March 10, 2003

ONE PLACE WHERE PEACE IS GETTING A CHANCE

By Tom Plate

Swimming against the tide of war in Sri Lanka

LOS ANGELES -- Even on the eve of a major war, diplomacy can find a useful niche, however lesser the stakes. Consider the unheralded efforts of the Norwegian and Japanese governments to help reverse decades of vicious civil war on the island nation of Sri Lanka. Their relatively selfless diplomacy deserves a moment at center stage for the world to appreciate, before all hell breaks loose over Iraq -- and perhaps North Korea -- and the guns of war drown out everything else.

Progress is being achieved, ever so slowly, by a selfless Norwegian government that has fostered confidential peace talks between the country's perennially warring parties -- the majority Sinhalese government and the Northeastern minority Tamils. Those talks are to continue next week (March 18-21) in Tokyo, where a helpful Koizumi government has been offering not only direct aid to Sri Lanka but also the intermediation of a veteran foreign ministry diplomat.

Yasushi Akashi, former U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, has been shuttling back and forth to Colombo, the capital of the country formerly known as Ceylon. In addition, Tokyo plans to host an international economic aid conference for Sri Lanka in June, which top-level players -- from the World Bank to the European Union to the U.S. government -- are planning to attend. This is a lot of diplomatic activity for ordinarily low-profile Japan.

At stake is not only the future of 19 million people in a nation that's half the size of Alabama but the stability of the South Asian region as well. Countless minority Tamils live in south India: Years ago a top Indian political figure was murdered by assassins from the Tamil Tigers -- freedom fighters to some in their homeland but to the Bush administration common terrorists and infamous entries on its "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" roster. India, facing serious security problems in Kashmir, would be well pleased were Oslo and Tokyo to transform the temporary cease-fire on Sri Lanka, which over the years has begun to look more like an Asian Northern Ireland than anything else, into permanent peace.

Many interested parties in the United States would applaud as well. On the U.S. West Coast, the Sri Lankan diaspora is huge. Immigrants from the country's besieged northeast, thriving in Silicon Valley, have formed a group that hopes to establish a software industry in a reunited Sri Lanka. In Southern California, another outfit, called Veahavta, works with thousands of ethnic Tamils to help widows and orphan casualties of the civil war back home.

The Bush administration, with other weighty issues on its mind, is happy that Tokyo is taking the quiet lead in the peace process. The Japanese, who painstakingly helped give birth to the Kyoto protocol, only to have it iced by the Bush administration, all but jumped at the opportunity. "To put it simply," said one Tokyo-based diplomat, "we ourselves have become weary of being perceived as just a generous donor playing but a minor role in the actual processes of peace." Under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in fact, Japan has overall stepped things up considerably, accepting potentially risky diplomatic and political duties, especially in Indonesia, Afghanistan and Iraq, at least to the extent its constitution and culture permit.

"This may be a key moment," agrees U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has called on both the government in Colombo to negotiate in good faith with the Tamils and on the Tamil Tigers in the northeast to make "hard choices and compromises ... if they want to meet their ambitions for international support." Such high-level statements are quite helpful, of course; but so would a ban on the cycle-and-counter-cycle sales of tanks to the government and then anti-tank weapons to the rebels by Western arms merchants.

This lucrative but immoral game by the defense industry has been in no small measure responsible over the years for the incredible human carnage of at least 60,000 people killed. Even now, after decades of fighting, the Sri Lankan peace process is unstable, jeopardized daily by dreary political infighting in Colombo between the president and the prime minister -- and up north by counter-productive anti-Colombo violence from the Tamil Tigers.

Worse yet, the Koizumi government is acutely aware that the Bush administration is otherwise wholly preoccupied with Saddam Hussein -- and now, increasingly, with Kim Jong Ill. It privately worries that this month's peace talks and the June aid conference could well prove casualties of the Iraq war, which could wind up putting on hold virtually everything of major moment in the region. Says Japan's Akashi: "A lot depends on the outcome of the war, which many people, including myself, feel is likely to occur." It is the unanticipated consequences of war that can sometimes hurt the most.

The above weekly column has just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.

Previous Columns:

An Odd Couple Framing the Iraq and North Korea Debate (March 3, 2003)

Meet the Al Qaeda of the World Economic System (February 24, 2003)

Under the Glare of a Global Microscope (February 17, 2003)

No Pause for the Chinese Space Program (February 10, 2003)

Columns From Davos:

Sunshine in Davos? (January 27, 2003)

Hawkish Policy Best Defended By the Dove (January 26, 2003)