“Critical Engagement or Constructive Engagement? Sri Lankan Civil Society at the Crossroads of Politics and Principle”

A Review of “The Sri Lankan Peace Process at Crossroads: Lessons Opportunities and Ideas for Principled Negotiations and Conflict Transformation,” by Tyrol Ferdinands, Kumar Rupesinghe, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jayadeva Uyangoda, and Norbert Ropers.

[A slightly shorter version of this essay was published in June 2004 and is available at http://www.lines-magazine.org/Art_May04/alan.htm]

by Alan Keenan

Few would dispute that the roughly two year long peace process between the UNP-led government of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers was an almost entirely pragmatic affair, with little concern for principles of democracy, human rights, multicultural understanding, or even those, like collective autonomy or federalism, that are generally seen to be at the heart of any solution to Sri Lanka’s war. Instead, as the months passed, as six rounds of direct talks came and went, as disputes over the reconstruction and normalization of the north and east grew more bitter, and as the LTTE’s political assassinations and forced recruitment of children continued unchecked, it became increasingly clear that none of the parties – not the government, not the Tigers, not the Norwegians, the SLMM, or the “international community” at large – had a very serious commitment to even the most basic of democratic and human rights. At least not serious enough to place any limits on the Tigers’ quest for total domination of Tamil society, not serious enough to get in the way of the kind of peace and quiet necessary to the UNP’s neo-liberal economic plans for “regaining Sri Lanka,” and not serious enough to complicate Norwegian (and Japanese, and European) visions of a politically insulated and smoothly run peace process.

It is thus in many respects refreshing to see a document emerge from within Sri Lankan civil society that calls for rethinking the peace process along the lines of clearly thought through principles, ranging from “inclusivity,” “transparency,” and “mutual gain,” to “international human rights and humanitarian rights standards” [iii]. A fascinating document written by five of Colombo’s most prominent advocates of a negotiated settlement to Sri Lanka’s civil war – Tyrol Ferdinands, Kumar Rupesinghe, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jayadeva Uyangoda, and Norbert Ropers – “The Sri Lankan Peace Process at Crossroads: Lessons, Opportunities, and Ideas for Principled Negotiations and Conflict Transformation” offers a sustained analysis of the insufficiently principled nature of the peace process to date. They argue that the first two years of the LTTE-Sri Lankan dialogue and negotiations were weakened by “the lack of a clear, transparent and common strategic framework which could have guided and structured the negotiations as well as helped to mobilise public support for the peace process. Instead, all principal stakeholders had their particular strategies on how to maximise power and influence through their attitude towards the peace process…. The net effect was a pragmatic and ad hoc muddling through of the negotiation process, which made it difficult to address the crucial contentious issues and move towards inclusivity.” [i]

The answer proposed by the “Crossroads” authors is to “develop a comprehensive and common strategic framework of multiple peace negotiations and peacebuilding” [iii, emphasis added]. Of central importance here would be to assure that all important “stakeholders” become co-owners of the peace process, that a memorandum of understanding is signed that incorporates a “holistic” conception of human rights, and that women and the issues central to their experience of conflict are given greater prominence. The authors also hold that an explicit set of principles must be established for the conduct and outcome of negotiations. These would be designed to insure: 1) that the central conflict issues are addressed directly, 2) that negotiations aim at building greater trust between the parties, in part so as to 3) identify “the enlightened and common interests of the parties” and “overcome bargaining from adversarial positions.” This would allow for agreements 4) to be framed towards “mutual gain” and 5) based on “jointly accepted principles (e.g., principles of fairness, justice, equality, democracy, good governance and pluralism.).” Clearly, the adoption of such a common framework of principles would revolutionize the Sri Lankan peace process. Were such a revolution to occur, one would have reason to hope that a permanent solution to the war and its ethnicized divisions wouldn’t be far down the road.

