Sri Lanka offers lessons to RP Peace issues

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Sri Lanka offers lessons to RP Peace issues
Reconciliation commission will heal wounds of conflict - President
Only the military campaign is finished and the work to address the root cause of their 30-year problem is still ongoing, stated President Mahinda Rajapaksa in an interview with the Manila Times published on July 12, 2010.
The President said that he formed the commission [Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation] to "heal the wounds" of conflict, the Manila Times reported.
He added that the he wanted to accelerate development in the former territories of the Tigers, making the quality of life in those depressed areas at par with the rest of the country.
The Manila Times further stated that if the Aquino administration is to deliver on its promise to crush the decades-long insurgencies in the Philippines by 2013, it might be worthwhile to study Sri Lanka's success in defeating terrorism.
Following is the full report:
Sri Lanka offers lessons to RP peace issues
By Dante "Klink" Ang 2nd Executive Editor
If the Aquino administration is to deliver on its promise to crush the decades-long insurgencies in the Philippines by 2013, it might be worthwhile to study Sri Lanka's success in defeating terrorism. On July 3, newly appointed military Chief of Staff Ricardo David Jr. said the Aquino government hopes to crush the communist New People's Army and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front by 2013.
Three years may appear overly ambitious given the experience of former President Gloria Arroyo in 2006, when her government vowed-but failed-to end the twin insurgencies before her term ended on June 30.
In an exclusive interview in his Colombo office at Temple Trees, Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa told The Manila Times how he ended 30 years of fighting against fierce and well-armed separatists in just three years.
He said that he would like the world to perceive Sri Lanka as "a country that had defeated terrorism." And having realized peace and stability, the country was "looking forward to a developed and better country."
So how did President Rajapaksa do it?
His formula for success may sound like common sense rather than a secret-treat the military well, don't allow foreign forces to fight local battles, win the support of the people, and most important of all, be decisive.
More than a year after the government defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, businessmen and others in Colombo seem to glow with a sense of optimism.
"Our nation is on the path of rapid growth," Dr. Anura Ekanayake, chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, said on July 5. He spoke at the recently concluded Conference of the Asia Pacific Chambers of Commerce and Sri Lanka Economic Summit in Colombo. "Sri Lanka has become a great place of investments, not just tourism," he added.
First, try peace
When Rajapaksa was first elected president in 2005, Sri Lanka was struggling to maintain a shaky ceasefire with the separatist Tigers, which controlled the northern and eastern parts of the island nation.
The Tigers were branded as a terrorist organization by 32 countries, including India, the US, Canada and members of the European Union. The group was notorious for carrying out assassinations, which included fellow Tamils and even India's former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. The Tigers were also well armed, and even had its own navy called the Sea Tigers and an air wing, the Air Tigers.
Rajapaksa's successful military campaign against the Tigers did not begin with an offensive, however.
He tried but failed three times to bring the Tigers to the negotiating table, even declaring that he was willing "to walk the extra mile" to talk peace in their controlled territory, the President said.
But in mid-2006, when the Tigers closed the sluice gates at a reservoir in eastern Sri Lanka and cut off water supply to some 15,000 villages in government-controlled areas, Rajapaksa seized the opportunity to deploy soldiers.
After successfully entering the rebel-held area in the east, the soldiers held their ground despite retaliatory attacks by the Tigers. From there, the military continued its campaign.
The people in the strife-torn areas were "starved" for development, which could not take hold because there was no peace, President Rajapaksa said. In fact, the locals themselves wanted government troops to remain in the rebel-held territories because they feared the Tigers, he added.
"People were suffering," he said. "There was no development at all."
His government eventually withdrew from the negotiating table in 2008, much to the dismay of donor countries, including the US, Canada and Norway.
"One thing is certain," he told The Times. "There are people you can negotiate and get nowhere."
Treat the military well
When Rajapaksa came to power, it was apparent that Sri Lanka's Army was also going nowhere.
"The morale of the [armed] forces was weak," the president said of the military then.
Many soldiers did not have weapons, and those that did had no bullets. Many also did not even have combat boots, he added.
He appointed his brother-retired Army Lt. Col. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa-as Defense secretary. The brother remains in that post today and is among those credited with the Sri Lanka's victory over the Tigers.
Not only did government properly arm and take care of the soldiers, President Rajapaksa said that they also took care of the families of those killed in action, even giving them the slain soldiers' salaries.
He was also particularly proud of Sri Lanka's Navy. "We built [up] the Navy," he told The Times. "We used those small boats concept."
Initially, the government also had problems recruiting soldiers, but the president said that when he allowed one of his sons to join the Navy, all of a sudden other Colombo boys also enlisted.
Fight your own battles
President Rajapaksa said that he also took lessons from the history of Sri Lanka, which like the Philippines has a colonial past. The Portugese colonized the island state in the 15th century, followed by the Dutch in the 17th, and finally by the British in the early 18th.
The president said that he was particular about using Sri Lankan troops in the campaign against terrorists.
The country, meanwhile, received humanitarian assistance from abroad and bought weapons from foreign countries, including China.
Using local state forces gave government a psychological advantage, the president explained. If they had allowed foreign soldiers to fight in Sri Lanka, "the people will think that they have come to invade the country," he explained.
"That feeling is there," he said. "It happened in Sri Lanka. It is happening in Afghanistan. It happened in Iraq."
