The Island Editorial

SAARC caught in crossfire

04 October 2016

 

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has been a casualty of the Kashmir conflict. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration has drawn heavy fire from the de facto Opposition for ‘boycotting’ the Islamabad SAARC Summit. Its decision has come as no surprise, given its foreign policy clad in the Modi jacket, so to speak. Former Foreign Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris has asked it to attend the event when new dates are announced. One cannot but agree with him.

In handling the country’s international relations, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government acts in such a way that one wonders whether it has mistaken subservience for diplomacy. It is practising the very obverse of its predecessor’s foreign policy. The Rajapaksa government unnecessarily antagonised India and the West and the incumbent administration has isolated Sri Lanka from her friends in its bid to ingratiate itself with India and the western nations. The country has been the loser under both regimes.

It is a supreme irony that India has had to thwart a UN attempt to send a UNHRC team to Kashmir to study the human rights situation there. This, New Delhi has done, after siding with the US-led forces to adopt a UNHRC resolution to probe Sri Lanka’s alleged accountability issues. When India departed from its policy of desisting from voting for country specific UNHRC resolutions to back the US-sponsored one against Sri Lanka, observers warned that the UNHRC would want to get involved in Kashmir as well. India is now hoist with its own petard. It is, however, lucky that is strong enough to withstand UN pressure; it is also a strategic partner of the US, which has arrogated to itself the right to decide how the human rights violators should be dealt with.

Now that India has endorsed the UNHRC action against Sri Lanka by way of bringing about reconciliation, shouldn’t it be urged to let UN intervene to resolve the Kashmir conflict?

It behoves the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to desist from being party to plots being hatched to isolate Pakistan internationally. The boycott of the Islamabad SAARC Summit is aimed at painting a black picture of Pakistan and preparing the way for conferring pariah status conferred on it as a state sponsoring terrorism. Sri Lanka must not join forces with the nations hostile to Pakistan, which has always been one of its trustworthy allies.

But for the unstinted support this country received from Pakistan it would still have been plagued by terrorism. It may be recalled that the newfound allies of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government once refused to help the Chandrika Kumaratunga government to fight terrorism at a critical juncture; they offered ships to evacuate about 40,000 troops trapped in the Jaffna peninsula in 2000 with the LTTE poised to go for the kill. It was Pakistan which rushed big guns here and helped stop the marauding Tigers in their tracks. Else, Prabhakaran would perhaps have realised his Eelam dream by recapturing the Jaffna peninsula and demoralising the armed forces. All Sri Lankans who are enjoying the dividends of peace, especially those whose children were abducted by the LTTE on a daily basis and turned into cannon fodder and suicide bombers, must be grateful to the countries which unwaveringly helped crush the LTTE terror.

Times have changed and Sri Lanka cannot live in the past. It must maintain healthy relations with India. However, there is absolutely no need for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to practise what may be called slipper-licking diplomacy to please any foreign government at the expense of Sri Lanka’s traditional allies. It ought to learn from how the late Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike safely steered the country through far worse regional crises than the present one in Kashmir without antagonising any of its neighbours.