subsequently, the US Ambassador to India, Mr.Timothy Roemer, has been repeatedly telling Indian officials and people that the US was working “day and night” to meet the Indian request for access to Headley.

The outcome: A delay of eight months in giving us access and that too a limited access which reduces the entire exercise to a charade.

Should India have agreed to go along with this charade? Should the Manmohan Singh Government have literally colluded with the Obama Administration in playing a fraud on the Indian people by creating an illusion of Mr.Obama’s cooperation when the US has not been co-operating with India as it expects others to co-operate with it?

It would have been more in keeping with our national self-respect and dignity for the Manmohan Singh Government to have politely withdrawn its request to the US for access to Headley because of the lack of sincerity on the part of the Obama Administration and its belated action, which has reduced the utility of any interrogation by Indian investigators.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

"Petraeus and Obama (plus Admiral Olson of SOCOM) have created arguably the most aggressive covert/overt campaign to counter an “enemy” since WWII and the Cold War. All levels of US society are now being asked to be on guard in this national/global effort in an uncertain world."
____________________

By John Stanton writes from Virginia

(May 31,Virginia, Sri Lanka Guardian) “It would seem that the US Army TRADOC Command has entered a time warp. They have dusted off the files on CORDS and the old FAO program. The new COIN manual and doctrine are the Holy Grail! The message being sent is this: Use COIN or else!”

The HTS Program Manager was scheduled to make a magic appearance here to observe the wonderful MAP HT training program unfold. However, while en route, he was called back to HTS Headquarters to discuss the results of an employee survey that was sent out to HTS US Army civilians about a month ago. The response rate was dismally low (30%). Those that did respond apparently did so with a vengeance. Direct criticism of MAP HT and questionable activity, falling under the 'Waste, Fraud, and Abuse', statutes were apparently brought up by more than one person.”

Among the litany of woes within the US Army's Human Terrain System, it is difficult to pick one that outdoes the other. However, in the last few months, MAP HT has come under much criticism from a variety of sources in Washington, DC and out-CONUS. Not only has MAP HT failed to materialize in any useful form, but also that “MAP Anything” is hardly a novel concept in 2010. Geospatial analysis, mapping, modeling and simulation can be done by just about any competent computer user these days. Indeed, there are dozens of online programs available at no cost, plus Google Earth is out there with many API's for use. It's actually become a popular pastime in the USA.

To map the human terrain of one's neighborhood, say, one need only observe movements, dress, speech, trends, political comments, etc. and input that data into, say, MAP HT Neighborhood. The same could be done on a visit to a community in another country. Just bring the survey data back and plug it in to your very own geospatial program.

We Are All Human Terrain Team Members!

Before getting back inside the US Army HTS, it's worth going offf on a short but worthy tangent. Americans are all intelligence collectors now. In fact, that is precisely what CENTCOM CG David Petraeus' seems to have envisioned long ago. To enlist the nation to become Human Terrain Intelligence Gatherers in the global wars on insurgency, drugs, crime, or whatever other threat/war there needs to be. His human terrain concept has, remarkably, been hammered into the fabric of national military strategy and tactics, and President Obama's recently released National Security Strategy of the USA (NSS).

According to the New York Times, the Petraeus' Plan requires “American troops, businessmen/women, and academia...” to join in the fight. Was anyone really surprised that kill-capture would have to go way beyond CENTCOM's AOR or into all other COCOM AOR's? President Obama's NSS butresses the case. The public is called forward, again, to be on the watch for the “enemy.” American's will be engaged further at how best to do that in the coming years. Obama goes on to say that national security is indistinguishable from homeland security.

Petraeus and Obama (plus Admiral Olson of SOCOM) have created arguably the most aggressive covert/overt campaign to counter an “enemy” since WWII and the Cold War. All levels of US society are now being asked to be on guard in this national/global effort in an uncertain world.

This truly is Whole of Government and Whole of Society as depicted by the logo for the US Interagency Task Force on COIN.

So be it.

But when the day comes to pass that the US becomes enaged in a 20th century style conventional land war--and it will—America better be able to rapidly set aside COIN/HTS as the central focus of US military strategy/tactics.

