LIBERAL PEACE IN QUESTION: THE SRI LANKAN CASE

Kristian Stokke

Sri Lanka has repeatedly gained international attention among scholars of politics and development as an illustrative case of development theory and practice. This was initiated with Sri Lanka's strong emphasis on import-substitution industrialisation and social welfare in the 1960s and 70s, but the country also gained critical attention for its shift to economic liberalisation in 1977 as well as the subsequent coexistence of neoliberalism, authoritarianism and armed insurgencies in the 1980s. The last decade has seen a new focus on Sri Lanka as a test case for internationalised conflict resolution and liberal peacebuilding in protracted intrastate conflicts. The final attempt at negotiating an end to the armed conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was characterised by active involvement by a range of international actors as facilitators, donors and monitors of liberal peace. From being an intrastate conflict that was of little relevance beyond the South Asian sub-continent, Sri Lanka became a test for liberal peacebuilding facilitated and funded by the US-led 'international community' (Goodhand and Klem 2005, Liyanage 2008, Lunstead 2007). As the peace process broke down and was replaced by an intense and successful military campaign by the government, Sri Lanka has been seen by some as providing evidence of the possibility of defeating 'terrorism' and creating peace by military means. Other observers emphasise that the final stage of the conflict demonstrates the changing geopolitics of the Indian Ocean and an emerging new politics of security and order as well as the injustice and humanitarian costs of a victor's peace.

The present book is placed within this tradition of using Sri Lanka as a critical case to address broader questions about politics and development. The objective is to examine the internationally facilitated peace process between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in order to provide critical insights on contemporary attempts at crafting liberal peace in intrastate conflicts. The internationalisation of conflict resolution and liberal peacebuilding that has characterised Sri Lanka in recent years reflects changing international discourses and practices in regard to the links between security, development and peace. During the Cold War, international aid was to a large extent subsumed under the global rivalry between US-dominated capitalism and Soviet-led socialism. Concerns about human rights and democracy were thus downplayed by the donors. This changed from the late 1980s when the collapse of the Soviet Union and the triumphalism of Western liberalism provided a space for liberal concerns about governance and the links between neoliberal development, liberal democracy and liberal peace. In the 1990s it was increasingly recognised that conflicts pose obstacles to successful development, but also that development could be an instrument for crafting liberal peace (Jarstad and Sisk 2008, Paris 2004, Richmond 2007). Furthermore, the fear of transnational impacts of localised wars made the resolution of intrastate conflicts a matter of global security. Following from this, international development cooperation has undergone a general shift from being conflict-blind in the sense that development aid was offered without taking conflicts into consideration, to offering aid in a conflict-sensitive manner, and increasingly also using development assistance as a tool for transforming conflicts and building liberal peace (Anderson 1999, Goodhand 2006).

The Sri Lankan conflict situation in the late 1990s was conducive for this kind of liberal peacebuilding. Sri Lanka was characterised by a protracted intrastate conflict that had reached a mutually hurting stalemate and produced a humanitarian and development crisis that made both the GOSL and the LTTE willing to sign a Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), enter into political negotiations and address humanitarian and developmental needs. At the same time, Sri Lanka's aid donors were committed to making Sri Lanka a showcase for liberal peacebuilding and found like-minded partners in the market-friendly United National Front government led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and, to some extent, in the Political Wing of LTTE and the network around LTTE's chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham. Thus, domestic and international stakeholders converged around an internationally facilitated negotiation process between GOSL and LTTE supported by aid-funded liberal peacebuilding.

Against this background of internationalised liberal peacebuilding the purpose of the present book is to broaden the perspective on conflict resolution from elitist peace negotiations to the contextual politics of rights, representation and welfare. The aim is to extend the focus from technocratic concerns with formal negotiations and delivery of humanitarian and development aid, to the politics of state reforms for liberal democracy, minority rights and power-sharing and the associated politics of market reforms for neoliberal development. In examining the contextual politics of state and market reforms in Sri Lanka, the contributing authors highlight the tensions between liberal peace and Sinhalese and Tamil nationalisms, manifested as contestations over international facilitation vs. local ownership of peace, exclusion vs. inclusion in peace negotiations, individual human rights vs. group rights, territorial power sharing vs. state sovereignty and neoliberal development vs. social welfare. In general terms, the book highlights the conflict producing consequences of social and political exclusion and the centrality of political and social inclusivity to ensure sustainable and just peace. The Sri Lankan case raises a number of critical questions about whether the present model of internationally supported elite-crafted liberal peace can ensure this kind of social and political inclusion.

As a point of departure, the present chapter provides a general introduction to the Sri Lankan conflict and outlines the arguments that are developed in the subsequent chapters. The chapter is organised in three sections, where the first section provides a basic...