PARADISE POISONED - LEARNING ABOUT CONFLICT, TERRORISM AND DEVELOPMENT FROM SRI LANKA'S CIVIL WARS -- LINK

With thanks to the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, I am pleased  to make a PDF version of my book Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict Development and Terroism from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars available to all who may find it useful.  The link and additional information about the book follows.  

Link to

PARADISE POISONED: 

Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars

(NOTE: YOU MUST COPY THE LINK INTO YOUR BROWSER)

John Richardson

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31337126/Paradise%20Poisoned%20-%20Compressed.pdf

Paradise Poisoned is a publication of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka. It was published in 2004 with two subsequent reprintings. The Board of Directors of the ICES has authorized the distribution and reproduction of the manuscript for non-commercial purposes.  Sections of Paradise Poisoned, translated into Sinhala and Tamil, are being published by the Social Science Association of Sri Lanka, in a series entitled Lessons from the War.  Four volumes (in each language) of a projected series of eight have been published,  to date.  For further information contact, Mr. Ranjith Perera or Ms. Rasika Chandresekera, Social Science Association of Sri Lanka, 12 Suleiman Terrace, Colombo 05, Sri Lanka. Email: ssa@eurika.lk.  Tel: 94-11-2501339/504623.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements xi

Prologue 1

Part I

Anatomy and Physiology:

Linkages Between Deadly Conflict, Terrorism and Development

1 - ‘How Could We Have Come To This?’ 11

2 - Why Did Sri Lanka’s Political Differences Escalate Into

Protracted, Deadly Conflicts? 39

3 - What is ‘Successful Development’ and Why Does it Matter? 55

4 - Measuring Violent Political Conflict and State-sanctioned

Violence In Sri Lanka 73

5 - The Development-Deadly-Conflict System

Part II

Homeostasis - Reality or Illusion:

Was Sri Lanka a Development ‘Success Story’?

6 - The ‘Uncle-Nephew Party’ Years: Elitist Pluralism 125

7 - Opening Pandora’s Box – The Bandaranaike Era Begins 159

8 - Political Responses and Feedback in a New Era 189

9 - ‘Middle Path’ - Dudley Senanayake’s Imperfect

Governance Strategy 217

10- Political Responses to the ‘Middle Path’ 243

Part III

Symptoms of Infection and Immune System Responses:

How Sri Lanka’s United Front Government Coped with a Violent

Insurrection and Shortcomings of its Marxist Development Model

11 - Populism and Sinhalese Nationalism Resurgent 271

12 - Sri Lanka’s Marxist Experiment - Promises and Performance 311

13 - Political Climate, Institutions and Feedback

in the United Front Era 335

Part IV

Failure of Radical Therapies:

How Sri Lanka’s ‘Open Economy’ Development Model and

Strengthened Presidential Authority Failed to Prevent

Conflict and Terrorism from Escalating Out of Control

14 - Symptoms of Development Failure 381

15 - Strengthening Executive Power to Sustain Open

Economy Reforms 393

16 - The Open Economy – Promises and Performance 427

17 - Political Identities, Attitudes and Organisations in the

Open Economy Era 465

18 - How State-Sanctioned Violence Clouded Political Feedback 493

19 - Protracted Civil War Begins 523

Part V

Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention:

Why Deadly Conflict and Terrorism are not only

Predictable, but Preventable

20 - Costs and Benefits of Protracted Violent Conflict 555

21 - How it Came to This – Learning from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars 573

22 - Preventing Deadly Conflict and Terrorism: Ten Imperatives 589

Notes 605

Selected Bibliography 717

Index 750

Prologue

I have long believed that a book’s central message should come first and be given in a few words. Why must readers and reviewers struggle to learn what an author believes is fundamentally important?

Paradise Poisoned is the principal product of a seventeen-year project, devoted to understanding linkages between deadly conflict, terrorism and development, by viewing them through the lens of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, from 1948 through 1988.

After a period of relative tranquility, escalating conflict and terrorism engulfed this beautiful island nation. Coping with two civil wars became the principal preoccupation of Sri Lanka’s government and people. Explaining how tranquility was supplanted by all encompassing violent conflict and terrorism became the focal point of my inquiries.

What I have learned about preventing deadly conflict and terrorism fromSri Lanka’s civil wars?

What I have learned, of fundamental importance, from Sri Lanka’s civil wars, is this. We know more than enough to choose policies that will help prevent protracted deadly conflict and terrorism. We also know more than enough to avoid policies that will cause protracted deadly conflict and terrorism.

