Even as the war in West Asia raged on in Palestine, Lebanon, in the Red Sea, along with continued Western bombing of Yemen and tensions in the Persian Gulf, in the adjoining geopolitical region of South Asia, a “strong” Leftist Government has emerged in Sri Lanka, for long a strategic hub on the East-West sea lanes. When the potential for such a political emergence first appeared last year, many geopolitical powers, from India to the US, China and the UK, sat up and took notice.
While Delhi was quick to invite a whole delegation from the National People’s Power (NPP) – as any regional power should – other more distant capitals sent their local missions to engage. Emissaries from Beijing, Washington, and London were among the many diplomats paying calls to the NPP leadership at the headquarters of the coalition’s main organising political force, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.
People recalled that the previously ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s stopgap President Ranil Wickremesinghe had been quick to send one of the SL Navy’s few deep sea vessels to join the Western naval task force in the Red Sea. The Offshore Patrol Vessel SLNS Gajabahu joined the US-led force for a short stint earlier this year.
But protecting merchant shipping from pirates and Yemeni targeting of Israeli freight is hardly the main operation of the West’s current Red Sea naval force. Rather, the Western naval flotilla is regularly carrying out massive bombardment of Yemen’s economic and urban infrastructure in an attempt to suppress the Yemeni people’s defiant, but miniscule and hardly damaging, military actions against the genocide in Palestine.
Colombo must necessarily be cautious of any such deployment long term not so much because of the risk of Sri Lankan casualties, which would be highly unpopular domestically. Rather, it is the risk of endangering relations with the neighbouring states that bordering the Indian Ocean that are crucial to Sri Lanka – in terms of energy resources, export markets and as hosts of migrant labour, all most crucial for the country’s economic and social well-being.
In the 1980s, Colombo did benefit from Israeli military aid in the early stages of the ethnic separatist war – Kfir fighter jets, Dvora inshore attack crafts and as well as deployment of early combat drones that likely helped Israel test this very new aerial weapon.
West Asia
Sri Lanka’s economic reliance of several West Asian states far outweighs her dealings with Israel. In the first place Israel is a very small market with very little concrete needs that Sri Lanka can supply – not even for migrant labour to substitute for the lakhs of Israelis now mobilised in the Israeli Defence Force’s multi-front aggressive operations across West Asia.
Iran is a major trading partner in terms of cheap energy supplies for nearly a half-century, tea and other export markets. Equally significantly, Iran has also been a military supplier for the Sri Lankan state’s war against ethnic secessionism. At the Iranian Embassy’s Iran armed forces’ day celebration in Colombo earlier this year, the Defence Ministry Secretary made special reference to Iran’s ready supply of heavy mortars which beefed up the military’s light artillery-equipped tactical offensive operations.
Equally significant, the entirety of West Asian countries have long been destinations for whole generations of Sri Lankan migrant labour. West Asia, overall, is a major buyer of Ceylon tea.
Thus, Sri Lanka has a very legitimate reason to want to see peace and stability not only in the seas around West Asia – i.e. the Gulf, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Red Sea – but also on land across the region which is home and source of livelihood (social mobility) for many Sri Lankan people.
Sri Lanka is the Indian Ocean island at the very centre of the East-West sea lanes between the Southwest Asian coastline, Arabian Peninsula and the entire length of the African littoral on the one side and the equally long South and South East Asian littoral, the vast rich East Asian economies and markets and, also, Australasia.
Colombo is the biggest hub port for the South Asian subcontinent while Colombo, Galle and Hambantota are all now major resupply and freight-forwarding points for massive shipping traffic. This ranges from the Americas, Europe transiting the Red Sea on the one side. On the other, there is a similar heavy traffic transiting South East Asia through the Malacca Strait from the even bigger economies in East Asia.
This sea lane is one of the most vital supply lines of the world, affecting much of the world population and economies. Any impact of these economies thereby affects entire world economy.
Ships passing through the Malacca Strait carry around 30% of all traded goods globally. Some 40 percent of Indian transshipment traffic is handled by Sri Lankan ports, especially the Colombo Port.
