EXTENDING RECONCILIATON

Rajapakse's impressive gesture
to 'son of the soil'

Jehan Perera in Colombo

The president of Sri Lanka held a cabinet meeting last week in the northern town of Kilinochchi, the capital of the Tamil Tigers rebels until they were finally defeated last year. The separatist guerrillas controlled one-third of Sri Lanka as recently as 2006 and ran a de facto state from Kilinochchi that included their own legal, banking and tax collecting systems. Mahinda Rajapakse held a two-hour cabinet session and a review of construction work in the former war zone before meeting with ethnic Tamils who were displaced during the final months of the war, his office said.
   The venue for the cabinet meeting was seen as part of Rajapakse's efforts to present Sri Lanka as a united country since the defeat of the rebels, despite continuing deep ethnic divisions on the island. The United Nations estimates that some 7,000 Tamil civilians perished in the final four months of the conflict, which claimed up to 100,000 lives since 1972.
   Meanwhile on July 23 Isabel Guerrero, World Bank Vice President for South Asia ended a three-day visit to Sri Lanka pledging support to the country's transit to a middle income country at peace.
   
   Grand gesture: son of the soil
   The grand gesture of recognition that President Mahinda Rajapaksa bestowed upon Muttiah Muralitharan for his long career contribution to Sri Lanka cricket has been widely appreciated throughout the country. The President found time to make an unscheduled visit to the Galle Cricket Stadium where Sri Lanka was playing against India, and Muralitharan was playing his final game prior to retirement. The President presented the world famous cricketer with a gift on the occasion and made a speech in which he hailed him as a son of the soil.
   This was not the first time that the President had supported Muralitharan. When the cricketer was accused of bowling with an illegal arm action and threatened with an international ban, he was given full support by President Rajapaksa, who was then the Prime Minister.
   
   Cricketer's acknowledgement
   In his own speech the great cricketer acknowledged the contribution that President Rajapaksa had made to his cricketing career. The relationship between the President and Muralitharan shows how the President is prepared to give value to those who contribute to the interests of the country. One of the President's most electrifying and clarion calls to the electorate is to be patriotic, to love and serve the Motherland, and not to undermine his government. In this respect all individuals appear to be equal in the eyes of the President. The problem is that the President has still not been able to transfer his universal values, where every Sri Lankan citizen obtains equal protection, to the macro-level which affects entire communities of people. This is where great leadership that can transform situations is necessary.
   Over a year has now passed since the end of that war. During the past year, there have been many beneficial effects of the end of war. Most roads have been reopened and there is free access to nearly all parts of the country to ordinary citizens. Economic life has revived with the return of agricultural lands and seas to productive activities. Many members of the diaspora have been able to return and visit their relatives or engage in economic activities.
   There are many who would rightly praise President Rajapaksa's actions in going to Galle to honour Muttiah Muralitharan and call him a 'son of the soil' who had served his country well. However, governing a country well requires that these values be transferred to the entire system of government. Sometimes the main requirement of a society is to break out of the pattern of the past that re-produces conflict. It is the inequities that arose in previous governments' relations with different communities that gave rise to the ethnic conflict and to the war. There is a need to ensure that the protective values that President Rajapaksa demonstrated towards Muttiah Muralitharan regardless of his ethnicity are deployed to shape the structures of governance in the country.
   
   Heartburn
   It is unfortunate that much of what is happening in the country to the Tamil community is adverse to the spirit of reconciliation. The resumption of police registration in the predominantly Tamil inhabited areas of Wellawatte and Kotahena in Colombo has created immense heartburn amongst the community. During the war period, the government used the Emergency Regulations to enforce the registration of all Tamil residents and also Tamil visitors to Colombo. After the end of the war, the government announced to the world at large, and particularly in international forums, that these Emergency Regulations had been revoked and the practice of registration would cease. However, this practice has now recommenced using the Police Ordinance.
   The Democratic People's Front Leader Mano Ganesan has requested President Mahinda Rajapaksa to intervene to halt the police registration of Tamils in this manner as discriminatory and against the spirit of reconciliation. The government is expected to uphold the Constitution which affirms that everybody will be treated equally irrespective of race or creed. The President himself has frequently proclaimed that there is only a single nation in this country.
   While recognising that security measures may need to be taken, the singling out of any one community for such targeted actions goes against democratic values. The positive actions of the government, such as its appointment of a Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation must not be undermined by its discriminatory and heavy handed actions in other areas. The government also needs to be more open about the situation of those who have been taken into government custody both during and following the war. The most obvious of these instances is the detention of a reported 11,000 hard core LTTE cadres to which even the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been given access. Some of them have been released but most are being held incommunicado.
   