Our state of knowledge is analogous to our knowledge about the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. We know that smoking is a principal cause of lung cancer, though there are other causes. We know that refraining from smoking is the best way of avoiding lung cancer, though some abstainers may still contract the disease.

A promising, proactive strategy for preventing deadly conflict and terrorism

can be summarized in ten imperatives. Their relevance extends well beyond

Sri Lanka, to Kosovo, Kashmir, Palestine, the Sudan, Afghanistan and, in particular, Iraq. Chapter 22 discusses these imperatives in detail. The intervening chapters provide context and supporting evidence.

The ten imperatives are these:

1. Maintaining public order and preventing social turbulence from escalating

into protracted deadly conflict are prerequisite to the success

of all other development policies.

2. Polarising political rhetoric and tactics must be forgone, however

tempting their short-term benefits may seem. Like mustard gas,

which had to be abandoned as a weapon in World War I, this strategy

has a tendency to ‘blow back’ upon the user.1

3. Meeting the needs and aspirations of fighting age young men should

be the first priority of national development polices and of programs

funded by international donors.

4. Developing countries should have internal security forces (police and

paramilitary) that are generously funded, professional, apolitical and

trained to meet the complex challenges of maintaining public order

in a changing society.

5. Development policies that meet human beings’ common aspirations

– to feel good about their lives, the circumstances in which they live

and future prospects for themselves and their children – will contribute

most effectively to keeping violent conflict and terrorism within acceptable bounds.

6. Those who frame development policies should seek a middle path between capitalism’s efficient, but Darwinian precepts, and socialism’s egalitarian, but stultifying precepts.

7. Good governance and democratisation must be part of the ‘successful development’ mix. Most important are governance institutions that are open to ‘bad news’ and self-correcting.

8. Multinational corporations, businesses and businessmen’s organisations2 should play a more active role in supporting successful development policies.

9. Successful development requires a long-term view. Giving sufficient weight to the long-term requires institutional mechanisms and discourses that extend beyond the next election and term in office of political leaders presently in power.

10. There must be realistic, rigorous, opportunity-costs analyses of military options, versus equivalent expenditures for non-military options, before proceeding down the slippery slope of ‘military solutions’ to complex development problems.

‘We know our people’

Some readers want to know more than the typical preface provides about the context out of which a book grew and why the author considers it distinctive.  This section is for such readers.

The story begins when, some years ago, a picture of Iran’s former Prime Minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, an expression of fear and bewilderment on his face, appeared on the front page of my Washington Post. He had been imprisoned by Islamic revolutionary guards for months, while awaiting ‘trial.’ Soon after the picture was taken, revolutionary judges held a brief hearing and sentenced him to death. Guards immediately hustled him from the hearing room to an outdoor courtyard and carried out the sentence with shots to the back of his head.

I had known the Prime Minister in happier times. As a young systems engineering consultant, I had helped develop computerised simulation models to aid senior policy makers affiliated with Iran’s Plan and Budget Organisation in their long-term development planning work. Our two-year project culminated with a three-hour ‘on-line’ demonstration of the models, exclusively for cabinet ministers and senior military officers. An elegant luncheon followed our demonstration.

The luncheon gave me an opportunity to speak personally with Dr. Hoveyda and I gathered my courage to pose a troubling question. As tactfully as possible, I asked if he was not concerned that social-economic disruptions created by Iran’s accelerated industrialisation and urbanisation might be politically destabilising. In the rare opportunities that an intense work schedule gave me to walk about Teheran, these disruptions were evident, even to someone not schooled in Iran’s culture. The Prime Minister responded confidently that

I need not concern myself with such matters. ‘We know our people,’ he emphasized.

Looking at the Post photograph, I recalled the conversation and wondered what Dr. Hoveyda’s thoughts might have been during his imprisonment and in the moments before his execution.

In ensuing years, I worried about unintended contributions of my work to the draconian scenario that followed Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s abdication.  By then, I had co-authored a widely read book on ending world hunger3 and joined a faculty that trained international development professionals. I knew that even before the Cold War ended, violent conflict was endemic in many developing nations. Yet neither the book on hunger, nor our graduate curriculum, nor the international development professional literature generally, had much to say about linkages between development, deadly conflict and terrorism.  Development practitioners are, by and large, idealistic individuals who believe their work contributes to human well-being, especially the well-being of individuals who seem powerless to help themselves. ‘How probable was it that some elements of international development practice were more likely to produce deadly conflict than enhanced well-being?’ I wondered.

