Stalking Tiger, drowsy Lion
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The author Daya Gamage is a journalist who served many years in the U.S. Department of State and its Embassy in Sri Lanka. His title sums up the argument that he so tellingly fleshes up in his compelling 578 page narrative. He has had the advantage of being an inside observer/participant of the ideological battle, for American understanding and sympathy, between the Government of Sri Lanka(GSL) and the LTTE diaspora.This is a sad litany of the incompetence and ignorance of those responsible for Sri Lanka’s foreign policy as contrasted to the slick professionalism of the anti-regime campaign waged by the Tamil diaspora.There is little point in rehashing the argument that the architect of the flight of our Tamil elite was J.R.Jayewardene in 1983 when he let loose his monstrous brutes on the Tamil community. It is these Tamil fugitives, burdened with bitter anger and equipped with superlative skills and intelligence who, over the years, brain-washed the American establishment into ‘punishing’ the governments of Sri Lanka. For a few glorious years that outstanding patriot Lakshman Kadirgamar steered our foreign policy cannily enough to defuse the LTTE proxy campaign in the US and UK. After his assassination, foreign policy descended into a catastrophic decline of incompetence, ignorance and incredible cronyism. The Ambassadors appointed to Washington had forsaken Sri Lankan citizenship and cosily embraced the ‘American Way of Life’. Not only did they lack diplomatic competence, but their loyalty to Sri Lanka would always remain dubious. Outwitting them was child’s play to the LTTE diaspora of highly qualified professionals.
America always had a policy of mollycoddling dissident minority cabals from many countries. Among these were the Armenians from Turkey, Kurds also from Turkey, Tibetan exiles and Tamils from Sri Lanka. These groups were kept ‘on tap’to irritate their countries of origin by media attacks and photogenic demonstrations whenever called upon. The LTTE Tamil diaspora is streets ahead of all other such groups in its slick professionalism and long term strategy to destabilize the government of Sri Lanka and carve out an ethnic Tamil enclave.
A report to the US government spells out the role of diaspora activists very succinctly.”Emigrants often replay the conflicts of their homelands and try to enlist the government and civil society institutions of the settlement country to their cause.” In this endeavour the LTTE diaspora succeeded superlatively.
Since their arrival as fugitives from Sri Lanka after the communal riots of 1983, the Tamil diaspora systematically carried out a campaign to brainwash the US establishment of the brutality of the government and the need to establish a separate Tamil state in the Island. Therefore, when the government was waging its 30-year war against the LTTE, Secretary of State John Kerry was able to proclaim the US view that this was a war of Sinhalese against Tamils – not a struggle to defeat a separatist agenda.
To quote Gamage, “The pro-Tamil Tiger network…..was well focused to make it a diplomatic offensive since the demise of the LTTE’s military strategy…….The NGO sector has a special place in Washington’s foreign policy agenda, and they maintain a close rapport with USAID which appropriates funds for various NGO projects worldwide”. Sri Lanka has a plethora of this breed!
Gamage goes on to quote , courtesy of Wikileaks, a cable from the US Ambassador in Colombo. “The Tamil Diaspora, a highly educated internet savvy group across Europe, North America, Australia and several other countries has long been a source of funding and hard-line support for the LTTE……As Sri Lanka’s humanitarian crisis has worsened, Diaspora anger and lobbying have increased. On March 16 members of the Tamil community held demonstrations in Toronto, Brussels, Geneva and New York…..The demonstrators carried Tamil Eelam flags and portraits of LTTE Supremo Prabhakaran and labelled GSL actions as genocidal……..The Ambassador and a number of Embassy officers receive e-mails from the diaspora on a daily basis, most of them expressing points of view similar to those of the demonstrators.” There is no evidence that the GSL was ever aware of this relentless barrage by the diaspora to influence US policy.
To quote Gamage again, “The LTTE was defeated in May 2009. The Tiger global network was on diplomatic offensive against Sri Lanka long before the Tigers were militarily annihilated. As much as the Tiger leadership built its lethal military network, globally it put in place a well co-ordinated diplomatic network to work within the Tamil diaspora to develop a close working relationship with Western policy centres”.
The narrative makes it quite clear that, as the armed conflict was ending in victory for GSL, the US hoped for only a ”partial defeat” of the Tigers enabling it to survive as a pressure movement, centred in the West. It is this expectation that led the US to contemplate the “unprecedented move to protect the lives of the top leadership of the LTTE and facilitate the surrender of activists …..during the final weeks of the intensive battle.”
The value of this book lies in its meticulous documentation of official communications and directives from US government sources. These are balanced with reports from American academics and journals thus establishing the credibility of Gamage’s arguments. What strikes the reader is the incredible naivete of the US policy as regards Sri Lanka, almost wholly based on prejudiced [LTTE] sources, inexperienced diplomats and plain hypocrisy. The last item is amply shown by the US determination to drag the Rajapaksa government before international tribunals for human rights abuses and genocide, while vigorously refusing such tribunals from investigating US troops accused of identical crimes against humanity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Gamage’s detailed, amply documented and accurate expose of US policy towards Sri Lanka and its almost total reliance on LTTE sources makes it essential reading for students of politics, foreign policy advisers, and all politicians involved in dealing with the US.
| Book facts: Tamil Tigers’ Debt to America – by Daya Gamage [Published by Vijitha Yapa 2016]. Reviewed by Tissa Devendra |