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Looking Back at Peace
As Sri Lanka moves closer to a new war, Sri Lankan academics look back at what the peace process and the cease-fire has meant for academia on the island.
JAYAPRAKASH TISSAINAYAGAM TEXTOLIVIER PIN-FAT, AGENCE VU PHOTOSColombo, Sri Lanka
SHRINE A shrine commemorating a soldier of LTTE’s infamous suicide squad, the Black Tigers.
DESTROYED The remains of a bombed hotel in eastern Sri Lanka.THE CEASE-FIRE AGREEMENT (CFA), which came into effect on 23 February 2002, is perhaps one of the boldest documents conceived by the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in their 20-year ethnic conflict. What was to guarantee the cease-fire’s sustainability was the balance of military power between the two sides with a monitoring body – the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) – overseeing implementation of the agreement on the ground. Today we see the CFA gasping for survival as the two protagonists to the conflict find its use diminishing. The only thing stopping them from abandoning the agreement is fear it would displease the international community and invite economic sanctions or diplomatic isolation – issues arising from the ‘overinternationalisation’of the Sri Lankan peace process, to which reference is made below. As the situation enters a downward spiral it is opportune to measure the four-year CFA’s impact on a segment of the population with which matters martial are seldom associated: the academic community.Increased accessIn its most basic sense, the CFA allowed academics and scholars to find access to areas to which they would not have had access before. “I was part of a UNDP study that involved other academicsas well, where we tried to assess whether assistance had reached tsunami survivors. We had to identify the vulnerable sectors and see how well aid had been utilised,” says Professor V.Nithiyanandam, head of the Department of Economics of the University of Jaffna. Professor Nithiyandam said that access to different parts of the northeast had been greatly facilitated by the CFA. His part of the project involved going to the districts of the north aff ected by the tsunami such as the Vadamaradtchi coast in the Jaff na peninsula, the small stretch of land in the Kilinochchi District adjoining the sea and Mullaitivu, which was devastated by the waves. Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu are under the control of the LTTE. “We had to consult the government agent, divisional secretary and grama sevaka [village headman] of the villages affected by the tsunami followed by meeting beneficiaries, all involving extensive fieldwork,” says Professor Nithiyanandam.He said the UNDP study had necessitated the compilation of a detailed questionnaire after consultations with government officials, to which the beneficiaries were required to respond. The two rounds of data collection on the ground involved mobilising over 15 undergraduates of Jaffna University. They met fishing communities, peasants and other affected sectors through arrangements made by the divisional secretary – all made possible by a functioning cease-fire. “Data collection in the government-controlled areas required permission from the army, which was readily obtained,” says ProfessorNithiyanandam. “In the LTTE-controlled area however there was a problem because data collectors were not allowed to speak to affected persons without an authorised letter to the LTTE and TRO representatives of the area.” This meant the data collectors had to wait till formal permission was obtained. When that was done they were allowed to conduct interviews in those areas without hindrance. But when the second round of field visits commenced the political and security environment had changed considerably. Emergency regulations were in place and claymore mines, unofficial curfews and army retaliation was the order of the day. “In such an environment, we could not send university students out to collect data – it was too risky,” Professor Nithiyanandam says.This was compounded by another factor. University students could not even come into the campus without feelingvulnerable after the military clashed with students repeatedly in January. “Furthermore, many students are from areas outside the peninsula. They were unable get accommodation near the campus because people were afraid to keep them. All this affected not only university life in general, but the UNDP project as well,” says Professor Nithiyanandam.While smooth access to data was facilitated by the CFA for Professor Nithiyanandam, it did not significantly affect Dr Darini Rajasingham Senanayake, an anthropologist working with the Colombo-based Social Scientists Association (SSA). “The CFA did not make a fundamental difference to my mobility. I used to go to both cleared and un-cleared areas of the northeast even before the CFA, for which I got permission from the government and the LTTE. This was because I am a Tamil and was not afraid. But the CFA did help in that it was easier to get about after dark and there were no curfews,” she says.She says it is wrong to think the CFA had removed impediments to research; it also brought new restrictions that were not there before the agreement was signed. “There were no checkpoints in Omanthai and Muhamalai controlled by the army and the LTTE. All that began with the CFA coming into place,” she observes.Exploiting local knowledgeS. Jeyasankar, senior lecturer in fine arts at Eastern University, Batticaloa, takes a different view. “The CFA has helped city-based academics who believe that research is about data collection andfinding material in university libraries,” he says. Jeyasankar, while teaching fine arts at the university has also used kooththu, a popular dance form both in Batticaloa and Jaffna, as a vehicle for social transformation. Critical of the ‘modernisation’ of kooththu by its performance within the confines of the proscenium arch theatre, he has worked