US-Sri Lanka relations: fall-back from 12/2009 US Senate Report determinations
With the unearthed of the December 2009 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on Sri Lanka – nine months following the end of Eelam War IV – authored by its Chairman John Kerry and (Republican) Vice Chair Lugar it can be reviewed now totally in different aspects.
This Senate report needs to be read along with subsequent developments of US-Sri Lanka relations, Sri Lanka being taken to the UNHRC initiated by Washington, and Washington’s strong-hand on human rights/war crimes.
When the report was released in December 2009, John Kerry was Chairman of the Committee that wrote very interesting statements of ‘neglecting Sri Lanka’s Southern Sector”, “over-emphasizing domestic issues” etc., and later became President Obama’s Secretary of State who, during his four year (2013-2016), took Sri Lanka to task in Geneva accusing of international humanitarian law (IHL) and teaming with active professional representatives within the Tamil Diaspora to accuse Sri Lanka – little short of – war crimes leading to genocide.
Despite Washington never espoused the Tamil Tiger call for a separate state in Sri Lanka, the state department officials were furious – especially when Kerry was Secretary of State despite his promulgations in the report he authored – that the minority Tamil ethnic population was subjected to “Sinhalese majoritarian domination”, that the Rajapaksa administration that won the war was on the national path of triumphalism giving the Tamil minority a sense of defeat, the lethal Tamil Tiger movement was totally destroyed – a scenario the US never expected but a controlled-unarmed movement to survive as a political pressure movement to check the Sinhalese domination and bring reforms, brought a lacuna between Washington and Colombo.
The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, a bipartisan endeavor, on Sri Lanka released December 07, 2009 was a thorough review of the failed U.S. policies and approach toward Sri Lanka during the preceding years, and recommended that the U.S. needs to adopt a fresh approach to this South Asian nation declaring “the U.S. Government has invested relatively little in the economy or the security sector in Sri Lanka, instead focusing more on IDPs and civil society. As a result, Sri Lanka has grown politically and economically isolated from the West.”
The report shared by the Senate Committee chairman Democratic Party’s John F. Kerry and the committee’s ranking member Republican Richard G. Lugar further observed: “This strategic drift will have consequences for U.S. interests in the region. Along with our legitimate humanitarian and political concerns, U.S. policymakers have tended to underestimate Sri Lanka’s geostrategic importance for American interests. Sri Lanka is located at the nexus of crucial maritime trading routes in the Indian Ocean connecting Europe and the Middle East to China and the rest of Asia.”
The United States during a decade or so which exerted pressure on successive Sri Lankan governments and intensified during Mahinda Rajapaksa administration that the nation needs to totally focus on Tamil issues, predominantly Tamil provinces in the north and east, Tamil economic woes and grievances of the 12% Tamil ethnic minority, in this Foreign Relations Committee evaluation a novel approach was taken: “U.S. strategy should also invest in Sinhalese parts of the country, instead of just focusing aid on the Tamil-dominated North and East.”
But this novel approach was temporary depicted very clearly during Kerry’s tenure as Secretary in the Obama administration, and thereafter to date.
Admitting the shortsighted policies the United States has adopted towards Sri Lanka in the Kerry-chaired Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommends to the Obama administration to “Take a broader and more robust approach to Sri Lanka that appreciates new political and economic realities in Sri Lanka and U.S. geostrategic interests. Such an approach should be multidimensional so that U.S. policy is not driven solely by short-term humanitarian concerns but rather an integrated strategy that leverages political, economic, and security tools for more effective long-term reforms.”
So one could see the departure from the sane advocacy of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December 2009 to a confrontational approach Washington adopted paving the way for Sri Lanka to gradually drift toward China.
Will the new Sri Lanka ambassador to Washington (former Human Rights Minister) Mahinda Samarasinghe understand the ‘total’ scenario to mend fences with the United States, and will he have all the knowledge to appraise lawmakers and policymakers in Washington the correct scenario in Sri Lanka that Sri Lanka is not a genocidal nation?
Daya Gamage
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