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FRONTIER POST OF PAKISTAN
TELLS SRI LANKA THAT MANMOHAN SINGH
IS THE LAST MAN TO HELP SRI LANKA AS HE WANTS TO KEEP HIS FRAGILE COALITION
By Walter Jayawardhana
The Frontier Post of Peshawar Pakistan in a hard hitting editorial
on India categorically pointed out that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh would be the last to listen to Sri Lanka’s urgently needed
sophisticated weapons to combat a Tamil insurgency to keep his fragile
coalition government dependent on politicians of Tamil Nadu , an Indian
state which supplies the insurgency with weapons and hence Sri Lanka
should look elsewhere for its needs.
“The Sri Lankans are outraged at the Indian national security advisor’s
bluster that for their defence needs they can look only to India and
cannot go to China, Pakistan or anyone else,” the editorial pointed
out bluntly.
The editorial was commenting on the recent statement of Indian Defense
Secretary M. K. Narayan that not only said Sri Lanka should buy from
India and from no other country but also should buy what India decides
as the categories of weapons which are defensive and not offensive.
Narayan’s statement has been described by some Sri Lankan quarters
as a call for India’s “Brown Imperialism”
The editorial pointed out the statement is reminiscent of an earlier
era of Indira Gandhi when her government trained armed and bankrolled
the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka and her son Rajiv Gandhi even thought
of invading the island nation for the dismemberment of the country until
he realized that the Frankenstein Monster India created would destroy
his own country.
Rajiv Gandhi was later assassinated by a suicide bomber of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the very insurgent group helped by India.
The following is the full text of the editorial that appeared under
the headline Colombo’s Grievance on June 5:
“The Sri Lankans are outraged at the Indian national security
advisor’s bluster that for their defence needs they can look only
to India and cannot go to China, Pakistan or anyone else. This warning
he had sounded out to Colombo after its defence secretary recently visited
New Delhi with a request for arms to combat the spiraling militancy
of its separatist Tamil Tigers. The Indian top-ranking official had
statedly responded that from India, too, the Sri Lankans could hope
to get only “non-offensive weapons”, leaving them in the lurch
for meeting their pressing needs for sophisticated weapons to face up
to the mounting insurgency of the Tamil Tigers, who have lately unfolded
the possession of an air force arm as well, with which they attacked
the Colombo airbase fatally only a short while ago.
“At their command the separatists already boast of a lethal naval
force, which they have long been employing to sink Sri Lanka ’s
warships, disrupt its maritime shipping, and even to lay down naval
blockades on it. The Sri Lankans do have a reason to their grouse. But
they are by and large forgetting history of the not-too-distant past.
It was in the 1980s that they had confronted a similar warning from
India . They were then cosying up to the Americans and also snuggling
up with the Israelis for their security purposes, albeit to the great
disliking of New Delhi . The then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi
took strong exception to these newfound relationships of Colombo and
sternly asked it to pull back, propounding simultaneously a doctrine
that the political and diplomatic observers instantly labeled as the
Indira Doctrine likening it to the famous Monroe Doctrine.
“Just as the American president had decreed that the American continent
was the exclusive turf of the United States , she too pronounced the
South Asia as India ’s sole preserve not open to any outside power
to tread on. The Sri Lankans had then some compelling compulsions to
move out of India ’s orbit and forge relationships outside to build
up their defences. At that time, the Tamil nationalism had begun rearing
its head stridently in the island state, and was feeding richly on the
munificence of its sympathisers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, then
being swayed by rabid Tamil nationalists.
In pursuit of her own geopolitical objectives, Mrs. Gandhi had also
opened up the sanctuaries for the training, arming and bankrolling of
Sri Lanka ’s Tamil insurgents in India and unleashing them on the
island state. After her assassination, he son Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded
her in the prime ministerial office, kept up with her policy of fueling
up the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka . Indeed, he went a step further
and actively toyed with the idea of invading the island state in support
of the Tamil rebels and dismembering it militarily. From this adventurism
he was held back by some wise men of New Delhi , warning him that this
would inevitably boomerang disastrously on India itself, when its own
Tamil Nadu state was being flayed by a raging Tamil nationalism and
had even gone through a strong separatist movement in the 1960s.
“That is a different matter when in the late 1980s he sent out
an Indian expeditionary force to Sri Lank in pursuance of a peace accord
to tame the Tamil Tigers the Indian military itself had trained at the
behest of the premier Indian intelligence agency RAW, they turned out
to be the Frankenstein’s monsters. After two and a half years,
they sent packing this Indian military force in humiliation with a bleeding
nose. Of course, that kind of Indian official interference in Sri Lanka
may have now come to a close. Yet, this cannot be said of the Tamil
Nadu’s nationalists. Their sympathies for their nationalist peers
of Sri Lank have not dried up. They remain as wet as before. And if
independent reports are any guide, money and even arms keep flowing
out from this Indian state for the Tamil Tigers even now.
In any case, Colombo cannot hope for any bigger or appropriate military
assistance for its security from this Indian government whose crucial
part make up the Tamil nationalists of Tamil Nadu. The Indian advisor
may have acted arrogantly, callously and hubristically in the character
of “the Nazi regime of Hitler”, as bemoaned a Sri Lankan daily.
The newspaper may not be wide of the mark in saying that “ India
always behaves like a sadist deriving, as she does, immense pleasure
from the sufferings of her neighbours”. The newspaper may have,
though, forgotten that by saying India was a “big power” that
cannot allow China and Pakistan enter its sphere of influence, the Indian
official was reiterating a New Delhi ’s fond long-held but not
frequently stated policy. But no less critically is politics involved
here. For keeping his fragile coalition government in place, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh would be the last even to listen of Colombo ’s request
for sophisticated weapons to combat the Tamil insurgency. For that,
it will have to look elsewhere.”
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