Playing Geopolitics

On the Department of International Relations

Many are baffled by Sri Lanka’s ability to harness assistance from a spectrum of geopolitical poles: it is the only country that can count on military assistance from India and Pakistan, and finance from the West, China and Russia.

Credit where it is due: Sri Lanka has plaid the game of geopolitics with enviable skill. It has managed to pitch powers against each other at crucial junctures. Likewise, criticism: Tamils have been awfully weak and excessively restrained in their relationship with external actors.

Eelam Tamils’ strength, the world wide Tamil community, has, inadvertently, been their major undoing on the international arena.

Given communication difficulties and overall “cut-off” from the outside world, since the early 70s, much of the “international relations” aspect of the Tamileelam struggle has been spearheaded by Tamil Nadu and Tamil Diaspora.

The result has been an unfortunate bias in the Tamils’ strategy.

Come hell or high water, Tamil Nadu will only appeal to New Delhi. Time and time again, even if New Delhi offers outright military assistance to Colombo, as it does now, Tamil Nadu would only make “final”, “urgent” and “critical” appeals. Similarly, despite the West’s financial assistance to Sri Lanka, Tamil Diaspora will only work with London, Pairs and Toronto.

Overtime, New Delhi, London, Paris and Toronto have began to take Tamil loyalty for granted. These powers rightly believe that regardless of the military and financial assistance they give to Colombo, Tamils will never move out of their sphere of influence. But, if they halt assistance to Colombo, it will head towards Islamabad, Beijing and Moscow.

Even after New Delhi sent battle tanks and soldiers to the Vanni, Tamils have been unprepared to look beyond India. Last week Tamil Nadu’s most powerful man, the chief minister, appeared to be a modern day Raj for an European empress when he said New Delhi’s military assistance is decided by the Centre with no inputs from states or ministers.

The West, for its part, has listed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a “terrorist” organisation, stopped Tamil Diaspora from making donations and arrested scores high profile activists. In Washington, the Bush regime entrapped half a dozen Tamil youths by appealing to their emotions in the immediate aftermath of the Sencholai bombing, which left 62 school girls dead. Court cases are ongoing in Toronto, London and Rome. Two dozen Tamils have been behind bars for more than two years in Paris.

India is indifferent to the suffering of the Tamils. In fact, the current phase of the conflict is being spearheaded by New Delhi; by Indian “experts” using Indian military hardware.

The West, which all too often claims to be sitting on a moral mount, is acting blind to the suffering of the Tamil people. Bombings of hospitals are ignored and people are urged to move out of the “conflict area”, which happens to be areas administered by the LTTE. But it has no concern for the people who do leave; it is not bothered by families being indefinitely detained at military ran camps with no access to the outside.

Given this reality, the LTTE’s recent appointment of Selvarasa Pathmanathan as the head of its newly formed Department of International Relations is most welcome. Mr Pathmanathan, one of the most senior leaders in the LTTE, is not a member of the Diaspora. He has extensive contacts around the world. Crucially, he can do business with countries to which most Tamils have not been exposed.

Now that India’s and the West’s indifference to Tamil suffering and their outright promotion of Tamil genocide has been fully exposed, Tamil Nadu and Tamil Diaspora have to decide if a shift in international relations is timely.

Activists around the world have a duty to highlight to their politicians and policy makers that Tamil loyalty can no longer be taken for granted. Given genocide as the only choice, Tamils will seek alternatives around the world, even if that comes at the price of upsetting “traditional” allies who are, after all, fully behind Colombo’s agenda.

In the coming days, as choices become limited, Tamils of Eelam will have to make hard decisions. Tamil Diaspora and Tamil Nadu must be mindful that any such shift in strategy was taken last minute and for the purpose of survival alone.