Yes. The sudden progress on the Trinco 5 and aid worker massacre must be a coincidence, surely, given the ‘independence’ of the Sri Lankan judiciary! 🙂 – as you say it would be funny if it weren’t so very sad for the individuals and their families.

For all his cleverness and even brilliance, Dayan J remain an enigma, who has failed to establish trust among his readership.
He may not wish to change course. Pity, as more and more are getting around to ‘discovering’ the real ‘him’.

I agree, without external intervention is nation is a failed state.
Just as Ms. Pillay is about to appoint and start the international investigation I see that the murders of the school kids (known as the Trinco 5) and the slaughter of the French NGO workers has been expedited. I am not sure whether to laugh or to cry ! What were they doing for all these years?
It was also heartening to note that when Mahinda had used the usual excuse of “war finished now” to Hon. PM N. Modi, he had correctly stated “it finished 5 years ago”.

Firstly, a look at the reviewer is would be helpful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK-gZLW5Km8
Prof Ahmed’s recent book (“Garrison state”) has been hailed by the Pakistani military establishment, who participated in its production through extensive interviews. This chap is Dayan’s Pakistani twin from what we can tell. Both ardent statists, both defenders of the most illiberal military regimes in the world, who routinely torture and kill within their borders.
Not sure that a positive review by Prof Ahmed really does DJ and favours in a more liberal global context.

Thanks for the kind compliment. I have to say I am more of an observer in this space. My speciality is venture capital and tech stat ups. I find the situation in Sri Lanka tragic as it is one of those countries that had so much potential once. On the right path its citizens (Tamils, Sinhalese, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist) would have had per capita incomes like Singapore. However, what you realise is that there is a common base in all the countries that make their citizens free and prosperous. Funnily its not oil or gold or diamonds – just simple things like accountability and justice, and yet it is not so simple, as Sri Lanka shows. Internal reform is near impossible in Sri Lanka. Simple actions like a ‘convention for journalists’ is shut down by a state run mob (in the North yesterday). For all his ‘majoritarian tendencies’ Dayan still says he wants an equitable society, but he fails to explain how it is possible to transition Sri Lanka in his absolute sovereignty paradigm. I.e without external intervention. Even Foneska, the champion of a collective opposition, says Buddhism shall remain the foremost religion (interview yesterday). So the opposition cannot break free of the theocratic mantra. That is why I have always favoured external intervention as it seems to be the only way to break up this poisonous ethnic confrontation. In my space in particular I can see how the developed world continues to race away from all Sri Lankans – they may be going from earning $2 per day to $2.20 but the world developing so much quicker. The way people work, the technology they use, the productivity of modern societies. A Czech / Slovak style split or other mature approach to this would make all of the nations in Sri Lanka better off.

Instead of dealing with what Asanga has written Dayan resorts to his usual quotes to impress. This was beautifully exposed by Vangeesa Sumanasekara last month in a series of articles on GV. The same old same old..

Obviously the line of demarcation is the issue of whether or not Sri Lanka should be recognized as pluri-national/bi-national. Having adopted a dogmatically Leninist position in the late 1970s which asserted exactly
that, I have long shifted to a position that instead defines Sri Lanka’s Tamil question as does the international state system (the ‘international community’)– as an ethnic minority or a ‘community’ .

I have made recourse to Prof James Petras’ critique of federalism in a Third World context (2008) and Prof Jerry Muller’s (2008) reminder that a notable degree of ethnic, linguistic and ethno-religious dominance has characterized the process of nation and state building in the West, and is much more the global norm than not.

On the question of how my book fares as a “way of doing political science”, I think that a rather more authoritative judgment would come from a credentialed political scientist rather than an emerging legal and constitutional theorist, such as Asanga is. I therefore refer him and the reader to the review of my book sometime last year by Prof Ishtiaq Ahmed in the Daily Times of Pakistan. Ishtiaq Ahmed is Professor Emeritus of
Political Science, Stockholm University. His latest publications are ‘Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011)’, Karachi:Oxford University Press, 2013; ‘The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person
Accounts’ (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books,
2011). He writes as follows:

“…The author is at his masterly best when he applies his vast theoretical and conceptual knowledge, including normative political theory, to distinguish a freedom fighter from a terrorist. He defines terrorism as deliberate policy to target innocent civilians. In this regard, the review of Marxist theory and practice associated with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara is especially instructive, because although they resorted to armed struggle they considered it a necessary evil. Prabhakaran made a virtue out of violence and terror and personified that cult.

He reveals the psycho-ideological mindset of Prabhakaran as intrinsically fascistic. We learn that the leader of the Tigers actually hero-worshipped Hitler and kept a copy of Mein Kampf by his side, and like his hero extracted complete submission from his followers to his whim and caprice. Moreover, the Tamil Tigers showed no mercy to dissidents within the party or the opposition within Tamil society, or to innocent Muslims and Sinhalese. Their record of carrying out assassination attempts and suicide bombing predates by many years similar trends in South Asia.

Jayatilleka rejects the right of national self-determination to mean an absolute and automatic right to secede through the use of force and terrorism from an existing state. He asserts that secession from an existing state is not to be confused with liberation from colonial rule. Such an interpretation is an accurate understanding of the norms upheld by international law.

The author then examines the right of the state to wage war against an intransigent terrorist group in the light of classic just war doctrine and concludes that the Sri Lankan state had no other choice but to wage a war against the Tamil Tigers. It did so, but with such overwhelming force and ruthlessness that hapless non-combatant Tamils wholesale became its victims. It shocked the world and the United Nations expressed its concerns in no uncertain terms.

The author warns that a triumphant, vindictive, majoritarian Sinhalese mindset cannot win the peace. It is important to heal wounds and win back an estranged, defeated and humiliated minority. Currently a
cold peace prevails that isolates and alienates the Tamil minority. He pleads for a just peace, which guarantees substantial autonomy, economic, political and cultural, equal rights for all citizens, and respect and acceptance of
ethnic identity. To the Tamils his recommendation is to abandon secessionism and seek fair and equitable treatment within a pluralist, decentralised but unitary Sri Lanka integrated in a power-sharing framework. He argues that neither neo-liberal capitalism nor neoliberal conservatism can serve as the basis for building peace, which he argues has three important dimensions: the North-South axis; the rich-poor axis; and the country-world axis.

In my book, ‘State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia’, (London and New York: Pinter, 1996; 1998), I propounded a theory to analyse within a comparative framework a number of separatist movements in South Asia: Khalistani and Kashmiri in India; Sindhi and Mohajir in Pakistan; Chakma Hill Tribes in Bangladesh; and Tamils in Sri Lanka. I predicted that secession was doomed. The modern state is too well-armed vis-a-vis separatists. Moreover, international law and praxis is biased heavily in favour of the integrity of the state. Only when powerful neighbours or global powers support a challenger to the state can the balance of power possibly be tilted in favour of secessionism (pages 69-76). In the final showdown neither India nor any global power backed the Tamil Tigers: their extermination became inevitable. Seventeen years later Jayatilleka’s authoritative case study on Sri Lanka verifies the soundness and relevance of that theory.”

(http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/30-Jun-2013/book-review-winning-the-war-but-not-the-peace-by-dr-ishtiaq-ahmed)