The subject of Paradise Poisoned – identifying the causes of deadly conflict and terrorism so that these pathologies could be prevented – became a major professional preoccupation. In the late 1980s, my colleagues among development professionals expressed little interest. ‘Internal security’ matters were viewed as the domain of politicians, police and military professionals.

Events in the 1990s changed this. Devastating outbreaks of deadly conflict

and terrorism – especially the internationally riveting Rwandan genocide – spurred creation of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, charged with answering the question ‘what might have been done at an early stage [of potential deadly conflicts] to avert mass violence and achieve a just outcome?’

The events of September 11, 2001 made ‘preventing terrorism’ a global preoccupation. More recently, unfolding scenarios in Afghanistan and Iraq have reminded policy makers that military intervention is not a sufficient conflict prevention strategy. There must be a long-term development strategy as well.

The Carnegie Commission’s landmark report, Preventing Deadly Conflict4, gave weight to the idea of development and deadly conflict linkages by identifying‘ structural prevention – or peace building’ – as a cost-effective conflict prevention strategy. Important elements of structural prevention, according to the report, were the development, by individual states, of ‘mechanisms to ensure bedrock security, well-being and justice for their citizens… [and] meeting people’s basic economic, social, cultural and humanitarian needs…’5 ‘The costs of prevention are miniscule,’ Preventing Deadly Conflict concluded, ‘when compared with the costs of deadly  conflict and the rebuilding and psychological healing in its aftermath.’6

Like the Carnegie Commission report, Paradise Poisoned identifies causes of deadly conflicts and explains why they are so difficult to resolve. It points to early warning indicators of conflict outbreaks and proposes structural prevention strategies. Thus it is intended to reach the same professional audiences as the report. Now that the ‘war on terrorism’ has become a global concern, general readers in both developed and developing countries will also find the book to be of interest. Clearly the cost-effective way to fight terrorism is by preventing groups like Al Qa’eda from forming in this first place or, when they have formed, to cut off their pool of potential recruits.

Paradise Poisoned differs from the Carnegie Commission Report in five respects that make it a useful complement as well as a stride forward on the terrain mapped out by Preventing Deadly Conflict.

• It argues that the early warnings envisioned by the Carnegie Commission do not come early enough. High-leverage, cost-effective interventions should, whenever possible, come before what the Report calls ‘symptoms [of] states at risk’ become apparent.

• It shows how the relationship between relatively minor incidents of violent conflict and failed development strategies can provide timely early warning indicators. Recognizing the significance of these early warning indicators can trigger remedial measures focusing – as appropriate – on economic policy, governance, democratisation and security.

• It compiles ‘political conflict incidents’ in graphically compelling ‘fever charts’ that map the escalation of violent conflict in Sri Lanka over a 40-year time horizon. It compares types of incidents to show how the pathogens created by militant movements can infect a country like a disease.

• It uses an explicit systems analysis methodology to represent the development and deadly conflict system as a structure of interlocking feedback loops, synthesizing relevant development and conflict theories. Coupled with contextually rich descriptions, this structure provides a basis for showing linkages between development failures and topologies of rising conflict intensity exhibited in the ‘fever charts.’

• Rather than generalising from a number of conflicts, Paradise Poisoned describes in some detail, over a long time period, one of the most perplexing escalations of deadly conflict and terrorism in the post-World War II era.

• Paradise Poisoned combines political history with economic analysis, grounded in a comprehensive economic database that was created especially for this book. (My commitment to combine political and economic perspectives, in the classic political economy tradition using systems analysis as an integrating framework, mostly explains why the book is so long.)

Why this particular case? Sri Lanka, once a prototype of successful development, had long been discussed by development practitioners as a puzzling example of development failure. My interest in linking deadly conflict, terrorism, and development highlighted it as an interesting subject for study.

The choice was partly serendipitous. American University’s ‘Link’ program with Colombo University gave me the opportunity to live and work there. As I learned more, it became clear that Sri Lanka’s post-independence experience provided a setting for considering linkages between terrorism, conflict and an unusually diverse range of development scenarios.

Paradise Poisoned is not about current events in Sri Lanka. Most of the political

leaders about whom I write are, like Prime Minister Hoveyda, dead. By distancing from current events, I hope to free readers from viewing my conclusions as commentaries on contemporary political debates and maneuverings. In the case of Sri Lankan readers, this is probably unrealistic, but Paradise Poisoned is not written primarily for Sri Lankans. It is written so that others can take heed and learn from their experiences.