   Vulnerable groups
   In any situation in which a group of people have complete authority and power over others, there is bound to be an abuse of powers, unless this is checked by other means including systematic and independent monitoring. Ad hoc visits by important dignitaries or even organizations are no substitute for an accountable and effective system to halt acts of impunity. The government would do well to rectify this deficiency, if it is to gain credibility in its defence of its human rights record.
   It is not only the LTTE suspects inside detention centres who are vulnerable in the absence of independent monitoring systems. Even the war-displaced people who have returned to their home areas without any resources, and whose entire villages are destroyed, are also vulnerable and requiring of special protection. They have no homes, no community, and no jobs, and have no strength as a community group. In their very midst is a very strong military presence, which is organized, whereas they are not. In these circumstances, the war-displaced people need to be strengthened as communities so that they may protect themselves in the absence of external monitors such as the ICRC. This is a task that nongovernmental organizations such as the long established Sarvodaya Movement have specialized skills in.

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Jonaid Iqbal

The change of name from the former North West Frontier Province to Pakhtunkhwa-Khyber [PkK] has not brought about any change of heart in the lawless militants. During the past one day, they gave advance notice of doing worse after assassinating Mian Rashid Hussain, son of the PkK Information Minister Iftikhar Ahmad on Sunday. The next day they went on a killing spree attacking the minister's home village in Pabbi, where a suicide bomber blew himself, close to the minister's home when he was busy receiving mourners who came to offer condolences on his son's death. Ten, including three police constables and 10 innocent people were injured in the lethal explosion.
   These are some of the wages of the war of terror, being fought on Afghan soil, though the war is going badly for the NATO's ISAF forces, under President Barack Obama as well as under the new command of Gen. Petraeus [on Monday Wikileaks released 90,000 documents saying the war is going bad for the Americans and the numbers of their deaths are soaring.
   The leaked documents have accused Pakistan of running with both the hare and the hound- but it has been rubbished by the Pakistan military in most strong words.
   The Pakistan state has become deeply entrenched in the war on terror that has brought the fight not only to the tribal areas, but at our own door in the Central Punjab that has been accused of having a large presence of Lashkar Taiba (LeT). Both India and the United States are sore with this militant organization, notwithstanding the daily claim of Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik that they [the militants] have been isolated and are on the run. Meanwhile, Rehman Malik tabled an Anti-Terrorism Amendment Bill 2010 in Senate here on Tuesday.
   Nevertheless, it has become routine matter to listen to disclosures about large numbers of militants being killed and taken prisoners.
   The brutal mayhem has no doubt slowed down in the past few days but that has equally brought new fears. One can see it in Islamabad where the federal city has been placed again on red alert, and new road barricades have come up on roads.
   
   Hot debate
   In this background the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made a 10-minute broadcast, one late night, informing the nation that he had extended the tenure of Chief of Staff Gen. Ashraf Pervez Kayani, a move across the country these days.
   There was nothing new in that announcement; in fact an English daily predicted on July 16 that extension to the army chief was on the card. Much was made regarding this announcement as if it had placed the armed forces establishment under the civil control.
   The Prime Minister famously commented that the extension had ensured safe berth for the quartet -- the President, the government, the Judiciary and the army--since all four heads would retire the same year.
   Many people agree with the extension because the military has been able to get the better of the militants and restored peace in Swat and Malakand after a heavy fighting and because Pakistan desperately needs uninterrupted operations to counter militancy. General Kayani's tightrope walk at home has worked well and the democratic system has not been truncated despite the frantic calls of several media persons. A newspaper that ran a survey poll on this subject had 53 per cent respondents hailing the extension.
   Equally, people are questioning the extension. They would say it need not have been for the full term of three years. According to one analyst, even though the reasons for extending General Kiyani's tenure by another term are good ones, there are better reasons why he should have retired on time, paving the way for his successor to take charge.