There is grave danger in betting the country's future focused maniacally on this approach.

MAP HT: Fondacaro's Boondoggle

It's official. MAP HT, “The boondoggle of all boondoggles raised it's ugly head in a big way.” Sources say “Steve Fondacaro got a weed up his ass about a month ago and mandated that all teams attend
MAP HT training.” “That was a great plan,” they say, “except the crap doesn't work. It consists of a bunch of outdated servers sitting in Pelican Cases that are gathering dust in various corners of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Not deterred, an MTT (Mobile Training Team) began its MAP HT Road Show starting with HT'Ts in Kandahar. Subsequently, when three groups of US Army Civilians failed the week long course, an individual employed as a US Army contractor threatened them all with being fired.” That action is in clear violation of Human Relations procedures covering US Federal Employees. The same contractor, according to sources, is responsible for “pushing the SSRA--another taxpayer rip-of”-- when not trying to sell MAP HT”.

Sources claim, “He is in bed with yet another US Army contractor “to get MAP HT crammed down everyone's throats at the behest of Steve Fondacaro so his buddy Dan Wolf can get richer. Steve
set him up to supply all of HTS' computer systems and equipment through a company his wife apparently owns.”

It is reported that, “to date MAP HT has cost the taxpayers some $40 million for a pile of junk that's not being used. The kicker is that it finally has received some kind of initial accreditation from the U.S. Army to be used on the NIPR (unclassified) network where it does little good.”

The vast majority of HTT reports are posted on SIPR and CENTRIX-I, not NIPR

Further, the licenses for Analyst Notebook and ARC GIS have expired. Sources say “it'll take another $60 million to get the system operating and usable.” Evidently, Fondacaro is trying to get the $60 million slipped into the Army's O&S budget request so it will not be noticed.

HTT's are apparently on the move now in Afghanistan again--at considerable expense--to attend another MAP HT training gig conducted by Wolf and the two US Army contractors cited above. Sources say one BCT Commander had to delay a major campaign for a week since a “gung-ho HTT Team Leader (who imploded his own team in Bagram previously) mandated that his ENTIRE team attend MAP HT - leaving the BCT Commander without HTT support until they returned.”

We'll Pay You When We Feel Like it

“The general public doess not have any clue how serious an issue it is for us in HTS.”

There is an internal tracking system known as Request For Support (RFS) where compensation matters are tracked. There are “well over 1,000 open requests being tracked.” Sources say, the overwhelming bulk of these are related to pay issues. “An important point to consider is that each RFS may contain several problems for one HTT member from one pay period, or the RFS may include an entire HTT's worth of problems. Multiply each pay issue in RFS by four or six times and the extent of this becomes apparent.”

Evidently, some HTT members are owed $15,000 or more for services rendered.

It is all a “big yawn” say observers back at Fort Leavenworth. “The individual person who processes the civilian payroll shows outright animosity towards the US Army Civilians and routinely decides on her own what hours someone actually worked instead of following what was on the timesheet/timecard”.

It is reported that one team was “shorted” holiday pay and when they informed the person who processes the payroll, she shot back a reply that the payroll would be adjusted to reflect the hours worked (even though it was a holiday period). It took nearly four months to fix.

HTT's have reportedly been denied overtime premium pay for working past 6:00pm. This is a requirement mandated by US Federal law. “Attempts by the USFOR Human Resources representative to get this resolved have been met with stone-walling from HTS HQ. They refuse to return emails sent to them by the HR representative.”

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.

By Dayan Jayathilleka

(May 31, Singapore City, Sri Lanka Guardian) Interestingly of the four pieces I have read on the first anniversary of the war, three are by Indian analyst/commentators, of whom two are military professionals: Gen Ashok K. Mehta’s Manekshaw paper No 22 for the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (New Delhi) on ‘How Eelam war 4 was Won’ (which cannot be read by any patriot or anti-fascist without a lump in one’s throat or mist in one’s eyes), the piece by Col R Hariharan in The Hindu and by PK Balachandran in the Indian Express. The fourth is by a youthful security researcher Sergei de Silva Ranasinghe writing in the respected Australian periodical, The Diplomat.

