Sri Lanka has a model to offer the world. Not the 'anti-terrorism' model President Mahinda Rajapakse's administration is assiduously peddling. Rather, this is a model of political marketing, an 'all you need to know' crash course in building innocuous facades to hide insalubrious realities. The old saying suggests that all the people cannot be fooled all the time. But, as the Rajapakses have proven, fooling all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time can more than suffice.
In his keynote-speech at the 'Defeating Terrorism: Sri Lankan Experience' seminar, put on in early June by the country's armed forces with Chinese sponsorship, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse stated that his brother, the president, had prevented a repetition of 1987 (ie, a Tamil Nadu-compelled Indian intervention) by keeping Delhi fully in the loop during the ending of the ethnic conflict, two years ago. 'President Rajapakse went out of his way to keep New Delhi briefed about all the new developments taking place in Sri Lanka,' Gotabhaya said. 'He understood that while other countries could mount pressure on us through diplomatic channels or economic means, only India could influence the military campaign.'
He went on to state that early in the 'humanitarian operations', the relationship between Colombo and New Delhi was managed through high-level communications – 'a special committee was established to engage in constant dialogue'. According to the defence secretary, this included himself along with then-Senior Advisor to the President Basil Rajapakse and Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga; the Indian side comprised former National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, then-Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and then-Defence Secretary Vijay Singh. 'This troika had continuous discussions and ensured that whenever any sensitive issues arose, they would be resolved immediately,' Gotabhaya said.
In fact, diplomatic cables released over the past year by WikiLeaks paint a somewhat different picture. According to these, President Rajapakse achieved Indian neutrality by offering New Delhi a carefully calibrated combination of information and misinformation, false promises and dissembling reassurances. He allayed Indian fears about the human cost of the war by promising a ceasefire, reassuring New Delhi officials that post-conflict he would undertake to implement a political solution to the ethnic problem. According to one cable, Narayanan told the US ambassador that 'President Rajapakse had agreed to announce on 27 April a cessation of hostilities with the LTTE' after consulting his cabinet, and the NSA wanted the Americans to stay silent 'until Rajapakse fulfils his pledge and announces the pause'. According to another cable, Narayanan assured the Americans that Rajapakse 'intends to pursue political devolution ('the thirteenth amendment plus') and will make a gesture soon to win over Sri Lanka's Tamils'.