But what exactly does “principle” mean – and do – for the five authors of the “Crossroads” document? How do their chosen set of principles relate to and interact with the complex relationships of power, influence, and control that structure the Sri Lankan political universe? And who are the best carriers, or advocates, of those principles necessary to peace, and how best can they bring these principles into practice? Following the tenets of an increasingly prominent model of conflict transformation, the authors of “Crossroads” seem to believe that a particular kind of evenhanded, reciprocal, transparent, and inclusive process of negotiations and public consultations holds out the best possibility of introducing those principles needed to transform the attitudes and behavior of the contending parties and the Sri Lankan state and politics. But how well does their proposed framework of principles actually hold together in the specific context of Sri Lanka’s political conflicts? And, of crucial importance, what are the principles implicit in the approach to conflict and peace embodied in the document itself? Are they in fact fully consistent with – or the best route towards – the authors’ professed commitment to “fairness, justice, equality, democracy, good governance, and pluralism”?

The authors are clear in their dissatisfaction with the unprincipled nature of the negotiations and peace process to date. Yet they seem strangely unconcerned with explaining its causes. In particular, there is a striking absence of political or strategic analysis of the major parties to the negotiations – the LTTE, the government and military, and the foreign powers and institutions involved in supporting and funding the process. There is virtually no analysis of what their motivations might be, or of what political projects and forces might be shaping their negotiation (non-)positions. Yet, without any serious analysis of who the major parties are and what their histories tell us about their likely agendas and interests, the Crossroads text leaves it unclear why its favored principles haven’t been respected during the peace process so far, nor what obstacles will obstruct their implementation in the future. Instead, the text seems to take for granted that the parties to the process are already – if perhaps unconsciously – motivated by relatively benign intentions, which can be transformed into fully developed principles of reciprocity, justice, and the common good with the provision of the right technical means: money, training in negotiations, knowledge and acceptance of new paradigms/frameworks, more carefully structured negotiations, etc.

Yet it is hard not to think that the transformations that would be necessary for the LTTE and the SLG to adopt an “inclusive, transparent, and common strategic framework” would be pretty much what would be necessary to reaching a final settlement. In other words, what is presented as the means to the end is in many ways the end itself: a genuine willingness by both major parties to transform their institutions and practices in democratic ways, such that violence, hierarchy, and oppression no longer constitute their central means of maintaining power vis-a-vis each other and their “citizens.” Appeals to principle, rationality, and technical expertise can only get you so far without also developing the political leverage necessary to move the parties towards full self-consciousness of their own rational self-interest.

One can see both the strengths and the significant limitations of the “Crossroads” approach most clearly in the authors’ treatment of human rights issues. To their great credit, they argue that “movement in the peace process that does not take human rights questions into account will risk the continued loss of public support and legitimacy for the peace process. This will further result in a continued deterioration in the human rights situation on the ground. Moreover, further rhetorical commitment and gestures alone will not be enough; public cynicism has been fed by the failure to make better use of the good office of Ian Martin (designated as Human Rights Advisor by the two parties)” [25]. In terms of specific recommendations, the document states clearly that a “principled” approach to the process of negotiation would have to include an MoU on Human Rights that would “be valid throughout the negotiating process” and that could “subsequently be incorporated into agreements, both interim and final” reached between the parties. “The MoU should provide for effective monitoring of human rights with international assistance” [11].

Nonetheless, their commitment to a particular vision of evenhandedness and to a “mutual gains” approach to negotiations actually undermines much of the force of their principled defense of human rights. We can see this in three particular ways. First, their desire to sell the idea of human rights as a “win-win” item on the negotiation agenda – not just over the long term, but right now – leads them to be less than straightforward about the nature and sources of current threats to human rights. Thus, the authors write very evenhandedly that “the first phase of negotiations were marked by human rights violations, allegations and counter-allegations of such violations from all sides, and an apparent inability or unwillingness to integrate a viable human rights framework into the negotiations process” [10]. And when mentioning the kinds of ceasefire violations, they use agent-less statements like “under-age recruitment continues” [10], and “human rights abuses have continued to take place” [4], never directly connecting the LTTE with specific violations, even as they recognize elsewhere that it is the LTTE that has been accused of the vast majority of violations. In the document’s list of specific recommendations for the various parties, the LTTE is asked to make explicit “its commitment … to establish a representative and pluralist democratic system in the North-East, and elaborate on the mechanisms for guaranteeing human rights and the rule-of-law.” How different it would have been to read a call for the LTTE to cease assassinating its political opponents, to cease forcible recruitment of children, and to open its prisons to international inspection.

