Sunday, May 17, 2009

Tiger Down

It looks like the Sri Lankan government has managed to completely crush the Tamil Tiger insurgency. It did so with a ruthlessness and disdain for civilian casualties that makes Cast Lead look like a training exercise, but such is the world we live in. For all the talk about how we step so lightly around Israel, there is almost no doubt that the global community keeps it on a shorter leash than any other nation engaging in counter-insurgency operations. Whether we should loosen our standards on Israel, or tighten them everywhere else, is an open question. Sri Lanka does seem to be a point in favor of Give War a Chance, but, much like with torture or the suicide bombings of the Tamils and Hamas, "it works" isn't always a good enough reason to let things fly.

But what's done is done. Robert Farley gives his military perspective -- he really seems to think this could be the end for the LTTE in its current form (though he doesn't rule out a reorganization stemming from the Tamil diaspora). At the very least though, it may give the Sri Lankan government the breathing space it needs to negotiate a settlement. Hopefully, it will take the chance, rather than re-entrenching the grievances that led the Tamils to revolt in the first place.

9 comments:

ansel said...

"For all the talk about how we step so lightly around Israel, there is almost no doubt that the global community keeps it on a shorter leash than any other nation engaging in counter-insurgency operations."

Are you sure about that?

http://www.google.com/search?q=condemn+sri+lanka

David Schraub said...

Search results for "Condemn Sri Lanka": About 677,000.

Search results for "Condemn Israel": About 1,940,000.

Reasonably sure, yeah.

Moreover, look at the breakdown of the 10 hits on the front page of those searches.

For Sri Lanka, three were stories about Tamil groups asking folks to issue condemnations (not condemnations themselves). Another 2 were condemnations of attacks on Sri Lanka (or its citzenery). The remaining half were condemnations of Sri Lanka.

For Israel, 9 of 10 were condemnations of the state, the remaining one was an article opposing such condemnation. If we kick out condemnations by the Tamils and Palestinians, respectively, the Sri Lankan figure drops to 3, whereas the Israeli figure either drops just 1 to 8 or not at all (depending on how you count "Palestinians, solidarity activists condemn Israel's mass slaughter").

Bill Abendroth said...

I am NOT EVEN going to touch on the length of Israel's leash....but I'll believe we've heard the last of the Tigers after Sri Lanka makes like Atlantis.

I also recall that the Boers, the Algerians, the Huks, the Viet Minh, the Viet Cong, Mao's PLA, the Chechens, etc etc etc were all pounded into oblivion at one time or another.

Call me an old softie, but because successful insurgencies are political in nature, I believe you can only defeat them politically--and not militarily.

Of course, I did get into a big fight with some moron on amazon.com about responses to the Iraq insurgency. The moron insisted we needed to "start" killing lots of people, citing to the marlon brando character in Apocalypse Now. I based my arguments on the US Army/Marine Counterinsurgency Manual and John Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife." The moron told that just because I went to community college and had a library card, that didn't mean I knew anything about the military.......

Which my fault really: I was the one who argued with an idiot.

ansel said...

I provided the link because it shows a good portion of the "global community," at least in terms of their international representatives, condemning the Sri Lankan operations.

Click through to the news results. The U.N. Security Council and the US, neither of which managed to condemn Cast Lead, are both doing so in this case. The E.U., like with Gaza, issued a statement of concern over civilian casualties. There are folks around the world agitating for their governments to condemn the attacks, just as with Israel's attack on Gaza. I don't see much of a difference.

Israel-Palestine is generally a more high-profile issue than internal conflict in Sri Lanka, yes? I suspect that explains the discrepancy in volume of results.

David Schraub said...

Which is meaningful in of itself, given that Sri Lanka has nearly 3x Israel's population. Keeping the attention on Israel serves the interest of more powerful states than Sri Lanka, to be sure, but that hardly seems the sort of reality you'd consider a good thing.

Looking only at the UNSC is simply double counting the US. The UN currently has (another) human rights probe heading off to examine Gaza. The Sec. General flat out accused the Israeli state of lying with regards to the shelling of a UN compound. There's no shortage of UN condemnations (through the UNHRC or GA) of Israel with regard to Cast Lead.

The point isn't that the global community completely ignores Sri Lanka (or Russia, or Morroco, or China....). They say their words. But there isn't the sort international pressure (it isn't "high profile" enough, you might say) to actually change the political calculus for any of those states. That's the difference -- and again, I'm not necessarily arguing that we shouldn't put on such pressure, only that it is relatively unique to Israel.

ansel said...

"But there isn't the sort international pressure (it isn't "high profile" enough, you might say) to actually change the political calculus for any of those states."

I think you're right about this - but that's a different claim from the one you made in the post about pressure to reign in counter-insurgency operations.

David Schraub said...

Not at all. Read the post again: "For all the talk about how we step so lightly around Israel, there is almost no doubt that the global community keeps it on a shorter leash than any other nation engaging in counter-insurgency operations."

Israel is faced with greater scrutiny than other COIN-Op countries, imposing tighter restraints ("a shorter leash"). You chose to read that as "nobody criticizes other countries at all", but my point was clearly one about proportions (that, contrary to the assertion that we use kid gloves when talking about Israel compared to what we say about Sri Lanka, we actually devote a lot more and a lot more high profile attention to Israel versus Sri Lanka), not presence/absence.

PG said...

Notably, the Sri Lankan conflict got the world's largest democracy involved and the insurgent group assassinated the Prime Minister of that nation. (It's hard out here for a Gandhi.)

I think general world sentiment is easier on both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict, though. Can you imagine the Palestinian equivalent of M.I.A. becoming a huge pop star?

Jenny said...

I don't know if they can reach a settlement with tamils if the Sri lankan army is commiting the crimes described here: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/05/scorched-earth-of-tamil-eelam.html