Lisa Kois is a brave filmmaker, working right at the heart of today’s dangerous and on going civil conflict in Sri Lanka. Her movie and television series on Sri Lanka’s war have won her numerous international awards; she talks to Hugh Bohane, about her experiences making her first movie, “The art of Forgetting” and the television series, “Crossing Fires”, which features British-Sri Lankan musician, M.I.A.

 

Tell us a bit about your background?

I am originally from the United States, yet do not identify with today’s America, its policies, or its practices. At the same time, it’s where I am from, it’s what I grew up with, there is a part of it - I like to think the good part, the part that celebrates freedom and justice and rights and diversity - that I carry with me always… that is me. The longer I have lived outside of the US, the more alien it has become, particularly in the last seven or so years of Bush and the Neo-Cons. It’s increasingly difficult to relate to it.

I have lived in Sri Lanka for the last 12 years. I’m a lawyer by training, a writer and now a filmmaker. But I’m not really comfortable with any of those titles. The work I do has always revolved around issues of justice and rights. So that means combating violence, raising awareness about violence, working with survivors of domestic violence and rape. It is also legal advocacy around rights abuses, documentation, writing, and now documentary filmmaking.

After working in various capacities within the UN and Sri Lankan NGOs, I became frustrated with what I saw as the limitation of traditional forms of human rights documentation and advocacy, with its heavy reliance on the law and legal remedies. I felt like we would write report upon report, but nobody was reading them. In search of a larger audience, I started experimenting with other forms, art forms and documentary film making.

 

How did you come to choose this line of work and Sri Lanka, as a country to work in?

There are issues… issues of justice, of rights, of power and the abuse of power; of violence… these are the issues that drive me.

I was a welfare child a product of the system, a system that is overwhelming and increasingly hostile and violent toward the very people it is supposed to serve. Then there was violence, episodes of violence in my life, in my friend’s lives. It’s virtually inevitable as a young girl, then young woman, you will experience some form of violence directed at you merely because you are a girl or a woman, so that’s that. Then the work you do drives you further, working with survivors of violence, or working with women in conflict situations, you have the opportunity to meet, interact and work with the most amazing people.

As for Sri Lanka, after first coming to Sri Lanka for a few months in 1995 to work with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Sri Lankan lawyer and academic Radhika Coomaraswamy, I had returned in 1996 to continue that work.

Although employed by the UN, I was lucky to find myself based at a local research and policy institute, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), in a community of intellectuals, activists and political leaders who encouraged my involvement and activism in human rights and peace movements in Sri Lanka.

At the center of this tightly woven community was a man named Neelan Tiruchelvam - an activist-intellectual, constitutional expert and moderate Tamil politician working to craft a political solution to the war, who was also the energy, passion and spirit behind ICES and a mentor to the many young scholars and researchers, like me, who worked there.

I was actually starting to think about leaving Sri Lanka in 1999… and then reality crashed the gate and left Neelan’s body on the road and Sri Lanka, the conflict, peace, it all became very personal. Political violence has a way of breaking you open and laying you bare.

Throughout my time in Sri Lanka I have moved in and out of conflict areas. In some cases my outsider status - the fact that I am visibly foreign - made it easier for me to do that, to move, to go into areas that were very insecure and document rights abuses. My skin privilege provided me access and a certain level of security in areas and situations in which my Tamil colleagues couldn’t venture.

 

Tell us a little bit about the film you made?

It’s called “The art of Forgetting”.

It is framed in terms of those moments I was talking about earlier… the moments when political violence enters the frame and alters your world.

The film explores issues of political violence and memory in Sri Lanka through the stories of ordinary people whose lives have been forever altered by the violence. It attempts to foreground the stories that don’t get told. The stories that were being excluded from the peace process as it began to unfold in 2002 and 2003, to highlight the commonality of suffering for those who experience political violence and somehow to break through the silence and statistical anonymity that characterizes the dominant discourses of war by foregrounding the personal stories of the people whose lives have been forever altered by war and political violence.

Filming was done over the course of the two years - 2002 to 2004 - after the signing of the (now collapsed) ceasefire agreement. The project had two components. One was documentation of oral histories and places that had been inaccessible because of the war - to document them before they were all reconstructed and memory was erased. The second component was the film itself.

The project was meant to engage in what Alex Boraine, former Deputy Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Director of the International Centre on Transitional Justice, calls the “intentional act of remembering”. To look back and remember the past in order to move beyond it, so this is a non-vindictive memory, I’m talking about. It is an honest memory, a memory that need not be afraid of the light. A memory that must be exposed fully so that healing can begin.

Peace cannot merely be a political arrangement between two warring parties. That’s part of it, of course, but what happened in Sri Lanka, and what is still happening, is that the official discourse of peace, the failed talks, the “peace process,” leaves the people behind. I really wanted to challenge that. To make room for the voices of the people and the stories that isn’t heard.

The film uses the metaphor of ‘travel’, from the majority Tamil North of the country to the majority Sinhala South- through government and rebel territory - to examine the ways in which those affected by violence and conflict have no choice but to remember and to challenge those who advocate amnesia. It was made with the hope that it could be used as a tool to promote dialogue on issues of political violence, war, justice, and accountability, on the question of how a country goes about balancing the past - and the suffering and rights violations of the past - and the future.

