War Commission Ignores The War, Indicts The Ceasefire

By Indi Samarajiva

Sri Lanka’s War Commission is not directly addressing the war. The main point and writ of the Commission is actually to investigate the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), how the LTTE broke the negotiations and what to do in the future. The war itself is either ignored or praised but never questioned.

Chairman C.R. De Silva looks visibly nervous as the order instating the Commission is read in Sinhala, Tamil and English. The former Attorney General’s speech is entirely confident, however, as is his lithe praise of the military operation. “Only one year since the military vanquished the most ruthless terrorist organisation, time has come to ensure that this country veers aware from the insidious rocks of communal disharmony.” It is the only mention of the actual war in the first session.
The hall is more than half empty and the small crowd of mostly journalists is gathered in front of an image of the late Lakshman Kadirgamar, assassinated by the LTTE five years ago. As the first witness takes the stand, he comments that it is indeed opportune to hold this session in the Institute bearing the late Foreign Minister’s name.
“Sufficient attempts were made,” Bernard Goonetilleke said. “There was a very clear situation that the LTTE side never allowed substantive issues to be discussed.”
The former head of the Peace Secretariat relates an anecdote where LTTE negotiator Balasingham described the consequences of discussing substantive issues. The witness draws a finger across his throat, pantomiming the late Balasingham. The clear output of Goonetilleke’s testimony was that the LTTE was not serious about negotiations, seeing them as merely a step towards final war.

The questions from the commission lead in the same direction. The main focus seems to be on undermining the Ceasefire Agreement. “Was there adherence to normal process?” asks Karu Hangawatte, now a professor in Nevada. “Were the security forces consulted?”
Chairman De Silva is more blunt, asking “Was the CFA in favour of the LTTE?” not once but twice until the witness says, “I am inclined to agree.”
The other questions are no less leading and even on the first day the conclusions of the Commission seem quite clear. The LTTE was given enough and more chances over 30 years. Goonetilleke emphasized how numerous rounds of negotiations resulted in those involved being killed and how the Sri Lankan Government still continued negotiations in good faith. Ultimately it was the LTTE that pulled out, necessitating a war that he did not discuss.
Indeed, while it may seem that the War Commission is avoiding the war, they are in fact following the writ of the order given by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The first point the Commission is to investigate is “the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the Ceasefire Agreement operationalised on 21st February 2002 and the sequence of events that followed thereafter up to the 19th of May 2009.” In fact, the word ‘war’ is nowhere mentioned in the writ, being only eluded to as a ‘sequence of events.’
The point of this Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission already seems clear. The lesson learnt is that the LTTE was non-negotiable and the ceasefire was hasty and wrong. The path towards reconciliation is largely getting the diaspora to understand that, as they seem to be the only ones that haven’t faced that reality. In fact, elements of the diaspora which the witness called ‘rump LTTE’ have already succeeded in getting condemning statements from a group let by Archibishop Desmond Tutu and, if the government is to be believed, have already encouraged investigations by the UN and even lobbied US lawmakers.
While the commission may succeed at enshrining this common wisdom, it is actually not a war commission at all and it does not seem to have the writ nor the inclination to substantively discuss the ‘sequence of events’ after the Ceasefire. This is actually the main concern of international investigators and elements of the Tamil diaspora but it seems that it will go largely unaddressed.
The war is viewed as a necessary and good step in a historical process, but the specifics are not discussed. This may or may not be true, but it does not address some very major concerns about the final conduct of the war. The concern of the commission seems to be why, not how. That last question may go unaddressed.