Second, the document advocates a “holistic” understanding of human rights, one that “will integrate the protection of civil and political rights with the provision of resources and facilities for the enjoyment of economic and social rights” [25]. This helps explain the apparent equivalence the document draws between “the continued recruitment of children, … extortion and political assassinations, on the one hand, and … the right of return of IDP’s and refugees and the HSZ’s [the Army’s high security zones in Jaffna], on the other” [25]. It is certainly important to recognize the indivisibility of all rights and to draw out the connections between the violation of classically liberal rights of privacy, property, due process, and bodily integrity and the denial of social and economic equality and well-being. However it is not at all obvious that the particular understanding of "holism" recommended is in fact the wisest one in the present Sri Lankan context. Undoubtedly immediate steps need to be taken on a range of human rights issues, including child recruitment, political assassinations, and the situation of IDPs. However, there is a distinction between the immediate steps needed to respect rights, and the outcomes that one may expect from those steps. To expect tangible outcomes in the short term on all these issues is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the challenges. Immediate steps on political assassinations and forced recruitment of children will bring tangible results in the short term , and it would be pernicious to delay actions on these issues until tangible results can also be achieved on issues such as the continued displacement of people from their lands and homes. The first set of problems could be solved immediately, with a simple series of order from the LTTE leadership, while the other issue is clearly one that will require careful negotiation between the parties and confidence building guarantees all round. Lumping the different issues together threatens to obscure the particular politics characteristic of the failure to respect each mode of rights – the politics of militarist domination and internal terror characteristic of the LTTE, and the politics of ethnic majoritarianism, class inequality, and structural “racism” on the part of the Sri Lankan state. Demanding that all rights be addressed at once, in a misguided quest for “mutual gains” and a theoretically flawed conception of holism, threatens to hold assurances of basic rights to life and liberty hostage to the difficulty of making the complex decisions necessary to honoring humanitarian rights, not to mention the even more complex structural and political changes necessary to respecting social and economic rights.

Finally, their advocacy of a holistic approach is clearly motivated at least in part by a desire not to embarrass the LTTE. “Human rights are better dealt with in a way that is not seen as threatening by the LTTE,” they write. “Neither can it be done in a way that projects one party as having the monopoly of virtue on the issue” [25]. They codify this rhetorical preference in the form of a principle when they argue for the value of “moving beyond” the standard mode of human rights mode of “naming and shaming” and towards “constructive engagement” (primarily with the LTTE) instead [11]. Going beyond naming and shaming – which the authors are right to suggest is a limited and limiting rhetorical posture – would seem to make sense only if the parties being called on to change are at least minimally open to hearing criticism and changing their behavior for reasons other than the fear of public criticism and the shame it brings. Unfortunately, despite the hopes of many in the initial months of the ceasefire, the LTTE has yet to make any changes in its behavior with regard to basic rights of life and liberty and property that would suggest any such space exists. What evidence is there that the systematic refusal of the major players – the GoSL, the SLMM, the Norwegians, and all governments but the United States – to publicly name and shame the LTTE for its violations has been at all “constructive”?

Many clearly share the fears of the authors of the “Crossroads” document that publicly calling the LTTE to account for its continuing use of terror and active destruction of democratic space for Tamils would let the Sri Lankan state off the hook and play into the hands of Sinhala nationalism. The experience of the last two and a half years suggests the opposite is the case, as the “Crossroads” author seem to recognize elsewhere: by not naming the LTTE, one fuels a vicious circle whereby the LTTE’s violence encourages many Sinhalese to refuse responsibility for past violations and structural injustices, thus further entrenching the distrust of many, if not most, Tamils and with it their reluctance to criticise Tiger abuses. Not naming the LTTE as the source of the most troubling abuses during the time of the ceasefire makes it harder to name the specific forms of institutionalized injustice – with their potential, of course, to be expressed in specific acts of repression and violence – that are characteristic of the Sri Lankan state. It is here that the document’s lack of political analysis and failure to analyse the specific modes of power characteristic of the LTTE and of the Sri Lankan state has particularly regrettable effects.