It has been really well received. More so than I expected, there is something that seems to touch people or something with which people are connecting with on various levels. Watching the film seems to be a very personal experience. It becomes a vehicle of expression for the pain and memory that people watching the film carry.

Although the film wasn’t specifically about women, most of the people in the film are women, you find that women are often the ones who are left behind, they are the widows, the mothers, the sisters, the daughters … they are the story tellers… the past…the bearers of history.

 

Tell us about your last television series “Crossing Fires”, who are some of the featured artists and how did it come about?

I worked as a Consultant on the series and producing a couple of the Programs for Young Asia Television. It is an Independent television production house. It produces socially relevant programming, for Sri Lanka and more broadly, Asia. They are conceived of a television documentary series that explores issues of women and armed conflict. Some of the issues that are being covered include women and combat, disappearances, displacement, war-related disabilities, migration, war widows, etc. One program in the series looks at issues of women, conflict and music, specifically how young women from Sri Lanka are using music to explore political questions and/or take a political stand on peace.

Now there are these young people in Sri Lanka - young Sri Lankan’s whose lives have been lived always under the shadow of war. Who are exploring different ways of making political interventions, locally and internationally, through different art forms?

A really powerful one is music… so this program looks at music. From M.I.A - Maya Arulapragasam - who really stirred things up internationally ever since her first commercially released CD, Arula, in 2005.

Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam. Photo credit Paul Natkin/WireImage.com

 

Although her music is only known by the young kind of independent hipsters in Sri Lanka, I must say I was really taken with it when I was first introduced to it by a friend in India. It’s very provocative, very political and has a great danceable beat. It’s what good music should be. And it gets people thinking.

Everybody wants to pin her down as pro this or pro that. I don’t think she’s that easy. I think she plays with images, experiences, identities and irony. She gets people talking and debating. I think that’s brilliant.

The program put M.I.A next to these young Sri Lankan women who are experimenting in different ways with a more political kind of music, who recognize the power music has to impact people and want to use their music to promote peace.

This is my favorite episode of the program. It’s a bit lighter, in some ways, but equally relevant. There is sometimes a tendency to get trapped in a victim-mentality when it comes to issues like women and conflict, to focus overwhelmingly on the ways in which women are victimized. But that’s just one piece of the story.

Think of M.I.A.? Where would she be, who would she be, and what would she be doing if she had not been forced to leave Sri Lanka as a child? So there is this thing about conflict for women, in some cases it helps reconfigure space and make room for women to change their roles or challenge the dominant construct of what women should be doing. These young musicians are all about that.

 

What do you want for Sri Lanka?

Peace. Real, meaningful peace, which means that there, needs to be accountability too.

 

[Editors note: Lisa's work has been featured on Groundviews in the past. Lisa's introduction to her film The Art of Forgetting can be found here. A review of the film can be found here. Both submissions were first published on this site.]

Similar Posts:

• Artists in a fractured, violent country
• The Art of Forgetting by Lisa Kois - Director’s Introduction and Previews
• CIRCLES OF VIOLENCE – GOING ROUND AND ROUND
• Circles of Violence: A Return to Sri Lanka
• “We need a revolution in Sri Lanka!” - A brief chat with Sam de Silva

[Editors note: This interview was conducted in April 2006]

 

Lisa Kois is a brave filmmaker, working right at the heart of today’s dangerous and on going civil conflict in Sri Lanka. Her movie and television series on Sri Lanka’s war have won her numerous international awards; she talks to Hugh Bohane, about her experiences making her first movie, “The art of Forgetting” and the television series, “Crossing Fires”, which features British-Sri Lankan musician, M.I.A.

 

Tell us a bit about your background?

I am originally from the United States, yet do not identify with today’s America, its policies, or its practices. At the same time, it’s where I am from, it’s what I grew up with, there is a part of it - I like to think the good part, the part that celebrates freedom and justice and rights and diversity - that I carry with me always… that is me. The longer I have lived outside of the US, the more alien it has become, particularly in the last seven or so years of Bush and the Neo-Cons. It’s increasingly difficult to relate to it.

I have lived in Sri Lanka for the last 12 years. I’m a lawyer by training, a writer and now a filmmaker. But I’m not really comfortable with any of those titles. The work I do has always revolved around issues of justice and rights. So that means combating violence, raising awareness about violence, working with survivors of domestic violence and rape. It is also legal advocacy around rights abuses, documentation, writing, and now documentary filmmaking.

After working in various capacities within the UN and Sri Lankan NGOs, I became frustrated with what I saw as the limitation of traditional forms of human rights documentation and advocacy, with its heavy reliance on the law and legal remedies. I felt like we would write report upon report, but nobody was reading them. In search of a larger audience, I started experimenting with other forms, art forms and documentary film making.

 

How did you come to choose this line of work and Sri Lanka, as a country to work in?

There are issues… issues of justice, of rights, of power and the abuse of power; of violence… these are the issues that drive me.

I was a welfare child a product of the system, a system that is overwhelming and increasingly hostile and violent toward the very people it is supposed to serve. Then there was violence, episodes of violence in my life, in my friend’s lives. It’s virtually inevitable as a young girl, then young woman, you will experience some form of violence directed at you merely because you are a girl or a woman, so that’s that. Then the work you do drives you further, working with survivors of violence, or working with women in conflict situations, you have the opportunity to meet, interact and work with the most amazing people.

