Shenali D Waduge

The British invaded and occupied 171 countries round the world except for 22 countries. The British and fellow colonial rulers together with the Church have left a legacy of problems the world over. Divide & rule policy, dividing communities as minorities & majority, artificial boundaries created by colonials leading to ethnic/cultural problems, creation of dominant minorities societies, invention of traditions & artificial local power structures, customary law, customary land-rights, customary political structure and so on were in fact all invented by colonial codification. The colonialists re-defined and re-mapped the communities into artificial administrative units to allow for better political control through proxies.

In all cases the British conspired to create environments that the people of the colonized nations would distrust, fear, and fight each other, instead of their colonizers.

While Africans/Asians are to blame for corruption, despotism, and the lack of rule of law since independence, the root causes of the majority of conflicts in Africa & Asia lie in the policies implemented by the former colonial powers.

Conflicts created by Britain in Africa

Of the 107 African leaders overthrown between 1960 and 2003 – 2/3 were murdered, jailed or slung into exile. Until 1979 – 59 African leaders were toppled or assassinated. Only 3 retired peacefully and not one was voted out of office. No incumbent African leader ever lost an election until 1982. $1.5billion worth of weapons have come to Africa from US alone (World Policy Institute). You can imagine why Africa will never see an end to conflicts.

SUDAN: The British differentiated the northern and southern Sudanese from each other without separating them politically. Sudan was kept divided by investing heavily in the Arab North Sudan modernizing and liberalizing political and economic institutions and improving social, educational, and health services and even encouraging Islamization of the North by even financially helping Muslims to set up mosques etc. To curtail the spread of Islamization what the British did was to increase missionaries to South Sudan and then created hundreds of informal chiefdoms (Sudan Southern Policy document) Under the Policy, northern officials were transferred out of the south, trading permits for northerners were withdrawn, and speaking Arabic and even wearing of Arabic dresses were discouraged. So much for British promoting integration and unity! In 1946 the British reversed the Southern Policy partly to pay back North Sudan for helping Britain during World War 2. The differences between North and South that the British had fanned ended up in war in mid 1950s. In developing the North and leaving South Sudan deprived the British knew that upon its departure trouble would arise. This was what British planned for.

RWANDA – it was the colonials that created the mess in Rwanda. The Tutsi, being most like the Europeans, were labelled the more intelligent of the two and were naturally born to rule while Hutu were labelled as dumb. Tutsi’s thus became a privileged race. ID cards were even issued. These IDs became useful during the genocide of 1994. The Tutsis understood the prejudices of the Europeans and exploited them fully to their own benefit. A new history was created giving Tutsi’s undue historical place. The real history that the area was first inhabited by the Twa’s, then the Hutus and thereafter the Tutsi’s from Ethiopia was conveniently erased. This erroneous history manifested in the 1957 independence manifesto when Hutu’s demanded freedom from the oppressive Tutsi aristocracy. Hutus’ also spoke of Tutsi colonizing Rwanda. European occupation in Rwanda, elitism was successfully refashioned into racism.

ZAMBIA – chief of a group remarked my people were not Soli until 1937 when the Bwana D.C. told us we were. The concept of the Zulu as a discrete ethnic group did not emerge until 1870.

Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere At the World Bank the first question they asked me was ‘how did you fail?” I responded that we took over a country with 85% of its adult population illiterate. The British ruled us for 43 years. Whey they left, they were 2 trained engineers and 12 doctors. This is the country we inherited. When I stepped down there was 91% literacy and nearly every child was in school. We trained thousands of engineers and doctors and teachers”.

Kenya – is another story of how Britain created handpicked corruptible governments and elites who would be their protégés. The British divided the Luo and Kikuyu marginalizing one and favouring the other. Kenyan democracy was what Britain deemed ‘democratic’. British drew electoral boundaries dividing groups that would cause problems.

The British divide and rule policy featured creating strong social structures to enable local sepoys to be loyal to the British white empire. The British would also take pains to give ethnic minorities a bigger place providing them better education, enabling better jobs, better comforts and better place in society and only giving similar place to those in the majority who would play the role of appeasing to the white rulers and the minorities. These features perfectly describe what has taken place in Sri Lanka where the majority that ruled the nation for thousands of years were brought to zero by the colonial rulers who gave to the minorities pride of place and changed policies to suit the minorities and only those who were prepared to forsake their own among the majority.

