TOM PLATE
Trouble in potential paradise

Sri Lanka could evolve into a tropical gem with a solid economy, but it faces another bloody nightmare.

By Tom Plate

SINGAPORE — There comes a time when one senses the approach of a turning point, and catastrophe is but a few ticks of history away.

That moment appears to be fast approaching in Sri Lanka. This small country is in fact as geo-politically significant to America and the West as troubled Cyprus and the other flaming sunspots that attract Western political and media attention. But the former Ceylon — a gorgeous tropical island just off the southern coast of India — is on the brink of the political hellhole again.

This divided country of 20 million has been troubled for more than two decades. A vicious civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil — fueled in part by eager-to-sell Western arms merchants — had all but incinerated the country until a cease-fire brought the insanity to temporary rest.

Giant India couldn't have been happier. A past effort at peacekeeping blew up in its face and triggered the assassination, by Tamil tiger militants, of the Indian prime minister. Today, India's government, determined to focus on economic development, fears that any ethnic violence offshore might wash back to its southern mainland, where many Indian Tamils live.

This is why the government of Norway, commendably, went to the trouble to host peace talks in Oslo, and why the government of Japan has held conferences to entice donor nations to organize a comprehensive aid program to get the country back on its feet.

If that doesn't happen, renewed violence will surely erupt and perhaps even boil over into India, whose coalition government, led by a Hindu nationalist party, has lately been trying to tamp down ethnic and religious tension and violence.

Who is the bad guy in the Sri Lankan impasse? Until recently, Western observers tended to blame the vicious Tamil Tigers, a mean bunch that traffic in the same clandestine arms-acquisition circles as al-Qaida and other notorious groups. But now a more rounded perspective views the viciousness of these rebels as related to the oppression by the ethnic-majority government in Colombo.

Certainly, the recent antics of President Chandrika Kumaratunga give considerable credence to that view. She recently dissolved parliament to pave the way for unneeded snap elections (four years ahead of schedule) in order to stack the cabinet with cronies and coalition allies in her effort to toss out Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, a relative moderate on the Tamil issue.

As in France, South Korea and other countries, Sri Lanka's political system allows for both a president and a prime minister. Such a bifurcated system can work well — but not in Sri Lanka right now. That's because the president and her allies foolishly refuse to compromise. While Tamils have dropped their insistence on independence, the ethnic-majority government has not dropped its strong preference for majority domination.

Only recently have the trigger-happy Tamil Tigers pleased the world community with unaccustomed restraint. That should continue so that the international community can shift into higher gear. Alas, yellow warning lights are now flashing as the world watches the juvenile behavior of the country's off-the-rails president, putting billions of dollars in potential foreign aid at risk.

By contrast, a Sri Lanka that comes to its senses has a good chance of evolving into a tropical gem with a solid economy. Its low wage structure and pleasant physical environment could challenge China for a slice of new direct foreign investment, especially in manufacturing.

Key international institutions — such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations — are poised to help. But if all those highly placed Sri Lankans in Colombo really want is more war to oppress, even liquidate, the Tamil minority, then Sri Lanka would face the fate of a perpetually failed Third World state instead of a modern, well-governed, prosperous small nation like Singapore.

Tom Plate is a UCLA professor and founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network (www.asiamedia.ucla.edu).