As for Sri Lanka, after first coming to Sri Lanka for a few months in 1995 to work with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Sri Lankan lawyer and academic Radhika Coomaraswamy, I had returned in 1996 to continue that work.

Although employed by the UN, I was lucky to find myself based at a local research and policy institute, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), in a community of intellectuals, activists and political leaders who encouraged my involvement and activism in human rights and peace movements in Sri Lanka.

At the center of this tightly woven community was a man named Neelan Tiruchelvam - an activist-intellectual, constitutional expert and moderate Tamil politician working to craft a political solution to the war, who was also the energy, passion and spirit behind ICES and a mentor to the many young scholars and researchers, like me, who worked there.

I was actually starting to think about leaving Sri Lanka in 1999… and then reality crashed the gate and left Neelan’s body on the road and Sri Lanka, the conflict, peace, it all became very personal. Political violence has a way of breaking you open and laying you bare.

Throughout my time in Sri Lanka I have moved in and out of conflict areas. In some cases my outsider status - the fact that I am visibly foreign - made it easier for me to do that, to move, to go into areas that were very insecure and document rights abuses. My skin privilege provided me access and a certain level of security in areas and situations in which my Tamil colleagues couldn’t venture.

 

Tell us a little bit about the film you made?

It’s called “The art of Forgetting”.

It is framed in terms of those moments I was talking about earlier… the moments when political violence enters the frame and alters your world.

The film explores issues of political violence and memory in Sri Lanka through the stories of ordinary people whose lives have been forever altered by the violence. It attempts to foreground the stories that don’t get told. The stories that were being excluded from the peace process as it began to unfold in 2002 and 2003, to highlight the commonality of suffering for those who experience political violence and somehow to break through the silence and statistical anonymity that characterizes the dominant discourses of war by foregrounding the personal stories of the people whose lives have been forever altered by war and political violence.

Filming was done over the course of the two years - 2002 to 2004 - after the signing of the (now collapsed) ceasefire agreement. The project had two components. One was documentation of oral histories and places that had been inaccessible because of the war - to document them before they were all reconstructed and memory was erased. The second component was the film itself.

The project was meant to engage in what Alex Boraine, former Deputy Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Director of the International Centre on Transitional Justice, calls the “intentional act of remembering”. To look back and remember the past in order to move beyond it, so this is a non-vindictive memory, I’m talking about. It is an honest memory, a memory that need not be afraid of the light. A memory that must be exposed fully so that healing can begin.

Peace cannot merely be a political arrangement between two warring parties. That’s part of it, of course, but what happened in Sri Lanka, and what is still happening, is that the official discourse of peace, the failed talks, the “peace process,” leaves the people behind. I really wanted to challenge that. To make room for the voices of the people and the stories that isn’t heard.

The film uses the metaphor of ‘travel’, from the majority Tamil North of the country to the majority Sinhala South- through government and rebel territory - to examine the ways in which those affected by violence and conflict have no choice but to remember and to challenge those who advocate amnesia. It was made with the hope that it could be used as a tool to promote dialogue on issues of political violence, war, justice, and accountability, on the question of how a country goes about balancing the past - and the suffering and rights violations of the past - and the future.

It has been really well received. More so than I expected, there is something that seems to touch people or something with which people are connecting with on various levels. Watching the film seems to be a very personal experience. It becomes a vehicle of expression for the pain and memory that people watching the film carry.

Although the film wasn’t specifically about women, most of the people in the film are women, you find that women are often the ones who are left behind, they are the widows, the mothers, the sisters, the daughters … they are the story tellers… the past…the bearers of history.

 

Tell us about your last television series “Crossing Fires”, who are some of the featured artists and how did it come about?

I worked as a Consultant on the series and producing a couple of the Programs for Young Asia Television. It is an Independent television production house. It produces socially relevant programming, for Sri Lanka and more broadly, Asia. They are conceived of a television documentary series that explores issues of women and armed conflict. Some of the issues that are being covered include women and combat, disappearances, displacement, war-related disabilities, migration, war widows, etc. One program in the series looks at issues of women, conflict and music, specifically how young women from Sri Lanka are using music to explore political questions and/or take a political stand on peace.

Now there are these young people in Sri Lanka - young Sri Lankan’s whose lives have been lived always under the shadow of war. Who are exploring different ways of making political interventions, locally and internationally, through different art forms?

A really powerful one is music… so this program looks at music. From M.I.A - Maya Arulapragasam - who really stirred things up internationally ever since her first commercially released CD, Arula, in 2005.

Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam. Photo credit Paul Natkin/WireImage.com

 

Although her music is only known by the young kind of independent hipsters in Sri Lanka, I must say I was really taken with it when I was first introduced to it by a friend in India. It’s very provocative, very political and has a great danceable beat. It’s what good music should be. And it gets people thinking.

Everybody wants to pin her down as pro this or pro that. I don’t think she’s that easy. I think she plays with images, experiences, identities and irony. She gets people talking and debating. I think that’s brilliant.

