Sri Lanka, the once self-trumpeted `island of paradise,` turned into the island of bloodshed more than a quarter-century ago. But even by its long, gory record, the bloodletting since last year is unprecedented. The United Nations estimates that some 1,200 noncombatants are getting killed each month in a civil war that continues to evoke a muted international response even as hundreds of thousands of minority Tamils have fled their homes or remain trapped behind the front line.
With the world preoccupied by pressing challenges, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a naturalized U.S. citizen, press on with their brutal military campaign with impunity. The offensive bears a distinct family imprint, with another brother the president`s top adviser.
Chinese military and financial support as in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Burma and elsewhere has directly aided government excesses and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. But with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly emphasizing that the global financial, climate and security crises are more pressing priorities for U.S. policy than China`s human rights record, which by her own department`s recent admission has `remained poor and worsened in some areas,` Beijing has little reason to stop facilitating overseas what it practices at home repression.
Still, the more China insists that it doesn`t mix business with politics in its foreign relations, the more evidence it provides of cynically contributing to violence and repression in internally torn states. Sri Lanka is just the latest case demonstrating Beijing`s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests.
No sooner had the United States ended direct military aid to Sri Lanka last year over its deteriorating human rights record than China blithely stepped in to fill the breach a breach widened by India`s hands-off approach toward Sri Lanka since a disastrous 1987-90 peacekeeping operation in that island-nation.
Beijing began selling larger quantities of arms, and dramatically boosted its aid fivefold in the past year to almost $1 billion to emerge as Sri Lanka`s largest donor. Chinese Jian-7 fighter jets, antiaircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons have played a central role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or `Tamil Tigers`), seeking to carve out an independent homeland for the ethnic Tamils in the island`s north and east.
Beijing even got its ally Pakistan actively involved in Sri Lanka. With Chinese encouragement, Pakistan despite its own faltering economy and rising Islamist challenge has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million while supplying Chinese-origin small arms and training Sri Lankan air force personnel in precision guided attacks.
China has become an enabler of repression in a number of developing nations as it seeks to gain access to oil and mineral resources, to market its goods and to step up investment. Still officially a communist state, its support for brutal regimes is driven by capitalist considerations. But while exploiting commercial opportunities, it also tries to make strategic inroads. Little surprise thus that China`s best friends are pariah or other states that abuse human rights.
Indeed, with its ability to provide political protection through its U.N. Security Council veto power, Beijing has signed tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with such problem states from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela.
In the case of Sri Lanka, China has been particularly attracted by that country`s vantage location in the center of the Indian Ocean a crucial international passageway for trade and oil. Hambantota the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are now building on Sri Lanka`s southeast is the latest `pearl` in China`s strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a `string of pearls` in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports.
China indeed has aggressively moved in recent years to build ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma. Besides eyeing Pakistan`s Chinese-built port-cum-naval base of Gwadar as a possible anchor for its navy, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. However, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota, which sits astride the great trade arteries.
China`s generous military aid to Sri Lanka has tilted the military balance in favor of government forces, enabling them in recent months to unravel the de facto state the Tamil Tigers had run for years. After losing more than 5,594 square km of territory, the Tigers now are boxed into a 85-square-km sliver of wooded land in the northeast.
But despite the government`s battlefield triumphs, Asia`s longest civil war triggered by the bloody 1983 anti-Tamil riots is unlikely to end anytime soon. Not only is the government unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils` long-standing cultural and political grievances, the rebels are gearing up to return to their roots and become guerrilla fighters again after being routed in the conventional war.
While unable to buy peace, Chinese aid has helped weaken and scar civil society. Emboldened by the unstinted Chinese support, the government has set in motion the militarization of society and employed control of information as an instrument of war, illustrated by the muzzling of the media and murders of several independent-minded journalists. It has been frenetically swelling the ranks of the military by one-fifth a year through large-scale recruitment, even as it establishes village-level civilian militias, especially in conflict-hit areas.
With an ever-larger, Chinese-aided war machine, the conflict is set to grind on, making civil society the main loser. That is why international diplomatic intervention has become imperative. India, with its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout over a war-hemorrhagic Sri Lankan economy that is in search of an international bailout package, must use its leverage deftly to promote political and ethnic reconciliation rooted in federalism and genuine interethnic equality. More broadly, the U.S., European Union, Japan and other important players need to exert leverage to stop the Rajapaksa brothers from rebuffing ceasefire calls and press Beijing to moderate its unsettling role.
