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Waging Peace against War

On the surface, it seemed like an idea whose time had come. At the invitation of the National Peace Council (NPC), elected Sinhalese politicians from the Matara district in the extreme south of Sri Lanka had crossed a physical and psychological division by visiting Tamil counterparts from Batticaloa district in the east. What was meant as an exercise in encouraging reconciliation between distrustful communities, got off to a less than fortuitous start, with a testy early tone ironically triggered by words encouraging friendship.

‘We should live in peace’, a Sinhalese politician had said. To which a young Tamil woman retorted: ‘First let us enjoy our rights, and then we will talk about peace.’

But thereafter the initiative, promoted by the NPC and the German agency Frederick Ebert Stiftung (FES) shifted onto a smoother path, the two groups showing more willingness to listen than to allow old assumptions to dictate their positions.

The Tamil woman’s intervention led to the Sinhalese delegates concluding their main role was not to talk, but to listen. By bringing them face to face with the realities of life in the east where there is a Tamil majority and a dominant military oversees retarded development, NPC had made another step in a laborious process of building relationships and planting the issue of conflict resolution among people either unfamiliar with the concept, or distrustful of its consequences.

Sri Lanka’s name used to be a byword for paradise island; now it epitomises the intractability of ethnic conflict. A high-intensity military confrontation between government security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) drags on without any sign of either side winning - or evidence of willingness to compromise. It is a brutal war, costly in human and economic terms. Thousands have died or been injured, hundreds of thousands displaced. In 1996, according to a study by the Marga Institute, losses attributed to the conflict chopped 21.3 percent of Sri Lanka’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Last year’s discourse between Sinhalese and Tamils in Batticaloa was part of a series of measures launched by the National Peace Council to promote a peaceful solution to the conflict effectively waging peace against a bitter war. It was also a coming of age event for the bi-partisan body.

Before that, the NPC had invited 20 Members of Parliament (MP)to spend five days in the Greek island of Crete studying the degree to which the peace and reconciliation experience of South Africa could be applied to Sri Lanka. Beyond the lessons learned from that exercise, the residential nature of the programme - the fact that participants lived together and interacted for five days - forged personal relationships across the ethnic and political divide. The concept of conflict resolution and modern negotiating techniques and methods were introduced.

Then the NPC took 23 MPs from nine Sri Lankan political parties to Northern Ireland. They met leaders and representatives of all unionist and republican political parties and para military groups and the British and Irish governments. There the direct lessons were so sharp, a dramatic step was taken. The MPs, in instances deviating from the official lines of their respective parties, issue a joint statement calling for an all party consensus and the need for talks with the LTTE. Such a joint appeal had never previously been issued, and it caused quite a stir. Much intra-party debate resulted, but, in the end, some of the parties did use that discussion as a launching pad for changes in their approach to the peace process.

NPC-facilitated trips by MPs were then undertaken to Mindanao, the Philippines (to study a conflict that lasted for a quarter century, involving a battle for separation by the Muslim dominated Mindanao island) and to the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh (where as Buddhist minority battled a Muslim dominated state for a similar period of time before entering into a peace agreement).

Three-day residential workshops organised by NPC in all 13 local government bodies in the southern district of Matara, drew Members of Parliament representing four political parties active in the area and elected to these bodies. Basic conflict resolution skills were taught. Failed peace moves were evaluated. Attempts were made to learn from the experiences of peace processes in other countries.

A high point was reached on January 4, 1998. Some 1700 delegates from communities in all 25 districts in the country, held a major convention and urged an immediate end to the war. About 1200 of the delegates were Sinhalese, 350 Tamil, and 150 Muslim. More than half were from areas of Sri Lanka affected by conflict - the north-east and bordering districts. Among the participants were 50 disabled soldiers who approved the resolution.

Extensive workshop discussions had preceded the convention. Held at district level over a five-month period, these gave impetus to a call by the national convention for radical restructuring of the state along lines that would permit a form of self-government for all ‘nationalities and communities’, within one country.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga, Opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe and the LTTE’s International Secretariat in London all sent messages of goodwill. ‘Any just and fair solution towards ushering in peace in the island’ was welcome, the LTTE said in a message which came on the day after the convention ended. President Kumaratunga said the government pledged to do ‘everything possible within our power to achieve a political solution with the co-operation of all sections of our society’. And Wickremasinghe said the country’s war mentality had brought with it hatred and destruction. ‘There can be no victors in war,’ he said.

Established in 1995 to build ‘a peoples movement for peace’, the NPC membership is carefully balanced so as not to give even the impression of bias. That is critical in a country where political and ethnic demarcation lines are so clearly drawn. The NPC was launched during peace talks between the government and the LTTE. Previous attempts to promote peace had concentrated at the level of the top leadership. These had collapsed. Agreements reached were reneged on. And the general population had remained ‘unaware, suspicious and therefore rose up against or were easily manipulated by opposition orchestrated protest.’