Within Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, the debate on the war may be differentiated into four positions:

1. Those who condemn both the war and the voices that justify it and approve of its results (such as mine),
2. Those who applaud both the war and its aftermath, condemning both the critics of the war and the post-war present.
3. Those who criticise both the present policy of the state and the past of the Tigers, while either criticising or observing a vow of silence on the last war and the politico-military leadership that took it to success. This position is both intellectually dishonest as well as a-historical: it seems to assume that Prabhakaran and his Tigers were whisked away by a magician or wished away by pious preaching.
4. Those who advocated and supported the war and still do in retrospect, refusing to allow a reversal or revision of the ‘correct historical verdict’ that it was a necessary and Just war, while simultaneously seeking and struggling for a just peace. This stance holds that external-internal (chiefly but not exclusively Indo-Lanka) dynamics would open space for the transition from a Just War and victory—which requires consolidation-- to a Just Peace.

This last position (which I hold) doesn’t seem to be much in evidence and may even seem unrepresentative, but its fundaments (‘we supported Sri Lanka’s war and are pleased you won, but you must not waste time, and should move towards a sustainable peace based on a political settlement with the Tamils’) are shared by all those states which supported the Sri Lankan war effort by military, economic and politico-diplomatic means, i.e. the majority of states in the international system, including all of Asia. More pertinently, all public opinion surveys, including the most recent (Colin Irwin’s surveys of 2009 and 2010 for the Univ of Liverpool) reveal that in respect of its basics, this is indeed the position of the vast majority of Sri Lankans (anti-Tiger, pro-war, pro-victory, pro-Mahinda, anti-federalism, pro-enhanced provincial devolution within a unitary system). Irwin surveys of 2009-2010reveal total congruency with the 2007 MARGA Institute opinion survey introduced and summarised by Godfrey Gunatilleke. In that 2007 poll:

• the large majority -- 84% -- favour a total military defeat of the LTTE and recapture of the territory presently held by it
• While only 22 % approved a federal solution, most of the respondents -- 87 % -- were in favour of the provincial council system. 51% wanted the two provinces to be de-merged and continue as separate provinces

What is utterly significant is that no mainstream political formation, leadership, or intellectual tendency comes close to this binary view. The government reflected and implemented the first part, which no preceding administration did. The CBK administration ignored the majority view on the second aspect, and toyed with the minority view, possibly under the ideological influence of the peace lobby. The Sinhala ultranationalists ignore the preference for provincial devolution, as do their targets and foes, the cosmopolitan liberals, who go for the federal model.

This brings us to the challenge of today and tomorrow. Provincial autonomy must be fought for because there is a serious danger that it will go by the board. It is a battle that can be won because there is a bed-rock of public opinion in favour and the realities of external factors and forces pushing (or at least nudging) in this direction. Ironically, the ‘moderate’ TNA and ‘enlightened liberal’ opinion is not for it; preferring to push for a federal or quasi-federal outcome. The problem is that there is no significant public support for it and enormous public opposition to it. As philosophical method cautions us, ‘Is’ cannot be derived from ‘ought’. Realism teaches us on the contrary that ‘ought’ must bear relation to ‘is’, by which is meant that in order to be feasible, the ideal aim -- ‘ought’ -- must not be simply a wish-list, but a projection of the most progressive tendencies and probabilities of the present.

A sustainable peace is not easy to conceptualise. For it to be implementable it must be viable and for it to be viable it must guarantee security – both ‘national’ and ‘human’ -- and be in accordance with the strategic needs of the Sri Lankan state. It is, in short, problematic and must not merely be prescribed but ‘problematized’ by public and policy intellectuals. Years after the war, the Sinhalese and the Tamils, the two major communities on the island have lessons to learn, but are they doing so? Will they do so? It is far too late in the day to place postures of politically correct punditry ahead of the political truth, however deep one has to cut and drill down in order to get to it and however deep the truth itself cuts when expressed coldly and analytically.

