Conflict, War and Peace in Sri Lanka – Politics by Other Means?

Abstract: For decades, Sri Lanka has been a laboratory for research and scholarship on ethnic conflict, liberal peacebuilding and civil war. Methodologically, this pre-war academic work laments the risks of applying simplified “episode based approaches” and narrow theoretical frameworks leading to adventurous interventions with meager appreciation of the complexities of state-society relations. Although this has contributed significantly to a better understanding of the conflict, most of the resultant explanations have, in the aftermath of the official (or rather military) ending of the civil war in May 2009, become largely questionable. This paper relies upon materials collected during fieldwork during the first quarter of 2009 and 2011. In it, I explore the relevant state-in-society dynamics that have contributed to the co-existence of negative and positive peace, limited war and total war and to assess the capacities for violent conflict reproduction during the period from 1994 to 2009. In this period, using a Clausewitzian (1780-1831) problematique, I disentangle the political shifts, repositioning of public opinions and various policy measures implemented to address conflict, war and peace, and to explicate possible trajectories of state transformation and state building. This paper shows that in Sri Lanka, war, peace and violent conflict are in essence a “continuation of domestic politics by other means” and “triumph of the hegemony of the right” at local and global levels. Specifically, post-civil war Sri Lanka harbors an enormous potential for violent social conflict reproduction that will influence the future state building process and trajectories of state transformation. This paper suggests that these processes will be ignited by a domestic politics dominated by long standing factionalism within the ruling class that uses conflict, war and peace as instruments to sustain their hegemony, for obscuring their lack of political legitimacy and their fear of responding to the country’s deep democratic deficit

In Pursuit of Hegemony: Politics and State Building in Sri Lanka

Since the late colonial period, Sri Lanka has been subject to modern democratic state building experiments. The number of challenges this project has encountered is rising. Many of these challenges have been identified alongside the multi-ethnic character of Sri Lanka’s population, illuminating the antagonistic inter-ethnic relations between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The various policy measures designed endogeneously and exogenously focused on building a democratic state where the rights of the ethnic minorities could be guaranteed. However, the outcomes of these policy measures have not reflected this goal. These policy measures have not sufficiently contributed to a guarantee of rights for ethnic minorities and paid ill attention to numerous other tensions that are of a non-inter-ethnic nature in Sri Lanka’s state building project. By focusing on the broader state-in-society relations and privileging hegemonic formations in Sinhalese politics through historical and contemporary times, this thesis re-problematises the issue of Sri Lanka’s state building. This thesis also aims to answer the following key questions: what are the key hegemony building processes identified in Sri Lanka’s state building project?; how do the dynamics in Sinhalese politics and the broader political and economic context influence these processes?; what were the main tensions between hegemony building and state building in Sri Lanka?; and how did they affect democratic state building? These questions are examined by applying a qualitative method of inquiry. The data for this study has been collected through a series of field interviews conducted in Sri Lanka in 2009 and 2011, as well as a preliminary literature survey conducted between 2005–07. The in-depth field interviews were carried out with the aim of gathering primary data on the perceptions, first hand experiences and narratives of the trajectories of elite and subaltern politics and state building. The primary data gathered through an extensive literature survey that was further complemented with the field interviews and a process of observation. Based on critical analysis of the data gathered from the above mentioned multiple sources, the research argues primarily that state building in Sri Lanka has been a struggle for hegemony of the right, in which the Sinhalese political elites and the broader Sinhalese community have played a decisive and an equally important role. The empirical inquiry identified four hegemony building processes – Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, a political party driven and a patronage system institutionalised at the state level, and events and discourses of war, peace and conflict that were used by the dominant Sinhalese political elites in their attempt to build political alliances in order to obtain consent and legitimacy for their rule, which essentially influenced the trajectories of Sri Lanka’s state building. The findings of this research suggest that, due to the underlying principle of inequality and right-wing political ideologies present in the above hegemony building processes, the state building project has consequently been drifting away from the path of democratic state building and fermenting the conditions for realising hegemony of the right. The results of this study show several implications for state building at the scholarly and policy level. At the scholarly level, it shows the relevance of examining politics as usual and politics taken for granted. Further theoretically and methodologically this research shows the relevance of enaging with class and the dynamics of class relations for the study of Sri Lanka’s state building. At both the policy and scholarly levels, this study shows that in understanding the paths and dilemmas of state building, particularly in the contexts of civil war and post-civil war scenarios, it is not only the much debated and antagonistic inter-ethnic relations that should receive attention, but also the subtle hegemonic relationship formations and the hegemony building strategies taking place at the intra-ethnic community level. Last but not least, this study highlights the need for re-examining policies aimed at state building by considering state–in-society relations in the broadest possible manner, which is done by tracing the seemingly disconnected strategies that are being pursued by the political elites under changing social, political and economic contexts in both the local and global spheres