The program put M.I.A next to these young Sri Lankan women who are experimenting in different ways with a more political kind of music, who recognize the power music has to impact people and want to use their music to promote peace.

This is my favorite episode of the program. It’s a bit lighter, in some ways, but equally relevant. There is sometimes a tendency to get trapped in a victim-mentality when it comes to issues like women and conflict, to focus overwhelmingly on the ways in which women are victimized. But that’s just one piece of the story.

Think of M.I.A.? Where would she be, who would she be, and what would she be doing if she had not been forced to leave Sri Lanka as a child? So there is this thing about conflict for women, in some cases it helps reconfigure space and make room for women to change their roles or challenge the dominant construct of what women should be doing. These young musicians are all about that.

 

What do you want for Sri Lanka?

Peace. Real, meaningful peace, which means that there, needs to be accountability too.

 

[Editors note: Lisa's work has been featured on Groundviews in the past. Lisa's introduction to her film The Art of Forgetting can be found here. A review of the film can be found here. Both submissions were first published on this site.]

Similar Posts:

• Artists in a fractured, violent country
• The Art of Forgetting by Lisa Kois - Director’s Introduction and Previews
• CIRCLES OF VIOLENCE – GOING ROUND AND ROUND
• Circles of Violence: A Return to Sri Lanka
• “We need a revolution in Sri Lanka!” - A brief chat with Sam de Silva

I walk into the bar at the Sapphire, knowing I’m early for this interview, but I don’t want to keep my contact waiting. He’s obviously a busy man, but has been convinced by a mutual friend to give me half an hour of his time.

The bar itself has a certain well-worn charm that reminds one of friendly little pubs in Europe - all dark wood, fake leather and dim, smoky corners. Except that there’s no smoke anymore. Sri Lanka’s draconian anti-tobacco laws have banished smoking to a glass-walled cage at the far end of the room. I curse softly and park myself in a cubicle, ordering a gin-and-tonic, and wait for the man.

The place is more or less empty - it’s not yet 6pm - and ten minutes later, I’m on my second G&T, when he walks in. Or at least I assume it’s him. I’ve no clue what he looks like, though he should recognize me since I mailed him the link to my blog the day before. It’s all a bit James Bondish, and I feel quite silly until he spots me and veers over to the cubicle.

Major Rohan - I’ve agreed to use only his first name, and not take any pictures - shakes my hand and sits down. He’s a big guy in his late thirties, close to six feet, but athletically built, with shortish hair and skin that’s negro black from long hours in the sun. He’s dressed in a short-sleeve button-down shirt and jeans, and looks exactly what he is - a businessman out for an informal drink.

He orders a Lion lager and we begin to chat. He’s amused that a web site would want to interview him, but is firm about keeping certain details off the record. I have agreed to this beforehand, and it’s the reason he’s condescended to meet me.

The bar is filling up now, mostly locals from Wellawatte, obviously regulars who look curiously at us before joining their own cliques, leaving the cubicle to us.

David Blacker: So you don’t mind staying here in Little Jaffna?

Major Rohan: (With a shrug) It’s just a short visit. Besides, I’m not bothered about Tamils. My war with the Tigers is over now, no?

DB: So tell me a bit about yourself. You’re ex-Sri Lanka Army, right?

MR: Correct. I joined in the early nineties. My background’s mostly infantry, and later special forces. Towards the end I was also in Int, but not very long.

DB: So the question you must hear a lot - why did you leave?

MR: Actually it’s usually “Why did you join?” but anyway. Yeah, I left because I thought I was wasting my time. I saw a hell of a lot of combat in the nineties, first as an infantry officer, and then in special forces. My time with Int was what convinced me to get out. The war wasn’t really going well, no one cared about fighting it properly. There was a stupid CFA on with our fellows getting the worst of it. I was married with a young daughter, and wanted a better life for my family.

DB: But Iraq?

MR: It’s not so bad (laughs). My wife and daughter live in Dubai and are very safe and happy.

DB: So didn’t you feel you’d had enough of war?

MR: It wasn’t really a war or no war choice. Just a career move. I’m trained and experienced in this business. When I was thinking of leaving the Army, I met a batchmate of mine. He had resigned his commission a year or two previously and was working as a security consultant in Oman. He had this idea of setting up his own company for operations in Iraq, and wanted me to be his partner. He’s not a combat man - logistics and supply is his field - and he needed an infantryman. I agreed and quit the Army soon after, and we set up a security firm in Kuwait called Vampyr Group.

DB: So it was just you two?

MR: No, no, of course not. I convinced two other officers to join us. Both have special forces backgrounds, and one of them is probably the best close protection expert Sri Lanka has ever had.

DB: Then what?

MR: Well two of us moved to Kuwait immediately and started looking for business. The other two stayed here and started recruiting ex-soldiers to move to the Middle East and begin work. Soon after, we decided to move our HQ to Qatar for logistical reasons, and it was easier to shut down Vampyr and set up a new company altogether.

DB: So what are you guys called now?

MR: I don’t want that publicized, sorry.

DB: Why not? Won’t it be good for business?