China's declaration of support for the Sri Lankan government against the LTTE, apart from sticking out like a sore thumb in the eyes of the world, has further fuelled India`s mortal distrust of its largest and most powerful neighbour. While India has a much more nuanced position over the issue owing to its domestic compulsions, an unfettered China is supporting Colombo and, in the process, authenticating India's fear about Beijing extending its influence in the Indian Ocean.
According to government sources, Beijing's support to Colombo cannot be viewed in isolation because it follows a series of initiatives aimed at influencing the Sri Lankan government. These include selling huge quantities of arms to Colombo last year and boosting aid almost five times to $1 billion. In fact, China is now the largest donor to Lanka. Its Jian-7 fighter jets, anti-aircraft guns and JY-11 3D air surveillance radars played a key role in the Sri Lankan military successes.
China came to rescue of Colombo after the US stopped direct aid to Sri Lanka because of its dismal human rights record. What's worse, said strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney, Beijing has also roped in its ally Pakistan for providing military assistance to Lanka. Pakistan's own economy is in tatters, but it has increased its annual military assistance to Sri Lanka to $100 million at Beijing's behest. It is also well known that its air force trained its Sri Lankan counterpart in precision-guided attacks.
"The Chinese are courting Sri Lanka because of its location in the Indian Ocean -- a crucial international passageway for trade and oil. Chinese engineers are currently building a billion-dollar port in the country's southeast, Hambantota, and this is the latest `pearl' in China's strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a `string of pearls' in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports,''said Chellaney.
The Chinese are building a highway, developing two power plants and putting up a new port in the hometown of President Mahinda Rajapakse. Delhi is also feeling hard done-by by Beijing's support to Colombo over the issue of LTTE because it believes China is driving home an unfair advantage it has over India in the crisis. "Unlike in our case, there is no moral dimension to the crisis for China. We have to think about the humanitarian situation and conditions after the offensive is over. There is no domestic compulsion for China but our involvement is much more intricate,'' said a source.China, in fact, continues to aggressively pursue its strategic interests by building ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. According to Chellaney, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. "However, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota,'' said Chellaney.
China is using the ongoing crisis in Sri Lanka to expand its sphere of influence and that has impacted India’s response to the situation, said Home Minister P Chidambaram. “China is fishing in troubled waters. That is a lone, discordant voice among all of the global community,” he told Hindustan Times on Friday.
China is encouraging the Sri Lankan offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while the rest of the world, including India, has called for a cessation of hostilities to enable civilians to escape. Fighting for a separate state for Tamil-speaking people, the LTTE has been declared a terrorist outfit by United Nations.
"China is acting with a clear agenda,” said Chidambaram. “Our policies take account of the Chinese calculations.” He said Pakistan also might have wanted to seek a foothold on the southern (maritime) border of India, but internal issues were holding it back. “They are not in a position to do something adventurous now,” he said.
The comments are significant as Lanka’s importance for Beijing is in the sea-lanes of communication in the north Indian Ocean through which Chinese trade and energy supplies flow.
“They want to secure the lanes by building strategic and defense ties with Colombo,” said Sujit Dutta, head of the East Asia Programme of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.
Senior Chinese naval officials have often stated that “the Indian Ocean isn’t India’s” despite no such claim by New Delhi. In the conversation that spanned a range of political and security issues Chidambaram expressed satisfaction over his 150 days in office. He replaced Shivraj Patil on December 1, 2008 in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. He was finance minister till then.
“Our intelligence gathering and sharing are far more effective now than six months ago. State governments are responding to the situation with utmost urgency and are better equipped to deal with it should another terrorist attack take place,” he said.
The Home Hinister said India is trying to put pressure on Colombo and the LTTE to cease hostilities. "It’s a humanitarian crisis. We want the killings to stop. Unfortunately, neither the Sri Lankan government nor the LTTE is willing to listen to the international community,” he said.
Chidambaram said the advances made by the Taliban in Pakistan were “extremely worrisome” for India. “Large sections of Pakistan are under the control of the Taliban,” he said. However, the Home Minister did not endorse former NSA Brajesh Mishra’s fears that the Taliban could “get their hands” on nuclear weapons. “My impression is that there are adequate systems in Pakistan to secure them,” he said.
“Read my lips. We’ve made substantial progress…I am not at liberty to disclose details as some procedural formalities are still underway,” he said.
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