Antonio Gramsci drew an important distinction between the West and the East, by use of metaphor. In the East, once you capture the main fortress, you win the war, but in the West, you may capture the fort but then you see a complex network of fortifications and tunnels etc snaking all round. This spoke to the difference between the East where ‘the state was everything and civil society nothing’ and the West, where the opposite was true. Therefore in the East you can win by war of manoeuvre and frontal assault but in the east you have to fight a long and patient war of position, capturing trench by trench, which takes time. This is the strategy of the long march through the institutions, where one accumulates intellectual, cultural ethical and moral leadership, so that you have established consensus before the final a decisive assault.

Whether they know it or not, the same experience has been undergone by the Sinhalese and Tamils. Both the Sinhalese and Tamils thought that each other resembled a relatively simple ‘Eastern’ formation (in the Gramscian sense) which could be knocked out by a frontal blow, while the reality is that both have a ‘Western’ configuration, with significant complexity and ‘reserves’.

The Tamils thought that Prabhakaran and his miraculous Tigers had punched the Sinhala armed forces into submission and always would. They did not understand that however many Mankulam ( 1990), Mullaitivu ( 1996) and Elephant Pass (2000) fortresses fell to the enemy, behind these forts and this army, were the Sinhala people who just kept resisting; refusing to give in. Similarly when the armed forces beat Prabhakaran last year and decimated the Tigers, the Sinhalese thought that the Tamils had been decisively beaten at Nandikadal and thus it would be easy to cow them. The Sinhalese did not understand that behind the Tigers were a globalised community, the mobilised Diaspora.

In my perspective on Sri Lankan politics, especially the politics of ethno-nationalism, I have gravitated to what might be called a combination of the Realist and Prudentialist schools. While the Idealists range from Kant to Kofi Annan, and the Realists range from Thucydides, through Machiavelli, to Lenin, Morgenthau and Kissinger, the Prudentialists claim ancestry from Aristotle, Montesquieu, Pascal, and Tocqueville through to Raymond Aron. More recently the Prudentialist school became indistinguishable from the new Ethical Realist tendency (Anatole Lieven). I agree with those who consider the best post-war Western strategic and foreign policy thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan and Stanley Hoffman, to be Ethical Realists.

The father of the Realist school of political theory and international relations, Thucydides, tells us that as Athens grew strong there was apprehension in Sparta. Applying realism I conclude that the outbreak of the war was inevitable as was the LTTE’s defeat. The policies and practices of the decade extending roughly from 1973-83, pushed the Tamils to the brink of what must have seemed like eternal victimhood and servitude. This posed an existential threat. The Sinhalese gravely underestimated the Tamils. Given their sense of selfhood, deriving in part from their numbers in the neighbourhood, their global spread, and the status they enjoyed in other parts of the world, they decided to make a fight of it. That much was inevitable. What was not was the nature, the character of that war; its duration and its dynamics.

A Realist reading would similarly yield the following conclusion: Given the sheer demographic weight and the fact that the Sinhalese as a collective are unique to the island of Sri Lanka, it was inevitable that they would fight back, especially when, with the CFA, the ISGA demand and the emergence of the LTTE air arm, it looked like the Tamil Tigers would establish a dominant position on the island while raiding the South at will, murdering its leaders and keeping the Sinhalese in their thrall.

In this stage the Tamils and the West, underestimated the Sinhalese, and lost the war. That too was inevitable, given the numbers and the Sinhala sense that their backs were to the sea and they had no strategic space to retreat. Then, they morphed from lambs to lions, rose against the Tigers and devoured them.

The international targeting of Sri Lanka on this first anniversary of the victory in the war shows that the Sinhalese have once again underestimated the Tamils, who despite their military decimation, have a significant global ‘reserve army’ and international leverage sufficient to bring an avalanche down on the head of the Sinhala leadership.