MR: We have plenty of business, thanks, and whoever wants us knows how to find us. (He doesn’t point out that probably none of his potential clients read my blog, and I’m grateful for that) Our main problem is that some of the soldiers we recruit are deserters and we have to do various things to get them out of the country. I don’t want to get into problems with the government so better I keep a low profile. That’s why I don’t want my name or picture publicized either. I rarely even come to Sri Lanka these days, but I had a funeral in my mother’s family so I was forced to visit.

DB: OK, no problem. But why are you using deserters? Do you think they’re good soldiers?

MR: It depends. Some are, and some are not. We want the good ones. Most of our guys have left the Army legitimately with good records. And just because some have deserted doesn’t mean they’re cowards, OK? Soldiers go absent from the Sri Lanka Army for many reasons, and mostly it’s not because they’re scared. Many are highly decorated for bravery. Usually it’s because of family and personal problems. A girlfriend is being promised to another man because the boyfriend is in the Army and never around. So he absents himself to marry her. Sometimes he comes back and everything is OK, but sometimes the wife doesn’t want him to go back to the Army and he has to choose between loyalty to his unit and love for his wife. So he deserts. Or a parent is sick and has no one to care for them. The soldier is stuck in the north, and can’t get leave. So when he does get some leave, he doesn’t go back. There are lots and lots of reasons. Many of these fellows like military life, just not the Sri Lankan military life, so my company offers them a better one, working with like-minded professionals and earning a good salary. They’re all well insured, medical and life, so they don’t need to worry about their families if they are killed or crippled.

DB: So what are their contracts like?

MR: I don’t want to go into financial detail, but it depends on their experience. We need all sorts - bodyguards for close protection details, security teams for convoy and perimeter protection, specialist drivers, things like that. We even have IT guys and electronics experts, plus our own mechanics for our vehicle pool. Usually it’s a one-year contract that’s renewable. Many of our chaps just come for a year or two, make their money and then go back, but some like the work and stay with us, or move to other markets like Afghanistan or Africa. We also hire consultants for short-contract work, depending on what we need.

DB: So it’s an all-Sri Lankan company?

MR: Almost totally. All our operators, NCOs, and almost all the officers are Sri Lankan. There’s a bit of a language issue at the lower level because most of the operators speak only Sinhala, though we’re always pushing them to learn English, so it’s easier to just have Sri Lankans. But one of our original partners quit the company a year ago, and we replaced him with an Indian ex-police officer who is an anti-terrorism expert, and that’s gone off quite well. Also, many of our consultants are non-Sri Lankan. We have used UAVs for some jobs, and we had an ex-USAF lady attached to us for six months (our only female employee!), and later an Israeli guy doing the same thing. We also do some training jobs for other security companies that are new to the area, so we have their people attached for short periods.

DB: Isn’t there a lot of competition? I mean, the private military business in Iraq is huge, with big boys like Blackwater getting all the headlines and big contracts. How do smaller outfits like yours survive?

MR: It’s like any business, David. There are big clients and medium and small clients. Companies like Blackwater get all the big government contracts and that’s fine. We’re not interested in those. We specialize in other areas and cater to a smaller-sized clientele, mostly commercial companies doing business in Iraq who need our expertise. I mean, there are tiny outfits in Iraq, with less than twelve people, but they have enough of work and are making good money.

DB: So how is your company set up? I mean, do you operate like a military unit with platoons and sections, or more like a mercantile firm, with business teams and managers?

MR: I think we’re definitely set up along military lines, and discipline is very very tight. It has to be. But there’s no shouting and saluting like in the Army! If you don’t do your job you’ll be sacked like any private firm. You can’t come late to work and just expect your salary to be cut, no? Someone might get killed because of your negligence. In structure, we’re like a special forces squadron, but a bit bigger. We have a recruiting centre here in Sri Lanka, and a training and logistics base in Qatar. Our forward operating base is in an Iraqi city, and that’s where most of our personnel are based. The company is divided into troops, we have a Support Troop under one managing partner, which handles logistics and other support, including finances and most of its people are in Dohar; a Training Troop under another partner for recruitment and training, which has people here and in Qatar; a HQ Troop in Iraq, with two of the managing partners, and then four rifle troops which are used for jobs as and when needed.

DB: Don’t you feel at a disadvantage when looking for clients. Wouldn’t clients be more inclined to pick European or American security companies with white personnel from more recognized armies?

MR: Not really. I think we have a more discerning clientele who need our more specialized skills. For instance, being Asian, we attract less attention in a place like Iraq, where an American or British operator with their white skin will be immediately identified as a target. Our clients are often Asian companies doing business in Iraq - Indians, Southeast Asians, and even South Americans or Africans - and our guys can just blend in with them and look like part of their staff. Also, you won’t believe what a reputation the Sri Lanka Army has built over the years. Clients know we’ve been fighting terrorists for decades, so they know we have a lot of experience.

DB:OK, but what about the danger? We all know Iraq’s one of the most dangerous places on earth, and you are right there doing a very dangerous job. We hear about the kidnappings and executions of security personnel, about ambushes. Have you ever thought you were going to be killed over there?