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Stephen Kinzer in Washington

To the frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the club. It's great not to be the only member any more!
   Does boycotting BP really make sense? Perhaps not. After all, many BP filling stations are actually owned by local people, not the corporation itself. Besides, when you're filling up at a Shell or ExxonMobil station, it's hard to feel much sense of moral triumph. Nonetheless, I reserve my right to drive by BP stations. I started doing it long before this year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
   My decision not to give this company my business came after I learned about its role in another kind of "spill" entirely-the destruction of Iran's democracy more than half a century ago.
   The history of the company we now call BP has, over the last 100 years, traced the arc of trans-national capitalism. Its roots lie in the early years of the twentieth century when a wealthy bon vivant named William Knox D'Arcy decided, with encouragement from the British government, to begin looking for oil in Iran. He struck a concession agreement with the dissolute Iranian monarchy, using the proven expedient of bribing the three Iranians negotiating with him.
   Under this contract, which he designed, D'Arcy was to own whatever oil he found in Iran and pay the government just 16% of any profits he made - never allowing any Iranian to review his accounting. After his first strike in 1908, he became sole owner of the entire ocean of oil that lies beneath Iran's soil. No one else was allowed to drill for, refine, extract, or sell "Iranian" oil.
   "Fortune brought us a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams," Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, wrote later. "Mastery itself was the prize of the venture."
   Soon afterward, the British government bought the D'Arcy concession, which it named the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It then built the world's biggest refinery at the port of Abadan on the Persian Gulf. From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks, and buses ran on cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fuelled by oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, powered its ships with Iranian oil.
   After World War II, the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism blew through the developing world. In Iran, nationalism meant one thing: we've got to take back our oil. Driven by this passion, Parliament voted on April 28, 1951, to choose its most passionate champion of oil nationalization, Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister. Days later, it unanimously approved his bill nationalizing the oil company. Mossadegh promised that, henceforth, oil profits would be used "to develop Iran, not enrich Britain".
   This oil company was the most lucrative British enterprise anywhere on the planet. To the British, nationalization seemed, at first, like some kind of immense joke, a step so absurdly contrary to the unwritten rules of the world that it could hardly be real. Early in this confrontation, the directors of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and their partners in Britain's government settled on their strategy: 'no mediation, no compromise, no acceptance of nationalization in any form.'
   The British took a series of steps meant to push Mossadegh off his nationalist path. They withdrew their technicians from Abadan, blockaded the port, cut off exports of vital goods to Iran, froze the country's hard-currency accounts in British banks, and tried to win anti-Iran resolutions from the U.N. and the World Court. This campaign only intensified Iranian determination. Finally, the British turned to Washington and asked for a favour: please overthrow this madman for us so we can have our oil company back.
   American President Dwight D. Eisenhower, encouraged by his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a lifelong defender of trans-national corporate power, agreed to send the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in to depose Mossadegh. The operation took less than a month in the summer of 1953. It was the first time the CIA had ever overthrown a government.
   At first, this seemed like a remarkably successful covert operation. The West had deposed a leader it didn't like, and replaced him with someone who would perform as bidden - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
   From the perspective of history, though, it is clear that Operation Ajax, as the operation was code-named, had devastating effects. It not only brought down Mossadegh's government, but ended democracy in Iran. It returned the Shah to his Peacock Throne. His increasing repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, which brought to power Ayatollah Khomeini and the bitterly anti-Western regime that has been in control ever since.
   The oil company re-branded itself as British Petroleum, BP Amoco, and then, in 2000, BP. During its decades in Iran, it had operated as it pleased, with little regard for the interests of local people. This corporate tradition has evidently remained strong.
   Many Americans are outraged by the relentless images of oil gushing into Gulf waters from the Deepwater Horizon well, and by the corporate recklessness that allowed this spill to happen. Those who know Iranian history have been less surprised.
   Stephen Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent and the author of Bitter Fruit and Overthrow, among other works. His newest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future.
   www.tomdispatch.com

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