British Premier David Cameron himself admitted in 2011 that Britain was responsible for many of the world’s historic problems, including the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Though the same Cameron on an earlier occasion praised Viscount Palmerston who drew the borders that divided India and Pakistan. India was asked to become secular, Pakistan was divided on ethnic Muslim lines while majority Muslim Kashmir was made part of India. 3 wars have been fought by India and Pakistan for Kashmir. The British purposely created Hindu-Muslim conflict. The British policy from 1906 was to treat Muslims as a distinct entity within Indian politics after Muslims sought separate electorates which was favorably accepted by Viceroy Minto.

Burma became a victim of British pseudo-anthropological colonial census and population reports. After Britain defeated the Burmese kingdom in 1824-26, 1852-53, 1884-85 the British decided to break the Burman hold on Burmese politics and society by employing ethnic minorities and hill tribes – the Karens were selected for missionary conversion and recruitment. British brought in migrant races. British purposely marginalized the Burmans by absorbing them into civil service and keeping them out of the economy thereby reducing their economic status. This naturally created more resentment which the British used to their advantage.

In British Malaya, the British began importing large numbers of non-Malays from India and China. Law & order was carried out by Sikh and Punjabi troops brought in from North India.

Before the Arab revolt, Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France 1915-16 secretly met to decide the fate of the post-Ottoman Arab world and divided up the Arab world between the two. The British were to take control of what is now Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan. The French were given modern Syria, Lebanon, and southern Turkey. By 1917, the British had made three different agreements with three different groups promising three different political futures for the Arab world. After the League of Nations was formed its job was to divide the conquered Ottoman lands. The borders were drawn without regard for the wishes of the people living there, or along ethnic, geographic, or religious boundaries. The differences between Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians, etc. were entirely created by the European colonizers as a method of dividing the Arabs against each other.  In 1918 the war ended with the victory of the Allies and the complete destruction of the Ottoman Empire.

Britain honored their promise to Hussein, Prince Faisal was made king of Iraq and Syria and Prince Abdullah was made king of Jordan. Saudi Arabia is also an imperial creation.

How did the British decide to return favor to Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the amir (governor) of Makkah who had agreed to revolt against the Ottomans? In return for his allegiance the British promised he would be given his own Arab kingdom that would cover the entire Arabian Peninsula. The correspondence between the British and Sharif Hussein bin Ali are known as McMahon-Hussein Correspondence (Sir Henry McMahon). The British provided support in the form of soldiers, weapons, money, advisors (including the legendary” Lawrence of Arabia), and a flag. Its really no surprise how the British and other Western nations support rebel/terror movements at present! Noteworthy too is Arab Revolt did not have the backing of a large majority of the Arab population.

Even the Israel-Palestine dispute roots back to Britain’s decision in 1917 to establish a national home for the Jewish people” in the territory then known as Palestine. Similarly Britain also redrew borders of the Middle East that has helped spark more conflicts.

Before colonials arrived communities lived without identifying themselves as majority-minority. That mentality was created by the colonial rulers. The terminology is being used to carve out territory and declare new independent states on bogus historical claims. The colonial West is agreeing to these demands because they know they created the problems. Though the answer is not dividing people further the West see this as another advantage to themselves and will contribute to further chaos.

What needs to be clearly understood is that the history being flogged by politicians for their own advantage is not the real history that prevails and it is good for people to find out the correct history separating it from the history that the West have promoted for their own advantage.

“The maxim that no man is to be judge in his own case should be held sacred. And that is not to be confined to a cause in which he is a party, but applies to a cause in which he has an interest….  

This legal maxim definitely alienates Britain, Portugual, the Dutch from having a say in any of Sri Lanka’s affairs, it also excludes India and all other nations that have been linked to terrorist organization LTTE from also coming forward as conflict-resolutionists even in drawing the new constitution because they were part of the problem.

What is clear is that the world’s conflicts categorized by the West are those that the West created for their benefit. Is it morally correct for the same West to now come forward to solve the problems they created?

Shenali D Waduge