MR:Well things are not as unstable as they were a couple of years ago, but three months ago I was personally involved in an incident. We had a client based in Baghdad, and he was expecting a senior board member to arrive on an inspection. The guest was a Bangladeshi, and because he was a VIP, the client had requested I personally handle the security. He flew into Baghdad and everything went well for the thirty-six hours he was in the country. He was due to fly out to Amman in Jordan, but changed his mind. He was supposed to visit one of their sites in Jordan, close to the Iraqi border, and instead of flying to Amman and then going out to the site, he decided he would drive across the border and check out the site on the way. We advised against it but the guy insisted. We started the trip late in the morning, but an hour out of Baghdad, we noticed two cars shadowing us. Fifteen minutes later, we spotted a pickup truck broken down by the side of the road. We were suspicious, and moving at high speed in a four-car convoy. I was in the client’s car, with one lead car and two trail cars. I slowed the entire convoy down, and sent the lead car past the pickup at high speed with guns ready. Just after the lead car passed it, the pickup blew. Luckily they were armoured and the terra who triggered the IED mistimed it a bit. But their tires were in pieces and they couldn’t move on their own. So I got the client’s car to do a U-turn with one trail car, while the other trail car went and picked up the three men from the lead car. In the middle of the U-turn, we took fire from the embankment on the other side of the highway, as well as an RPG from the nearer side. The terras were trying to RPG the trail car escorting us and block the road so that they could kidnap us. Luckily, the RPG missed and we took off in three cars back to Baghdad. I counted six bullet holes in my car later. That doesn’t happen very often these days, but you can’t say.

DB: We see all these pictures of American PMCs in full combat kit, with night vision and M16s and stuff. What kind of weapons and kit does your company use?

MR: Well we use whatever technology we need to get the job done, but when it comes to small arms and support weapons we usually use Chinese and Russian stuff. Our operators have been using these for years in the Sri Lanka Army, so it saves a lot of training time.

DB: So what about the ethics of what you do? I mean you’re fighting and maybe killing just for money - not for your country, or for a cause. Many people think of PMCs or mercenaries as criminals at worst or slightly shady characters at best. What do you think about that?

MR: I’m not bothered about people like that. I’m a businessman providing a service. It’s a very useful service. I provide security, and that helps save the lives of many many people who just want to go about their own business without being killed or captured by terrorists or criminals. What’s wrong with that?

DB: Just recently, Equatorial Guinea sentenced Simon Mann, an ex-SAS mercenary to a long prison term for his activities in the same field as you. Don’t you worry about that?

MR: You mean that bugger who tried to overthrow the government in Guinea, no? (I nod) Well what he did was totally different. Those ‘Dogs of War’ days are over, you know. He should have known better. Security companies are now very legitimate and there’s lots of legitimate, legal, lucrative business available for professional soldiers and security experts. Why do you need to overthrow a country. I think he was stupid, and now is paying for it. Sad, but stupid.

DB: So where do you see yourself in ten years - not in Iraq, I guess?

MR: Hopefully not (he laughs). No, I don’t want to be based in the middle of the action all the time. I’d like to diversify a bit more, provide more services that are useful outside of immediate war zones. There’s a trend even among NGOs and the UN to use private contractors now more and more, and that’s an area I’d like to look into.

DB: Do you think your services will ever be required here in Sri Lanka?

MR: Not really. Not the sort of services I provide now, but as I said, diversification’s the name of the game, so we’ll see. The MoD contracts many foreign specialists for particular jobs, and maybe those contracts could be taken by guys like me.

DB: I’m ex-Army myself. Do you think you could give me a job?

MR: I think you’re a bit too ex for us, but thanks for asking.

DB: Fuck off.

MR: You’re welcome.

 

This post sent to Groundviews by the author and originally appeared here.

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No more scantily clad foreign cheerleaders at cricket matches in Sri Lanka as it goes against our “culture”, the Minister of Sports and Public Recreation Gamini Lokuge recently decreed. He was awakened to this “foreign evil” by the Minister of Cultural Affairs Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, after seeing them at the first one-day match between India and Sri Lanka at Dambulla on August 19th. So instead of foreign dancers, the Sports Minister suggested hiring Sri Lankan dancers in keeping with our traditions.

My view is that the action of the Cultural and the Sports Ministers stink of the worst kind of duplicity and mirrors the reaction of the other political parties in Sri Lanka.

The Tourism Ministry sponsored the much-hyped Hikkaduwa Beach Carnival to coincide with the SAARC heads of state meeting earlier this month. There they were plenty of foreign women clad in even less attire energetically gyrating to the beat of trance and house music, to the delight of hundreds of people who where present. Is this keeping with the so-called Sri Lankan culture? The same Government that objects to the women in Dambulla had spent money to bring down these foreign women to perform in Hikkaduwa and yet, I haven’t read about anyone objecting it.

Did foreign cheerleaders became an issue in Dambulla simply because the Sports and Cultural Ministers feel that the spectators from a particular class of society who watch cricket need moral policing?

Surprisingly, the UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayaka has also gone on record saying they are against foreign dancers performing at cricket matches. That stinks of even worse hypocrisy than the Cultural Minister’s ramblings. Wasn’t it the UNP that introduced mini-skirt wearing newsreaders to the national television station and later got castigated for it by the then Opposition? How culturally correct was that move by the UNP? As expected, the JVP and the JHU too have jumped on the anti-foreign cheerleaders bandwagon saying pretty much the same thing, albeit with more froth and pulpit fervour.  