First impressions of communal preferences in Malaysia: pros and cons

Saturday June 21, 2008
With kind assistance from a professional colleague of my son, I was able to secure a car and driver for two days of on-and-off-the-beaten path explorations in Malaysia. Thursday, we drove to Malaka, a seaside destination about three hours from KL. Friday, we began, at my request, with a sociological tour of KL, visiting areas occupied by a variety of social strata and in each of Malaysia’s three major communal groups - Malay, Chinese and Indian (predominantly Tamil). Later we stopped briefly at some more traditional tourist destinations. We lunched at a very modest noodle shop, owned by the same Chinese family for forty years and now being managed by the third generation. My Thursday’s driver was an Indian man in his late thirties. Friday’s driver was a Chinese man in his sixties. The other individuals with whom I socialized have been either Chinese and expatriate and, of course, I have been living in the heart of KL’s Chinatown.

I mention the communal identities of my several informants because my first, necessarily superficial impressions of Malaysia’s communal (Bumiputra) preference system are obviously reflect the minority vantage point of those with whom I have spoken. Also, they reflect the my recent readings of Malaysian historyl about half the first volume of Lee Kuan Yew’s massive and engagingly written autobiography. More about Lee Kuan Yew in another blog. Unfortunately, I have yet to gain any deep exposure to the culture and vantage point of Malaysia’s dominant community.

In academic reading I had done previously, Malaysia’s system of preferential treatment for ‘sons of the soil,’ implemented after the 1969 communal riots, was presented as a source of social stability. In my American University course, “Conflict and Development’ I contrasted this with Sri Lankan government policies that have contributed to more than twenty years of intense communal strife. But pro-Malay policies have been a driving force in Malaysia’s political culture since before the time of independence. In particular, according to Lee Kuan Yew, it was fear of Chinese domination, in a democratic polity, that lead Malaysian independence leader, Tunku Abdul Rahman, to press for Singapore’s detachment from the Malaysian Federation.

The ‘success’ of the policy can be seen by contrasting Malaysia’s vibrant modern capital city with Colombo, now partially paralyzed once again by the reality and threat of militant terrorist bombings. But the resentment of the Malaysia’s minority communities, as communicated by my Chinese and Indian informants is real. Preferential university admissions, they report, mean that qualified Chinese and Indian students are denied admission and qualified Chinese and Indian faculty members are denied appointments. The same is true in the government services. The security forces - army, navy and police - are almost entirely Malay. Minority community members do not join because they know that even if they are accepted as recruits, they will be denied promotions.

The contrast between Malaysia’s system of communal preferences and Singapore’s meritocratic system is widely cited. One informant told me the story of a talented young Chinese woman who was denied admission to a Malaysian university and then accepted a scholarship to Singapore’s national university. He told me that such scholarships are available, on the basis of competitive examinations to all Malaysian secondary school graduates. There are three requirements. First, candidates must past a rigorous competitive entrance examination. Second, candidates are subjected to weekly performance tests. If their work falls below a required standard, they are sent home. Third, after receiving their degree, graduates must work in Singapore for at least two years. The hope, my informant told me, was that the ‘best and the brightest’ would remain in Singapore, and many do.

Contrasts between Singapore and Malaysia were frequently cited by my informants, though one told me he had chosen to remain here because of its slower pace and less intensely competitive culture. One was the public transport system. KL has three systems of public transport, an elevated light rail, a monorail, and a train to the airport. But, I was told, the systems are run by independent companies, have different fare systems and do not connect with one another. Also, I was told that there are many public transit stations in areas occupied by Malay community members and far fewer in those occupied by the minorities. When visiting KL’s magnificent Chinese temple complex, I was told that the construction and maintenance of Mosques is supported by government funds. The Chinese and Indian communities must construct and support their own places of worship. I was told that government sponsored family planing services are pressed on minority community family members but that Malay families are encouraged to have as many children as possible. I was told that at the time of separation, the Malaysian Ringit was worth more than twice as much as the Singapore dollar. Now the reverse is true. I was also told, however, that the preference system has worked in at least one respect. Malays now hold influential positions in most of Malaysia’s large business enterprises and are reaping the wealth that such positions provide. This makes it much less likely that Malay community leaders will collude in orchestrating attacks against the Chinese community than was true in 1969.

From studying Sri Lanka for more than 20 years I have learned that first impressions can be misleading. Gaining a deep understanding of a culture requires one to live ‘on the ground’ and years of intensive study. Even then, there always seem to be new ‘layers of the onion’ to be peeled.

All that can be said at this point is there may may exist potential problems that could threaten Malaysia’s political-economic well being and the long term sustainability of its communal preference systems.