When the 1995 peace talks that formed a backdrop to the setting up of the NPC broke down and hostilities resumed, the organisation set about ‘creating an environment for resumed negotiations’ between the government and the LTTE. The nature of the approach adopted was seen as critical to the success of this process - a complementary, supplementary and catalytic role, targeting the political elite, but also paying attention to middle level catalytic agents and grassroots. The aim: to build political will and consensus for a negotiated settlement while raising awareness among and giving public expression to popular desire for peace.

‘A hallmark of attempts at conflict resolution have been the lack of bi partisan consensus among the two main Sinhala dominated parties in the South coupled with a unilateralist approach to the minorities,’ notes the NPC’s Tyrol Ferdinands in a background paper explaining the council’s role and functions.

‘Political will has often been channelled into unilateralist attempts rather than giving leadership for the formation of a national agenda,’ he notes, ‘while processes that were mediated in an attempt to build a southern consensus on the national issue became politicised and exploited for narrow political gain.’

The NPC felt it was imperative to stimulate political will and consensus for negotiations, and thus set about assisting in risk management among political elites by demonstrating that peaceful change through negotiations was both possible and preferable while being complementary if not helpful to their own political projects.

Getting people from different parties travelling, living and learning together had a strong impact. In turn, that led to discussions about the need for ‘a new political culture of co-operation’ that would overcome the current impasse brought about by confrontational politics. State level actors got the opportunity to interact with those from other conflict situations in a non-formal setting. Devoid of the protocol demanded by official programmes and the positions such responsibility entails, otherwise unthinkable options were considered and sometimes surprisingly adopted as the creative way forward.

The process is not always smooth. Sáma Yámaya (Time of Peace), the NPC newsletter, reports on a conflict resolution workshop held by the National Peace Council in the north-western Puttalam district for about 20 community leaders, at which several participants denied there was even an ethnic conflict in the country. They declared that they did not have problems with Tamil neighbours, who likewise had no problems with them and questioned the value of workshops for ‘powerless’ people like themselves, who could not change the macro-level politics where the ‘real decisions’ about war and peace are made.

Nonetheless, evaluations undertaken with participants revealed they felt the NPC programmes helped create a more informed political debate, enabled those involved to give a more realistic assessment of Sri Lanka’s conflict and understand more clearly the dynamics of conflict and the price required to be paid for peace.

And how was a small civil society-based conflict resolution group able to sustain such a programme?

The composition of the NPC -ethnically and religiously diverse individuals, drawn from the various political shades- probably helped in gaining general acceptance and subsequent co-operation of political parties. Ferdinand: ‘It is also probably the reason why no other civil society group has been able to conduct such a programme in Sri Lanka in the past and why many who have attempted to replicate the process since have not succeeded.’

NPC’s own definition of itself helped. As a civil society based conflict resolution organisation, the body limited its role to complementary, supplementary and catalytic functions - as against being a protest movement. It facilitated a process of building the resource and capacity of politicians to deal with issues of conflict and resolution. Special care was taken not to give appearance of political bias.

For the Council, Sri Lanka’s current conflict has its roots in the inability of a British Westminster style democracy to safeguard and respect the rights of minorities through effective power sharing. ‘Discrimination in areas such as language, education, employment and land led to non violent protests by the minority Tamil community. When these protests were violently suppressed, Tamil youth commenced and intensified an armed struggle with the objective of creating a separate state in the Northeast of the island.’

Sinhalese politicians from Matara found the visit to Batticaloa an eye-opener. A report on the initiative published in the Sáma Yámaya, took note of how the separateness of the participants was brought home at the workshop which was one of the main activities on the programme. ‘Conversations had to be translated back and forth, between Sinhala and Tamil,’ the newsletter noted. One participant was led to comment: ‘This looks and feels as if delegations from two different countries are meeting.’

The workshop functioned as a forum for sharing difficulties faced by local level elected politicians in exercising powers that are supposed to be vested in them by central government. How can local communities work towards realising the goal of a negotiated peace? Frustrations about ‘the endless talk at the top’ led to delegates identifying the need to build understanding and consensus at a community level while reinforcing the need for political leadership.

One Sinhalese politician, a beneficiary of the NPC’s training in conflict resolution, said: ‘We who constitute this delegation - PA and UNP (the ruling People’s Alliance and the main opposition United National Party) - were like snake and mongoose a few months ago. Today we have travelled to the war zone together and are in dialogue with you. It’s a process that can easily be extended to the LTTE as well.’

A simulated ‘negotiation’ was conducted by the two sides with respect to a political solution to the conflict. Tamil politicians presented their view of the powers that should be vested in the north-east region which would be Tamil dominated and is claimed as the Tamil Homeland. After scrutinising the list presented, the Sinhalese politicians objected. According to the list, they said, virtually nothing had been left for the central government. The Tamil politicians accepted this as a legitimate objection, and began revising their list. However the process was stymied: because the workshop had to end. The point had been made though. Sincerity, political will and dialogue can bring about a mutually acceptable compromise.

Returning to Matara, the Sinhalese politicians agreed that what they saw had confirmed the validity of lessons taught during the NPC workshops. Dialogue had engendered changes in hard positions. Could this micro-level change also be possible at the macro-level - between the government and the LTTE?

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