If you look at the bigger picture, how relevant is cricket to the Sri Lankan culture. Isn’t it a sport we are clinging onto jealously as if it is an indigenous invention when we all know it’s another remnant of our colonial past? How many things that are alien to our culture have we adapted? Are we to discard all of them because some politician thinks it goes against his prudish and misguided morality?

If politicians think they are qualified to set moral standards, they themselves need to adhere to what they decree. Today, we all know that the politically powerful and elite have one set of rules while the ordinary people of this country have another.   

We don’t need politicians to set moral standards. The Cultural Minister can start by setting out a moral code for his colleagues and asking them to live by it.

If he succeeds, he can include it in his party’s election manifesto the next time around.

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Just as it did at the moment of decolonization and independence, the visible post-war moment provides a rare historic opportunity for nation building and the construction of national identity. We missed the first chance, but must not miss the second.

In his nationally televised dialogue with audiences in several areas on Tuesday August 19^th, President Rajapakse, speaking in Sinhala to largely Sinhala rural crowds, pledged to hold elections to the Northern Provincial Council within a year of its liberation just as he had held election to the Eastern Provincial Council. He added that he was considering elections to the local authorities in Jaffna very much earlier.

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Defence Secretary, had already indicated the goal in his response to The Times online, stressing the need to privilege a common Sri Lankan identity over and above our separate ethnic identities, allowing for devolution of power, and reiterating the President’s commitment to it.

In the context of a negotiated settlement the post-war order is shaped by all who sit around the table, including the peacemakers. However, given the nature of the LTTE, and as Kethesh Loganathan used to point out, the appeasement by the international community and Colombo’s civil society, a peaceful settlement of Sri Lanka’s conflict has repeatedly proved impossible.

Sri Lanka will get beyond the war to a post-war situation because of the military victory scored by the Sri Lankan armed forces, made possible under the political leadership of the Rajapakse presidency. In a context where the post war moment is the result of a war, the post-war order is decided upon by those who led, fought in and supported the war.

There can be no national identity without a unified national territory. It is unrealistic to expect those - national or international, Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim– who opposed the war of liberation, those who practiced a policy of appeasement, who acted as proxies for the enemy, to be stakeholders in deciding or shaping the post-war order. Notwithstanding the academic exercises debating Sri Lankan identity by those who opposed the necessary war through which Sri Lanka must be reunited as a single sovereign territorial space, the post-war order, the crucible of evolving national identity, will almost certainly be decided by those - Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim; national, regional and international-who stood shoulder to shoulder in, or stood with, or at least did not stand against, the anti-fascist war of national reunification. 

As we make the transition into the last stage-though not phase-of the conventional war against the LTTE, it is wise to have a clear idea of what comes after. It is in this context that the debate on devolution must be placed.

Those who advocate the non-implementation of the 13^th amendment, as well as those who advocate only its partial, rather than full implementation, have not taken into account the realities of post-mid intensity conflict warfare, that is the low intensity conflict that will doubtless follow the defeat of “the conventional military power of Tamil Eelam” — as the late columnist “Taraki” used to call it.

The Sri Lankan military and STF will doubtless be required to follow up the conventional military victory with the complete and final elimination of the LTTE as a military force, destroying its columns in jungle warfare, its cells in urban counter-terrorist warfare, uprooting its organisational infrastructure and its weapons caches.

What has to be avoided is a situation in which the Tigers, their proxies or substitutes, succeed in winning by other means that which they could not win by military means. The mighty USSR fell without a shot being fired, having defended itself, Europe and the world, against the armies of Nazi fascism. Therefore it is necessary to avoid what the Chinese Communist leadership has correctly called the dangers of “peaceful evolution”.

Even after the shooting stops, the 6^th amendment to the Constitution which bans secessionism must be strictly enforced with regard to the LTTE and its proxies. The LTTE should be banned. Its proxies should be treated as Spain, a member of the EU, treats Herri Batasuna, the parliamentary party of Basque separatism, which has been proscribed by the respected judge Baltazar Garzon as a party which “maintains links with an underground armed organisation”.

There is however, an important corollary. The ban on the espousal of separatism in Spain and India is regarded as legitimate because it takes place in a system that contains generous autonomy for ethnic or ethno-lingual regions. Therefore, the implementation of the devolution of power to the provinces must parallel this strict enforcement of the ban on separatism.

The Sri Lankan armed forces will have to stay in the North and East for as long as is needed but not a moment longer than is needed. If we pull out prematurely due to manipulated demands from Tamil politicians, endorsed by regional or global players wielding carrots and sticks, it will be at the risk of the reactivation of the Tigers and/or the Tamil Eelam struggle.

There will have to be a long-term Sri Lankan armed forces presence in the North and East, positioned in such a configuration and of such a strength that can suppress, pre-empt and deter any sign of separatist-terrorist activity.

As importantly or even more so, there will have to be a constantly modernised Sri Lankan combined services presence guarding our porous borders against the largest source of anti-Sri Lankan sentiment, namely Tamil Nadu.