"They are our people, the terrorists," Rajapaksa added. "They are not outsiders. We don't want to kill all these people. You can't. What you want to do is change them."
And as the fighting went on, the government conducted a propaganda program.
President Rajapaksa said that they air-dropped leaflets that contained messages urging the rebels to lay down their arms, and they even distributed small radios so that people and the terrorists could tap into government broadcasts.
He added that as soon as the government had controlled the eastern part of Sri Lanka, they held local elections-despite pressure from the international community not to rush into it.
Also, the president said that they launched on a massive development program, building infrastructure. This was conducted as the military campaign shifted to the rebel-controlled north. When people in the north saw what the government was doing in the east, the troops had an easier time winning over the locals there.
Alleged rights abuses
As in any conflict, the fight against terrorism in Sri Lanka was not without collateral damage. The final stages of the conflict left as many as 300,000 Sri Lankans displaced, according to Amnesty.org.
Recently, the European Union had pressed Rajapaksa's government to address allegations of human rights violations. And on July 16, United Nations (un) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon created an expert panel to investigate the alleged abuses.
The following day, Sri Lankans led by a government minister protested in front of the UN office in Colombo-forcing them to shut down.
Also on Tuesday, President Rajapaksa told The Times, "I'm not worried because we have nothing to hide. I have nothing to hide."
"We know our Army when they fought," he added. "They fought, on one hand they had the gun. The other hand, they had the Human Rights Charter."
He stressed that the military was instructed not to harm civilians, but the problem was that it was not always easy to identify terrorists, who mixed in with civilians and posed as noncombatants.
Even the political opponent of Rajapaksa, retired Army general and now leader of the opposition Democratic National Alliance (DNA) Sarath Fonseka told the Colombo newspaper Daily Mirror that "the war was carried out in line with international conventions and covenants."
Fonseka, who was the Army commander in the campaign against the Tigers, lost in the recently concluded elections against Rajapaksa, who won nearly 58 percent of the votes.
The general had a falling out with the president and had filed an election protest charging that Rajapaksa had cheated.
Fonseka is awaiting trial for allegedly organizing a coup. Government officials, who refused to be named, told The Times that they were also looking at alleged anomalies regarding arms sales to the Sri Lankan military during Fonseka's tenure.
Reconstruction, rehabilitation
Meanwhile, President Rajapaksa said only the military campaign was finished and the work to address the root cause of their 30-year problem was still ongoing.
"Without peace there is no development. And without development there is no peace," he said.
Earlier, he created the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, an eight-member panel that includes two Tamils.
The president said that he formed the commission to "heal the wounds" of conflict.
Lucien Rajakarunanayake, director of the government's Policy Research and Information, explained that the commission was similar to the Truth Commission established in the South Africa after it dismantled apartheid and to the Iraq Commission set up not long ago by the United Kingdom.
He also told The Times that some 4,000 former Tigers were undergoing "rehabilitation" in addition to another 4,000 who had completed that program, which includes teaching them livelihood skills.
He stressed, however, that participating in the rehabilitation program did not exempt the former terrorists from criminal liabilities.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's economy seems to be humming a year after the Tigers' defeat.
Sri Lanka projected a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of between 6.5 percent and 7 percent this year, said Dr. Sarath Amunugama, deputy minister for Finance and Planning. He noted also that the country's economy has always been resilient, even growing between 3 percent and 3.5 percent during the conflict.
In 2011, the GDP growth rate was projected at 8 percent, the deputy minister added. GDP is the total cost of final goods and services produced in the country in a year.
Sri Lanka is looking to develop its tourism industry and to build more infrastructure to make it a regional hub for logistics and technology-related industries.
"People can use this [Sri Lanka] as a hub," President Rajapaksa said.
Even Colombo's envoy in the Philippines, Ambassador N. Bennet Cooray, earlier told The Times that he was keen on establishing air links with Manila. He explained that this would be beneficial to the millions of Middle East-bound Filipino overseas workers, because the route via Colombo would be shorter, if not cheaper.
"The country is open for business-long and short of that," Director Rajakarunanayake told The Times, adding that the country was looking for sustainable industries that would add value to its primary products-rubber, tea, cinnamon and spices.
"Several years of helplessness and despair has changed," he said.
Next: 'War on poverty'
Deputy Minister Amunugama said, "We are now in the second war-the war against poverty."
President Rajapaksa agreed. As he prepares for his second six-year term to begin in November, he told The Times that he wants to focus on the closing the gap between rich and poor.
He added that the he wanted to accelerate development in the former territories of the Tigers, making the quality of life in those depressed areas at par with the rest of the country.
Director Rajakarunanayake said that many children in the former Tiger territories have not even seen trains, because terrorists had blown up the railway tracks a long time ago.
Sri Lanka has a success story to tell the world, said the president's brother, Defense Secretary Rajapaksa. He added that not long ago, his country was often in the news for the wrong reasons-for bombings and other terrorist attacks.
"That era is now over, no more," the secretary said in a speech at the economic summit in Colombo last week.
"Sri Lanka is poised to exploit its latent strengths," he added.
And like President Benigno Aquino 3rd in his inaugural address, President Rajapaksa said that the people were his main concern in plotting the Sri Lanka's future.
"What I want is to develop the country and make people happy," he told The Times. He also said that he would like to be remembered as a "man who loved the people and the country."
Courtesy: President's Media Unit