Friends like these

Since Sri Lanka crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam its government has found itself in an unfamiliar position.

Little Sri Lanka is rarely a model of anything. But since it crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam its government has found itself in an unfamiliar position. Some of the world8217;s less savoury regimes are beating a path to its door to study 8220;the Sri Lanka option8221;.

Last November,Myanmar8217;s military dictator,Than Shwe,who rarely travels abroad,visited the island 8220;so that his regime can apply any lessons learned to its efforts against the ethnic groups in Burma,8221; says Benedict Rogers,a biographer of General Than. In May last year at a meeting of regional defence ministers in Singapore,Myanmar8217;s deputy minister made the link explicit,saying the world had witnessed a victory over terrorism in Sri Lanka but had forgotten about the insurgency in his country.

In October Thailand8217;s prime minister,Abhisit Vejjajiva,held talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart about the lessons of the Tigers8217; defeat for handling a Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand,not the protests cleared this week in Bangkok. In March a military delegation from Bangladesh met Sri Lanka8217;s army chief,to swap notes on what he called Sri Lanka8217;s 8220;successful completion of the war for peace8221;. Behind the scenes,hawkish generals and politicians from Colombia to Israel seem to be using Sri Lanka8217;s experience to justify harsher anti-terror operations.

Louise Arbour,head of the International Crisis Group ICG,says the Sri Lanka model consists of three parts: what she dubs 8220;scorched-earth tactics8221; full operational freedom for the army,no negotiations with terrorists,no ceasefires to let them regroup; next,ignoring differences between combatants and non-combatants the new Icg report documents many such examples; lastly,the dismissal of international and media concerns. A senior official in President Mahinda Rajapaksa8217;s office,quoted anonymously in a journal,Indian Defence Review,says 8220;we had to ensure that we regulated the media. We didn8217;t want the international community to force peace negotiations on us.8221; The author of that article,V.K. Shashikumar,concludes that 8220;in the final analysis the Rajapaksa model is based on a military precept Terrorism has to be wiped out militarily and cannot be tackled politically.8221; This is the opposite of the strategy America is pursuing in Afghanistan. It is winning a widespread hearing.