However, if the Sri Lankan armed forces presence is too large, too obtrusive, remains largely mono-ethnic and mono-religious, and has too many abrasive functions in relation to Tamil society and public life, we risk exactly the same danger. Our armed forces would then have the profile of an army of occupation, with peaceful protests erupting, and violent incidents being flashed around the world, giving credence to the cause of separatism. We must avoid a replay of the whole experience ranging from the socially insensitive conduct of TAFAII through the suppression of the Satyagraha of 1961 to the brutal retaliatory tactics of the early 1980s.

Let us learn the lesson of Israel. It is a society and a people whose achievement ranges from the ancient Biblical texts to ultra-modernity: instead of resting on its heritage which is a foundational part of Western civilisation, in the 60 years since its founding it has produced eight Nobel Prize winners. However, Israel is locked in conflict, unable to fulfil its brilliant potential in the world. The turning point was in 1967. Neither Moshe Dayan and his Generals who won the Six Day War so spectacularly, nor Prime Minister Golda Meir, ever planned to remain in permanent occupation of Arab land. When he saw his paratroopers praying at the Wailing Wall, Moshe Dayan snorted “what’s this, the Vatican?” and ordered the pulling down of an Israeli flag flying over a sacred Islamic site. Today, his daughter Yael Dayan, a decorated war veteran, writer and Deputy Mayor, is a leading figure protesting against the building of the “security wall”.

The impulse for encroachment on and annexation of Arab/Palestinian land, turning a brilliant military victory into the political quagmire of permanent occupation, came not from the largely Westernized, sophisticated Israeli politico-military ruling elite, but from native Jewish ultranationalist religious fundamentalists.   

This is where devolution comes in. The issue of land is at the heart of civic conflict in many regions of the world, Israel/Palestine being only the worst or the best known. Nothing is as emotive and nothing is guaranteed to give any armed forces presence a profile of an army of occupation as unsettled questions of land, involving the peasantry.

An exhaustive discussion on Land in relation to devolution took place between the Governments of Sri Lanka and India and a complex formula was arrived at. Whether or not it is adhered to, one can envisage land being a bone of contention in the North and the East, but the danger in non-adherence is that we shall not have India on our side or even neutral in any such dispute. If India is alienated from us, so too will be everyone else. A land dispute in the East is also likely to involve the Muslim community, and if so, our valuable support from Pakistan, Iran and the OIC (the 52 nation Organization of the Islamic Conference) will stand in jeopardy.

If the Tamil citizens of the East, especially the peasantry, are locked in a protracted confrontation with the Sinhala community, the state or the armed forces over land, it will be impossible for our Tamil allies the TMVP to stand aside. If the TMVP were to move against the Tamil people it would weaken their base. If they moved against the Sinhalese it would weaken our profile, reducing it to a Sinhala Only one. 

It would therefore be profoundly counter-productive for us NOT to implement fully, the 13^th amendment, including on the subject of land.

Matters are as clear when it comes to the issue of police powers. Unlike in the case of a conventional war, no low intensity conflict/counter-insurgency has ever been won without a major role for local forces and this still truer when the conflict has a dimension of identity, i.e. when the insurgent and state’s armed forces are drawn from different ethno-national, linguistic or religious groups. “Chechenisation” was a cornerstone of Vladimir Putin’s victory over the ferocious Chechen secessionist terrorist army. 

In the absence of local forces, the conflict becomes one between an army of occupation and the people of the area. The state requires an intermediary layer to avoid such polarization. If these local forces are not to remain irregular militia which could lapse into banditry, they have to be incorporated into the system and subject to the rule of law. This is where the granting of police powers to the Provincial Councils as per the 13^th amendment, comes in handy.

In a recent, widely reported speech in Canada, Prof Ratnajeevan Hoole, whose scholarly credentials I greatly respect, has made an incomplete identification of the choices facing the Tamil people. He lists separation, federalism and assimilation. Having obliquely indicated a preference for the first option, he rules it out as unfeasible. He concludes with a robust call for federalism through international involvement. Prof Hoole unwittingly gives comfort to those Sinhala extremists who argue that Tamil moderates are closet Eelamists who prefer Tamil Eelam if it were feasible, would settle for federalism only because separation is not an option at the moment and would stretch federalism to the point of separation if given half a chance.

This leaves one with the realisation that the only realists among the moderate Tamils are not in the Diaspora, but on the island, and represented by Douglas Devananda, Chief Minister Chandrakanthan and Col. Karuna, i.e. the EPDP and TMVP. 

Prof Hoole also makes a grave analytical error in his identification of options. A glance around the world would show him that there is a fourth option, namely the devolution of power/autonomy within a unitary system, as practiced in the UK, China and the Philippines (if I were to name but three diverse examples). This is the option arrived at under the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, which could not be implemented primarily (but not exclusively) because the LTTE went to war against the IPKF. Once that armed spoiler is out of the way, the devolution option becomes practicable.

Provincial autonomy as contained in the 13^th amendment must be saved from two quarters: those who would seek to move beyond it by vaulting over it, and those who seek to dismantle, delay or dilute it.     

The Tamil community must be liberated from the structural political impasse they find themselves in. The Sinhalese must be emancipated from the structural economic-developmental, institutional and human resources impasse they find themselves in. Post-war Sri Lanka needs to catch up with the rest of Asia, the high growth area of the world. These objectives require a policy of Defence and Devolution.

 

(These are the personal views of the writer).

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