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Journalism of Courage
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.
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.