EU and gender-security sector reform in Ukraine and Mali: a picture is worth dozens of policies!

This article is a contribution to critical International Relations scholarship on European Union foreign and security policy and to the debates on “Normative Europe”. It focuses on the ways in which the EU engages with their own gender equality policies in external Security Sector Reform (SSR) missions. By analysing visual materials of the European Union Advisory Mission-Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine) and European Union Capacity Building Mission in Sahel Mali (EUCAP Sahel Mali) missions, this article identifies the discrepancies between EU’s proclaimed policy goals about gender equality and visual representations of women and men in the missions’ newsletter photos. These representations reflect a lacklustre approach and suggest a lack of commitment to practices of gender equality and positive role modelling in SSR’s day-to-day activities. This article suggests the EU-SSR missions overhaul their public communication strategies to focus first on “how” to communicate gender equality norms and only then on “what” to communicate. This study shows one concrete opportunity and space where this can be achieved

Bracing the wind and riding the norm life cycle: inclusive peacebuilding in the European capacity building mission in Sahel–Mali (EUCAP Sahel–Mali)

Since the political crisis in 2012, the European Union has stepped up its commitment to Mali and the Sahel using various external intervention instruments gathered under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). These instruments are designed to achieve functional and normative goals of the EU. Situating in the debate on normative actorness of the EU and by applying the Whole-of-Society (WOS) approach to conflict prevention and peacebuilding, this paper investigates how the European Capacity Building mission for the Malian Security Forces (EUCAP Sahel–Mali) is operationalising two key EU-SSR-related norms – local ownership and inclusivity– and manoeuvres context and programme specific challenges. By analysing the mission-training/capacity building and outreach, this paper argues the EUCAP mission has been largely functional than normative driven, thus reducing the EU’s overall reputation as a normative actor, particularly in the area of security. This paper offers practical recommendations to reach the EU’s normative goals via SSR

Lost in transition: linking war, war economy and post-war crime in Sri Lanka

Scholars continue to draw attention to the link between the war economy and post-war crime. The majority of these studies are about cases of civil war that ended with peace agreements. Sri Lanka’s civil war ended with a military victory for the state armed forces; thus, it can help shed new light on the above link. Situated in the war economy perspective, this article investigates the dominant types of crimes reported from post-war Sri Lanka and the mechanisms linking them with the war economy. The culture of impunity, continued militarisation and enduring corruption are identified as key mechanisms through which the war economy and post-war bodily and material crime are linked. It suggests, although the ‘victors’ peace’ achieved by state armed forces was able to successfully dismantle the extra-legal war economy run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, it was responsible for promoting criminality in the post-war period. Overall, this points to the urgency of breaking away from legacies of the state war economy in the post-war period, before introducing programs of longer term political and economic reform

Perspectives on Social Relevance

__Abstract__ During the recently held expert meeting entitled “Social impact @ sciences: Why does Science matter?” organised by the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, an invited group of participants from academia, NGOs, ministries and the media shared their experiences, their perspectives and their concerns on a number of topics on the theme of social impact and the societal relevance of social science research. The meeting was conducted under Chatham House Rule. This meeting gave the participants an opportunity for reflection not only on the broader topic of the social impact of scientific research but also an opportunity for self reflection as professionals and individuals. In the following section of this chapter, the key perspectives shared during the meeting will be presented