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Lessons from Lanka: How ‘hawks’ have turned to peace

But look what’s happening in Sri Lanka! President Mahinda Rajapakse who was labelled by the Western media as a hardliner is emerging as a true champion of peace. Almost every western journalist who came to Sri Lanka to report on the November 17 presidential election used the unsavory adjective to describe Rajapakse as anti-peace, for he opposed a federal solution to the country’s ethnic problem, rejected a tsunami aid-sharing mechanism with the rebels and refused to recognise the homeland concept of the Tamils.

The scribes from the West probably did not know or, if they knew, chose not to highlight the fact that Rajapakse was a human rights activist and as the head of the Sri Lanka-Palestinian Friendship Association he had campaigned for the Palestinian people’s right to statehood.

In the face of the recent spate of attacks on the security forces, he held fast to the olive branch. When his ultranationalist allies prodded him to give the LTTE a fitting response, he, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, advised his troops to exercise utmost restraint.

For the sake of peace, he has come several steps down. At the beginning, he wanted Norway out of the Sri Lankan peace process and tried to sideline Norwegian special envoy Erik Solheim. He held on to his position that the peace talks should be held in an Asian venue and rejected the LTTE demand that talks should be held in Oslo. But later, even at the cost of eating humble pie publicly, Rajapakse invited Norway to continue its peace facilitator role, allowed Solheim to visit Sri Lanka as a peace envoy and proposed Geneva as a compromise venue.

So if hardliners are incapable of making peace, here is a case for western label-givers to review their stereotypical view of hardliners or the so-called extremists. On the LTTE side, too, we see hardliners turning dove. Last week, the LTTE agreed to a government proposal to hold talks in Geneva and released one of three policemen facing espionage charges in a rebel court as a goodwill measure. Probably, taking a leaf from Hamas, the LTTE is reportedly planning to contest the upcoming local polls in Sri Lanka.

The hardliners on the opposite side are sceptical about the LTTE’s compromise and view it as a ruse to achieve under the pretext of talking peace what the rebels could not achieve through war. But taken at face value or otherwise, the fact of the matter is that even a hardline rebel group of the calibre of the LTTE, regarded as one of the ruthless guerrilla organisations in the world, could emerge as pacifists. So don’t just dismiss the hardliners. Who knows the very stone the people have rejected may one day become the cornerstone of the building of peace?

Now who has rejected the truce offer made recently by a certain Arab and vowed to continue the war on terror, which some Muslims perceive as a war against Islam? When US President George W Bush said Washington would not deal with Hamas until it renounced its desire to destroy Israel, isn’t he adopting a hardline position?

By branding Hamas as a terrorist organisation, aren’t the United States, Israel, the European Union and Canada trying to divert attention from the core problem? When they try to ostracise and penalise Hamas for its violence, it appears as though Israel’s illegal occupation is a lesser crime.

On Friday, while driving to my office, I caught up with a BBC radio interview with a Hamas leader in the afterglow of the resistance movement’s victory at the elections. The pointed questions were largely on violence — an attempt to box in Hamas. Probably lacking the expertise with which Israeli leaders and officials manipulate the media, the Hamas leader could not make maximum of the opportunity to put forward his side of the story in a right perspective. I wish he had answered one of the BBC’s questions in the form of a series of queries. “Now don’t you think our land has been illegally occupied for more than half a century? Don’t you agree with me that under international law, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, people living under criminal occupation have a right to resist occupation by the use of force? Why isn’t the West putting a fraction of the pressure it puts on us on Israel and asking the Zionist regime to end its illegal occupation and comply with numerous UN resolutions?”

When double standards steeped in moral bankruptcy drive policies, evil is seen as good, falsehood as truth and injustice as justice. O tempora, o mores!

Ameen Izzadeen is a senior journalist based in Colombo