Sunday Times 2
Qatar’s soft power: A lesson for Lanka
During the 2006 Lebanon war, Qatari planes worked like buses moving the Sri Lankan workers in Lebanon from Syrian airports to Colombo and returning for another load, over 10 flights in all
A brief press note signalled the private visit of the Emir of Qatar to Sri Lanka with his entourage, their flight landing at Mattala recently. This brought recollections of Qatar’s assistance to Sri Lanka at the time of the crisis between Lebanon and Israel in July 2006 which had devastating repercussions on the 80,000 odd Sri Lankan workers in Lebanon.
Our tiny embassy in Beirut was suddenly surrounded by around 7,000 Sri Lankan workers who could no longer be protected in their work places and asked to go home. Ambassador Ammanul Farouque then in Sri Lanka to attend a family wedding rushed back and had to find his way back to Beirut through Syria with the roads being littered with burnt vehicles and destroyed houses from Israeli air raids. Although the Foreign Ministry had offered to give our Ambassador cash to take with him for emergency relief, he was reluctant to do this on account of the hazardous return journey. He had preferred to manage with available embassy funds until bank transfers could be regularised.
I was then in Geneva and, on Foreign Ministry instructions, contacted the Head of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The organisation immediately dispatched its nearest officer to Beirut to prepare the Sri Lankans for departure. In the meantime, our ambassador in Lebanon had to cope with finding lodging, food, issuing passports and getting exit visas. Fortunately, Christian church organisations offered housing and provided at least one meal a day while the embassy staff worked day and night over the passports and documents for departure. Around 2,000 Sri Lankans stayed at the embassy, with the staff cooking food for them while embassy vehicles went from bakery to bakery for bread.
In Colombo, the Foreign Ministry put in place an inter-ministerial mechanism that worked almost on a 24-hour basis to arrange the return flights mostly from Syrian airports. Here it was Qatar that came to our assistance, following emergency telephone conversations between the Heads of State and some good lobbying by Ambassador Atugoda in Qatar. Two Airbus 300 aircraft were put at our disposal; only the landing and ground handling charges had to be found. Still the problems were not over, as the Sri Lankans had to be bussed out to Syria in between the Israeli bombing raids.
Under the direction of the Foreign Ministry in Colombo, our diplomacy was fine-tuned in Tel Aviv and Damascus to get these governments to agree to a safe passage and to open the southern Syrian Airport of Latakia. This may have been the first occasion during the Lebanon crisis that two adversaries — Syria and Israel — have been persuaded diplomatically to facilitate a mass movement of people across crisis frontiers. Finally all the convoys arrived safely in Syria with IOM’s professional assistance and supervision to enable the airlift. The Qatari planes worked like buses moving the Sri Lankans to Colombo and returning for another load, over 10 flights in all. Sri Lankan Airlines, then under the commercial control of Emirates, could not compete with this great gesture of goodwill from Qatar. When the conflict ended, it was found that five Sri Lankans had lost their lives in the bombing. They were compensated by the Lebanese authorities.
Much publicity is given to raising economic assistance and investment in our bilateral relations with Qatar, however less is known about its charitable work in this country. Qatar Charity’s humanitarian intervention in Sri Lanka started as far back as 1993, when it worked in coordination with local charities, and implemented its projects and programmes at a cost of more than QR 14 million. New development work has now begun, totaling about the same amount. According to media reports, the Sri Lanka Qatar Red Crescent Society has built a residential village for 800 internally displaced people, at a cost of US$ 486,619. The money was donated by a Qatari benevolent person who requested anonymity. The village located at Riditenna in Valaichchenai is complete with 56 houses, solar powered water, a mosque, a school and a health unit.
In international relations, studies which underline balance of power theory usually refer to the activities of the great powers and their impact on other states. We forget sometimes the role of small states and how they can make an impact by supporting each other on the basis of goodwill. We are all aware that there are many hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan migrant workers in West Asia and, most often than not, the media highlight tales of horror and mistreatment. Yet in Qatar, Lebanon and Oman (the Sultan of Oman has gifted US$1 million to operationalise a hospital set up by HelpAge for free cataract surgery for senior citizens), the contribution of Sri Lankan workers appears to be valued and there is, by and large, goodwill accruing on both sides, which is the desired end result of all diplomacy.
We also need to examine carefully how Qatar has managed its regional relations resisting the hostility of powerful neighbours like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt. In 2017, these countries cut trade and diplomatic ties with Qatar, imposing an air embargo while shutting off the land routes supplying most of its food. Qatar, however, was able to turn to Oman, Iran and Turkey and managed to retain normalcy for its population. Its resort to increased domestic food production was praised by the IMF. Its refusal to give in to the Saudi ultimatum to shut down Al Jazeera international broadcasting network won it broad support from the international community for its principled stand.
Some may argue that Qatar was able to take this stand due to its hosting of two powerful military bases for the US and Turkey. From the perspective of Sri Lanka which has long supported the non-aligned stance of no-stationing of foreign troops and bases, such a policy is a non-starter. However, we can perhaps learn from Qatar how to make sound threat assessments and cultivate relations with key countries, especially those in the neighbourhood. Qatar basks under the security umbrella provided by the US, yet Qatar maintains good relations with Iran which is in direct conflict with the US and its strategic partners like Saudi Arabia!
Qatar’s soft diplomacy strategy seems quite useful at a time when the President of the United States, the leading military superpower, seems more adept at confrontation than cooperation on the global scene, with resulting confusion. Here, it is worth noting the conciliatory note struck by American military leaders. The commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip S. Davidson, in a panel discussion in New Delhi as part of the Raisina Dialogue 2019 had underlined that the Indo-Pacific region should be about building communities, not about confrontation. In response to a question on the Quad − comprising the US, India, Australia and Japan — being seen as a step to contain China, Admiral Davidson had said that the US Indo-Pacific policy is not a containment policy.
In building Sri Lanka’s Indo-Pacific strategy, we should take careful note of great power politics and not become a pawn in the plots of others. For example, should we concentrate on trying to find consensus on “rules of the road” and aspiring for some vague international prominence? Or should we focus on what is in our immediate national interest, such as protecting our fisheries from illegal, unlicensed unregulated fishing by foreign vessels, stopping the drug-running across the Palk Strait, cleaning the pollution in the surrounding seas, moving the international shipping lanes off the deep waters, where the whales have lived for generations and rebuilding the coral reefs damaged by dynamiting and warming waters? Such an approach, placing heritage at the centre of our diplomacy, will make a valuable contribution to Sri Lanka’s soft power.
(The writer is a
retired Sri Lanka Foreign
Service diplomat)