Following in the tradition of Thucydides, a Realist reading would remark that there are three strategic perspectives for and of the island. Some among the Sinhalese hold that though the island holds more than one community, given the overwhelming superiority of numbers and the civilizational-linguistic uniqueness of the Sinhalese, they must enjoy sole ownership of the island, while the minorities remain as tenants. The second perspective is that of many Tamils who hold that given their numbers off the island and their cultural-civilizational antiquity and achievements, they should have co-equal sovereignty with the Sinhalese over the island -- that being the animating spirit from 50:50 to the ISGA/PTOMS.

The third perspective, which is the Realist-Prudentialist one that I share, is that given the existence of more than one community on the island, power and sovereignty must be shared between them all; given the Sinhalese specificity and huge demographic preponderance on the island that power and sovereignty cannot be shared equally and must of necessity be unequal and hierarchical; and given the external ( regional and global) spread and demonstrated leverage of the Tamils, that unequal sharing cannot be quite as unequal as the Sinhalese would wish.

So the Realist-Prudentialist perspective would conclude that the solution is for both communities to accept that there will be neither sole ownership nor equal partnership but there will be shareholder ship by all communities; a shareholding in which the Sinhalese will have a majority but now quite as overwhelming as they would wish. The Tamil share or stake will not be merely tokenistic but they will be minority shareholders, even in combination with other minorities. This is the case because the domestic balance of power is such, and the Sinhalese have a much bigger stake, existentially, in Sri Lanka than does any other community. They cannot but be the major stakeholders of and in the island. This is a consociation model of sorts but I would prefer to see it as uneven, hierarchical sharing of political space and power. It is not a model of Sinhala political monopoly, but of Sinhala political pre-eminence (hegemony?) in power relations. This is not to be mistaken for unequal rights the level of citizens: all citizens must have equal rights, in law and enforcement, be they Sinhalese, Tamils or of any other ethnicity. This is a model of equal citizenship but of unequal political power and influence; a domestic Yalta model. It is a model that is neither a hyper-centralised unitary one (1972-1988), nor a federal, still less con-federal one, in which the units have a veto (union of regions package, ISGA). It is a strong state, unitary not federal, centralised but not hyper-centralist, with a degree of autonomy that is sufficiently broad to be authentic and centripetal, but sufficiently circumscribed not to be centrifugal.

After the war, the only serious conversation should be about negotiating the degree of unevenness in a necessarily, inevitably hierarchical of power relations in a structure of shared power and sovereignty among the citizens of our common island home. My personal perspective is that the deliberation should take place somewhere within the square constituted by the 13th amendment (1988), the draft Constitution of August 2000, the APRC Experts Committee ‘majority report’ (2007) and the APRC proposals of 2009.

Some may observe critically, that mine seems an ethnic if not primordial perspective, and that this is not the way things are in other parts of the world. However I am a universalist who has grown to respect the Aristotelian contribution of focusing on specificity and particularity, in historical time and geographic space. For instance, India has many nationalities and is thus multi-polar while Sri Lanka’s demographic and power distribution is bi-polar, if not strictly on the island, then in a sub-regional frame. Our problem is to prevent the bi-polar distribution from becoming a perpetual zero-sum game. Singapore has four national languages, but its communities (Chinese, Malays, and Indians/Tamils) have a regional or global presence. The Sinhalese do not. The Tamils do. This means that the Sinhalese feel they cannot afford a level playing field. They are apprehensive about a trade off, in which they retain an uneven playing field with politico-cultural space at the periphery, because of the proximity of Tamil Nadu and the fear of osmosis. This is why under Mahinda Rajapakse there is dawdling on movement in either direction: equality at the centre or space at the periphery. For better or worse, the Sinhalese do not have the external component of national strength and power, to avoid making reform on one or the other, without a world of pain being brought down on them. This past week’s international offensive is just the arrowhead.

The Sinhalese simply do not have the strategic space to afford the generosity of conceding equal power on the island, but they do not have the strategic weight globally to retain sole power or sole ownership of the Sri Lankan state. They are simultaneously too strong (on the island) and too weak (off it). The Tamils are too strong off shore, to be crushed as a collective under the Sinhala jackboot though Prabhakaran was, but they are too weak on the island to carve out the political arrangement that fulfils their self image and self-esteem. A prudent, pragmatic compromise is imperative.