We can see a similar set of problems in the “Crossroads” approach to “civil society.” On the one hand, the document argues strongly that actors and organizations within civil society must play – and be invited to play – a much larger and more vigorous role in support of a negotiated settlement. “Public participation should underpin the negotiations process,” they state. “All parties should work on the premise that the general public is a stakeholder to the peace process. This requires effective mobilisation of people for a broad-based peace movement” [37]. Who exactly is doing the mobilizing, however, is left unclear. Is civil society mobilizing itself or being mobilized for the needs of the negotiating process and partners? We are told that “a protracted negotiation process must be situated in an environment of sustained public support and public interest. This environment can be created through coordinated mechanisms for information-sharing and awareness-raising, and coordinated strategies for social mobilisation and mass communication” [11]. Thus “well-designed programmes need to be developed to involve trade unions, women’s organizations, the business community, religious organisations, professional organisations and other numerous entities that compose civil society” [37]. Rather than being called on to mobilize itself in pursuit of its own democratic pluralist vision of a more just and equitable post-war Sri Lanka, civil society is primarily imagined as a useful adjunct to a professionalized and technicized conflict transformation process. It is more often presented as an object, rather than a subject, of mobilization – as a resource that the negotiating parties and their sponsors might better exploit through a more effective “communications strategy” and efforts at “mobilization.”

To be fair, the authors do at some points suggest a stronger and more independent role for civil society. Those in civil society are called upon to “expand the political space that was created by the peace processes, to take the role of critical supporter and multiplier within the overall society. What the country needs now is a highly diversified and broad-based peace movement with links and leverage in all communities…. The citizens of the country have to be prepared for reconstituting Sri Lanka as a multi-national federal state” [vi].

Yet these exhortations, however welcome, seem strangely hollow given the absence of any consideration of why none of the parties – not the LTTE, not the SLG, not the international community – has to date been particularly encouraging of a strong and independent role for civil society in the peace process. Has the lack of such support merely been an oversight, the result, perhaps, of too few capacity building workshops? Or could it be, instead, that the LTTE actively fears such uncontrolled public participation – and indeed, that many of their unattributed human rights violations were part and parcel of their active and violent suppression of civil society. Might it also be that the UNF government didn’t publicize their peace moves precisely because they themselves saw what they were doing as cutting an unprincipled deal with the LTTE, rather than engaging either in principled negotiations or in hard bargaining? Being so solicitous of the LTTE’s wishes and so silent on their continued violence only made it harder for the government to mobilize people around a platform of federalism, pluralism, and cross-community understanding, even had it wished to do so in the first place.

Instead of adopting and promoting the perspective of a politically active and demanding civil society, with its own independent agenda of democracy and anti-militarism, “The Sri Lankan Peace Process at Crossroads” is written largely from within the terms of a basic identification with the position (and, by implication, with the “enlightened” interests) of the negotiating parties. Or, perhaps more accurately, the text is generally written as if from the position of an ideal mediator, one whose central concern is with understanding the point of view of the negotiating parties so as to find the potential common ground between them. While this allows the authors to make a range of important suggestions for improving the negotiations process, it comes at a high price, at times allowing the mediator’s non-judgmental attitude to obscure the necessity of another very different role that can only be played by the forces of democratic civil society. The authors’ identification with the position of hypothetical mediator would seem to help explain the document’s disturbing claim that human rights issues must not be articulated in ways that challenge the power of the LTTE. We can see a similar, if more subtle version of this identification in the document’s use of the term “multipartial.” Used as a substitute for “impartial,” the term is, in principle, useful for moving beyond stale debates about the (im)possibility of adopting an “impartial,” “neutral,” or “objective” perspective in situations of conflict. Ideally, being “multipartial” would authorize criticism of any political party or group in the name of the rights and well being of any of the various communities they claim to be defending or representing. In “Crossroads,” on the other hand, the call to multipartiality seems to function more as an injunction to adopt a perspective that sees the validity of the viewpoints of all the negotiating parties, on the (mis)understanding that this is equivalent with seeing things from the range of perspectives that make up the Sri Lankan people. Such a demand would ignore the absence of adequate “representation” of Sri Lankan people by their self-proclaimed, often self-imposed, representatives.