It is no wonder, then, that Sri Lanka has been the focus of many great powers. India, the dominant power in South Asia, and Sri Lanka’s immediate neighbour and parent civilisation, has always had close economic and social interaction with island. The destinies of both states are inextricably intertwined.
But given the immense importance of Indian Ocean shipping between the Eastern and Western hemispheres in this globalised world, great powers from outside the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) have demonstrated their hard geopolitical interests in Sri Lanka for nearly half a millennium. From the inception of the European colonial enterprise beginning with Portugal’s invasion of the island in the early 16th century to two more colonial invasions ending with the British ‘dominion’, this country has been a victim of extra-regional geopolitical machinations.
This very tight colonial economic relationship has been sustained in the post-colonial era by the Western-oriented Sri Lankan elite that has governed the country till now. The West has been very comfortable with the Colombo’s loyalties and appreciates the economic, ideological and political dependence by the ruling class in Colombo.
Dominance
No wonder that during the Ranil Wickremesinghe Presidency Colombo rushed to join the Western naval force attempting enforce dominance over the Red Sea and West Asia. No wonder that successive Colombo regimes have cooperated with political moves by the Western power bloc that sustain the unjust and violent status quo in Palestine.
Last week, the regime in Colombo changed fundamentally.
As observed in previous columns, Sri Lanka has an incumbent President coming from among the poorer rural society. Just last week, the political movement led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, was elected into power as the Government. The National People’s Power, like the President, represents the poorer rural society.
This ‘subaltern’ political movement, therefore, no longer caters to the interests of the postcolonial social elite. Even more significantly, the NPP espouses a Left-leaning political enterprise. Although the NPP constituency itself is only broadly Left-leaning, the political organisation at its core, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna espouses an indigenously formulated Marxian-Communist political ideology. The JVP has previously expressed its radical socially transformative goals through no less than two armed rebellions both of which were militarily crushed by the Sri Lankan state under the control of the social elite. The NPP’s election manifesto spells out its leanings toward social democracy as opposed to policies of liberal democracy and iniquitous capitalism that have been practised by successive regimes of the country’s social elite.
Given its social roots in the subaltern social classes, the NPP is not in the least loyal to the country’s socio-economic elite. While its own pragmatic governance strategy has already demonstrated its accommodation of enlightened big business interests and active participation, overall, the new NPP regime is firmly loyal to and accountable to the mass of the population who are the ‘subalterns’ in the nation’s social order.
The development of profoundly historic significance is the sheer, immense, quantum of popular support for the NPP as expressed in the national vote in last week’s general election. The NPP is not only the very first Sri Lankan political movement to single-handedly win Governmental power (and without the support of the social elite), but it is the first Government to win the support from all ethnic groups on an unprecedented scale.
Finally, crucially, the NPP has won a two-thirds majority, a legislative punch that enables state reform without depending on other political forces.
Thus, all the boxes for political strength have been ticked: namely, nationally inclusive representation, mass popular acceptance and confidence.
“Strong” regime
This is why the NPP Government has been quickly recognised by observers and analysts locally and internationally as a “strong” regime. In geopolitical terms it means a regime that has come to stay in at least the intermediate term – that is, for the duration of parliamentary and presidential tenure. Some local analysts, assessing the severity of the political cultural ‘disruption’ from the past elite ascendancy, predict that the NPP may sustain its tenure into a second term half a decade from now. Thus, the regional and extra-regional geopolitical forces must plan their engagement with Colombo not on traditional lines of loyalty – or even subversion – but more so on terms of negotiation and amicability rather than pure coercion.
Given the visible loyalties of this strong regime of the subalterns, world politics must then factor in an Indian Ocean actor that will likely be more loyal to the Global South than to the West. In a small way, little Sri Lanka seems to be moving firmly out of its old, oppressive, colonial shadow.
A whole range of new geopolitical calculation is now required: from the home region of South Asia’s equilibrium, to West Asia’s greater stability and justice for Palestine, to greater appreciation of China’s global power status, to empathy with the victim nations of exploitative global power blocs.
In all, Sri Lanka is now more likely to strongly support peace and justice in the world order and far less likely to support aggressive politics, military actions and big power interventions.