Departing further from postures of politically correct pedagogues, I would argue that a Realist re-reading of Dutugemunu (a reading I had ventured in print slightly a decade ago) would trace the contours of such a pragmatic compromise. Dutugemunu of Mahavamsa legend evokes polarised responses: hero to the Sinhala chauvinists, anathema to the cosmopolitans. In a pioneering and valuable critique Gananath Obeysekara homed in on the consolatory episode in which the dying king is assured that his pangs of conscience are not in order. While I agree with Prof John Richardson that this prevented the ‘Dharmasokan turn’ on the part of Dutugemunu and thereby Sinhala Buddhism, my own point is the facile resolution of the question of violence prevented the wrestling between religio-philosophical ethic of non-violence and the state imperative of the use of violence, which in the Christian case resulted in the theology of Just War, which has become a part of secular political philosophy. But I digress: the Dutugemunu legend contains a doctrine which I believe to be the viable strategic solution of our dilemma.

The Dutugemunu doctrine is twofold:

1. The Indian ocean at our back and a Tamil kingdom in the North (with a Tamil hinterland further back) gives us little strategic space; given this strategic situation, a rival Tamil power centre on the North of the island will always be strategically intolerable and will have to be eliminated; The island’s geopolitical situation dictates strategic uni-polarity. Thus, a unitary state, not federalism still less con-federalism.

2. The Mahavamsa legend has it that having won the war Dutugemunu appoints a Tamil ‘sub-king’ to rule the area ‘in accordance with the traditions and customs’ of the area and its people. Thus devolution and autonomy, not demographic incursion.

Now, the cosmopolitan liberal idealists refuse to accept the grand strategic validity of Proposition (A), and the contemporary Sinhala chauvinists fail to practise, indeed do not accept the validity of proposition (B). The fact that Sinhala chauvinism has deviated from Dutugemunu is a massive vulnerability which cannot be exploited ideologically because there is no one to do so, since that would require acceptance of and adherence to Proposition (A), in order to have viability and legitimacy, and indeed strategic soundness. The two propositions constitute an inseparable, organic strategic unity; a strategic synthesis. What makes matters more interesting is that public opinion surveys from 1997 (available in a PRIO bibliography) right up to the University of Liverpool’s survey of 2009-10 conducted by Prof Colin Irwin, reveals majority support precisely for the combination of the two propositions of my Realist reading of the Dutugemunu doctrine: strong centre, unitary state, no federalism or Indian model, tri-lingualism, zero tolerance of a parallel Tamil army, improved devolution and provincial autonomy.

I am a universalist-modernist who is also a pluralist, because I recognise uneven development. The universal is an abstraction which is mediated by the particular in order to become real-concrete. Some think that world history is heading in one political direction – which I do not, preferring to think that each model has its advantages and disadvantages and that history remains open. Even though I respect and applaud genuinely universal norms and standards, I am enough of a votary of uneven development to know that not every state or society is at the same level of development as the other and that states have to go through a process of evolution. A reading of the Springtime of Nations, namely Europe in 1848, would reveal a picture of ethno-lingual nationalism as the propellant of nation building and a zero-sum game with minorities, rather like post Independence Sri Lanka. That first great wave of European nationalism and state-building left an unfinished problem of internal ‘national questions’.

Sri Lanka, like many societies in the periphery, was impacted by colonialism with paradoxical results: one the one hand, internal development was retarded, holding back certain changes that would otherwise have come about, and on the other hand, accelerated certain processes ‘artificially’ as it were, rendering their results rather rootless in the native soil and consciousness. This is so in the matter of nation and state building. There are stages of political growth and Sri Lanka and many states in the global South at different stages of politico-historical development from those in the First world. Therefore, notions of nation, nationalism and nationality and concepts of citizenship are rawer and rougher edged, less refined and evolved. Is Demos of mature or mid- modernity, Ethnos of and in early modernity? We have a historical journey to complete, towards a universalism which accommodates pluralism; towards modernity, guided by Reason.