Thus while the “Crossroads” document expresses a genuine and admirable desire for independent standards to which the negotiating parties would be held account, it gives virtually no consideration to the necessity of developing and strengthening the independent political agents who would do this holding to account, and who would have to adopt politically challenging – and risky – positions when doing so. What is missing from their account can just barely be glimpsed when one lingers a bit on a brief, but fascinating passage on “human security” issues. When discussing the importance of “sustaining the ceasefire and improving its security and confidence-building components” [21], the authors argue that “in order to move from ‘negative peace’ to ‘positive peace,’ it is necessary to address issues of security from the perspective of the affected people as well as from the perspective of the negotiating parties. It is in this respect that the issue of ‘human security’ became a focal point for concerns about the legitimacy of the peace process on the ground. They were raised from all sides, including those affected by the HSZ, harassment, intimidation, abduction and the imposition of unofficial taxation, and by child conscription, political killings and inter-communal conflicts” [21-2]. Here would seem to lie the seeds of a principled political programme of truly popular common interest: a programme of gradual and sustained demilitarization and delegitimation of the use of violence to maintain political control – whether that of the LTTE or the Sri Lankan military. Yet given that neither the Sri Lankan state nor the LTTE will wish anyone to weaken its ability to maintain its political and territorial control, bringing such a vision into being will require popular organization and struggle much more than technical expertise in negotiation skills.

By neglecting to locate squarely on its road map to peace – even in principle – the necessity of encouraging popular and anti-militarist struggles, the “Crossroads” authors seem to believe that an attachment to principle by the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE will somehow be cultivated as of a result of the logic, and process, of negotiation itself. Yet surely any effective programme for a principled peace would require that one at some point face the fact of unaccountable and anti-democratic power head on – and that one begin to organize at least some minimal forms of counter-power. To be meaningful, “principle” must be wedded to some form of political power. The question is whose power and what kind of power? And in whose common interest, that of the people, or that of their “representatives” (whether “sole” or “democratically elected)?

Ultimately, then, and despite important moments of ambivalence, the authors of “The Sri Lankan Peace Process at Crossroads” choose a conflict transformation paradigm of social change over the alternative framework of democratic politics. Political struggles, even democratic and inclusive struggles, must to some degree operate according to a logic of contradiction and opposition: they draw lines between good and bad, between “us” (democrats) and “them” (militarists, feudalists, fundamentalists, exploiters). Adherents of conflict transformation/resolution approaches generally avoid drawing such lines. When they do challenge the contending parties, it is done in the name of reason (“mutual gains”), technique (“communication strategies”), and principles that are abstracted from political power and leverage. While the two paradigms could, in principle, be made to complement each other, they are likely to remain in tension for the foreseeable future. The question now is whether those same political actors – international donors and their allies in Sri Lanka’s professional civil society organizations – who support the peace process as defined and controlled by the two most powerful stakeholders can learn also to support those local forces that could challenge those same stakeholders in genuinely democratic ways. The fact that donor support for local human rights activities has fallen significantly since the ceasefire is not a hopeful sign in this regard. But the first step would be for high profile and professionalized civil society groups to recognize publicly the urgent need to develop forms of truly critical – and thus truly constructive – engagement “from below.” These would be forms of engagement that offer general support for negotiations and the peace process, but from a position outside the seminar and conference rooms and with enough independent political leverage to have some chance of holding the Tigers and the Sri Lankan state to at least some of the higher principles that “Crossroads” so exhaustively outlines.