hard to legitimise the dances as they were traditionally performed – on a stage in the open air such as in a temple forecourt or village square. He has also used kooththu performances to understand power relations that are perpetuated through such traditional dances and how they could be transformed to suit a more egalitarian order. “What is usually called research in this country is data collection. The universities, without critically evaluating the methodology and the validity of concepts behind research, serve as channels to collect data, which is then forwarded to the government, private think-tanks or international NGOs to facilitate their work,” he complains.To Jeyasankar much of the research that has taken place in the northeast both before the CFA and after has used local knowledge, universities and the public as instruments for outsiders to exploit and gain something for themselves, rather than to help develop the community that is being researched. Resultsof such studies are not designed for consumption within the community but outside, he said. “We do not define our research programmes to develop the community in which the research is grounded. Therefore the community does not benefit. The benefit is to the academic who conducts the research programme or who publishes a paper or thesis,” Jeyasankar says.Deeply committed to participatory research, which he uses extensively in his work within communities in Batticaloa through kooththu, he believes, “Only if you look at research as application-oriented and community-oriented can you enjoy the real benefit of the CFA.”New ideasMeanwhile, other academics believe an important aspect of the CFA is that it created an environment which provoked new ideas or clarifi ed old ones. Dr Rajasingham Senanyake and Sunil Bastian, senior research fellow, both involved in looking at development paradigms and their application in Sri Lanka as well as other third world countries, see the CFA in this way. “The CFA has thrown up a number of issues: for instance we do not look at foreign aid now as we did in 2002. Similarly, the assumption that negotiations lead to stability is also something I question after four years of the cease-fire,” Bastian said.The other issue which the period of the cease-fire has highlighted is the conflict within the Tamil community. “Categories such as ‘loyalist’ and ‘traitor’ now used within the Tamil community remind me of the conflict between the JVP and Old Left in 1989-1990. Then too there were personal vendettas mixed with politics,” he recalls. Bastian focuses on economic issues that not only forced the then-government to pursue the establishment of the CFA, but have affected the political debate once the agreement was in place. For instance, it was the economic situation after the attack on the Katunayake International Airport in 2001 that compelled the Sri Lankan elite to agree to the CFA, while the economic climate generated post-2002 has framed the political debate on devolution and analysis of the structure of the state.The links between economic imperatives and political ones are also apparent in international assistance for development and relief. “The donors’ objective of giving economic assistance to the United National Front government soon after the CFA was signed was to end fi ghting through a cease-fire, initiate an extensive economic reform programme and internationalise the conflict by using aid,” said Bastian.In 2006 he believes the strategy used by the international community to both manage the conflict in Sri Lanka as well as the economy during the cease-fire period has not yielded the hoped-for dividends. Moreover, conflict resolution strategies that attempt to manage conflict as an end in itself have been found wanting. “The debate should be on how minorities can enjoy their rights. The CFA and negotiations are not ends in themselves – they should lead to people getting their rights. The question should be revisited through a rights-based approach,” stresses Bastian.Rajasingham Senanyake is disillusioned with the CFA and what the peace process has thrown up, but for different reasons. “The peace process has pointed to the existence of an international peace industry. The players are not only the government and LTTE, but the donors who are active in the humanitarian, peace and developmental sectors,” she says. She believes that that the international donors manage internal conflicts in such a way that conflicts are perpetuated. The donors obfuscate issues and their actions even result in the primary parties to the conflict getting more deeply embroiled in war. Like Bastian she too emphasises the economic aspect of the conflict highlighted in the period the CFA has been in operation. The economic agenda is set by the international donors, including the IMF and other international funding organisations, whose objective is to recycle the money spent on development aid back to the rich countries leaving the South continuously poor. “I think the peace process is over-internationalised and traps poor countries by giving aid and perpetuates conflict. The CFA and the peace process allowed me study this problem quite closely,” Rajasingham Senanayake says.Looking to the futureWhether giving access to researchers to areas that were earlier inaccessible, throwing up the stark truth that negotiations by themselves do not lead to stability unless underpinned by an agenda restoring equality and justice to affected communities, or demonstrating that international linkages do not always benefit a people at war, the CFA has helped academics by allowing a respite from war and by bringing to the fore an alternative environment that has fertilised new ideas on war, politics, development and society. The most we can hope for today as the CFA unravels is that these ideas will help to re-frame future debate.Jayaprakash Tissainayagam is a Sri Lankan editor and journalist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Last updated: 15.06.2006 11:37:12
