The cage : the fight for Sri Lanka and the last days of the Tamil Tigers

427 Pages·2012·3.32 MB·English

by  Weiss

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface
Preface
CHAPTER ONE - The Lion’s Victory
CHAPTER TWO - Paradise Found
CHAPTER THREE - Paradise Lost
CHAPTER FOUR - The Tiger Revolt
CHAPTER FIVE - Convoy 11
CHAPTER SIX - Inside the Cage
CHAPTER SEVEN - The Struggle for Truth
CHAPTER EIGHT - Managing the Siege
CHAPTER NINE - The Watching World
CHAPTER TEN - Aftermath
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Postmortem
Glossary
List of Acronyms
Timeline
Dramatis Personae
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Copyright Page
This book was inspired by my grandmother Suzanne, who urged me to risk and
rove,

And is dedicated to my grandfather Karel 1902—1945, who walked with me.
Acknowledgments

MY SPECIAL GRATITUDE TO KATEY GRUSOVIN, intrepid filmmaker and
roving intellect, who endured the most turgid phase of my manuscript, kept my
spirits up through the long months of writing and surrendered her Seal Rocks
house with its kangaroo-strewn lawn; to Owen Harries, Senior Fellow of the
Lowy Institute, adviser to statespeople and leaders and Editor Emeritus of the
National Interest in Washington, DC, who generously and repeatedly critiqued
the most important elements of this book until I was satisfied; and to my resolute
agent Jonah Straus, who from the distant shores of New York City cultivated this
project with dedication and aplomb, and brought it to publication.
My particular thanks also to Louise Arbour, President of the International
Crisis Group; Chandana Keerthi Bandara and the BBC’s Sinhala and Tamil
Service at Bush House; Alex Bellamy, Professor of International Security at the
Griffith Asia Institute, for his always warm listening; Andy Brooks of UNICEF;
Dr. Samuel Doe, UN postconflict specialist; the Hon. John Dowd AO,
Chancellor of Southern Cross University and President of the Australian Section
of the International Commission of Jurists; Chris du Toit, for his example; Eric
Ellis, for his insights into Sri Lanka’s political elites; David Feith of Monash
University; Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission; Yolanda
Foster at Amnesty International, London, for help obtaining archives of the JVP
insurrection; Joe Gannon at Mulberry Tree Press, who carefully attended to the
improved text of the US/Canada edition; Tom Gilliatt of Pan Macmillan for his
measured guidance; the unique Clare Goddard for her Norwich respite and
access to her rich library, from which I extracted work on the theosophists; Erika
Goldman of Bellevue Publishing in New York City, who always barracked for
my voice of experience; Natalie Grove, for her interest and substantive
contributions to this project; the BBC’s Sri Lanka Bureau Chief Charles
Havilland; Ron Haviv, photographer of the VII Photo Agency, who generously
contributed his photos from Sri Lanka; “Mr. Heidel,” a Sinhalese intellectual and
gentleman who provided me with the bulk of the most important and difficult-to-
obtain texts on Sri Lanka’s Buddhism, ethnography and history, and whose
compassion gave me great hope; Dr. Anthony Hip-pisley, for his close attention
to the text; Rajan Hoole of the University Teachers for Human Rights Jaffna,
whose courageous and exhaustive labors speak for themselves; Vincent Hubin, a
devoted United Nations civil servant and racquets partner who provided so much
of the data that tracked the fate of civilians caught in the siege; my great
comrade Morten Hvaal, whose military expertise, journalistic sense, experience
of the siege of Sarajevo and close observations of governments at war, quite
apart from the sheer joy of his friendship, served as a vital point of reference in
Sri Lanka; the courageous staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross
who served in Sri Lanka, and bore witness; Alfred Ironside, Director of
Communications at the Ford Foundation; Alan Keenan, the Sri Lanka expert at
the International Crisis Group; Warren Jacobs, for his insights into fast attack
craft and “brown water” tactics; David Keen of the London School of
Economics, for his fascinating chapters from Endless War; Damien Kingsbury of
Deakin University’s Faculty of International Relations; Ara Koopelien, for photo
research; Ogi and Emily Krunic of USAID, for cartographic advice; Martin
Krygier, the Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at the
University of New South Wales Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law;
Rich Lang of Rhode Island, intellectual, friend and doppelganger, for his
valuable critiques; John Lee, the China expert at the Center for Independent
Studies in Sydney (and new father); Iain Levine, Program Director at Human
Rights Watch, for his efforts on behalf of this book; Jake Lynch at the University
of Sydney’s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies; Javier Marroquin, friend,
author and aid worker, who shared his memorable experiences of Sri Lanka, as
he has shared so much, and Judith, for the weeks of writing in Barcelona; Ravi
Nessman, the South Asia Bureau Chief for the Associated Press, a humorous
companion who kindly read through the manuscript and offered valuable advice;
the staff of London’s Overseas Development Institute; Ana Pararajasingham, for
his generous outreach; Kay Peddle, my hard-working, attentive and elegant
editor at Random House, who spotted the potential in this story; Jacobo
Quintanilla, for his help and good friendship; David Rampton of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, for his insights into the JVP; Philip Reeves of
National Public Radio; Richard Rigby, former Australian ambassador to China,
and now head of the China Institute at the Australian National University; Jim
Ross, the Legal and Policy Director at Human Rights Watch, for his expert
attention to aspects of international law addressed in the book, as well as for his
generous, sharp, expeditious and warmly delivered Yuletide review of one of the
final versions of the manuscript; Jane Selley, for her close attention to the text;
Justice Carolyn Simpson of the NSW Supreme Court; Will Sulkin, my publisher
at Random House, who had the courage and curiosity to first take this project on;
Captain Timothy Visscher, who explained the intricacies and explored the
implications of the Long Range Information Tracking System with me; Lal
Wickrematunge, former police officer, now publisher of Colombo’s doggedly
courageous The Sunday Leader and brother of the murdered Lasantha; Professor
Clive Williams, Visiting Fellow, Strategic & Defense Studies Center, School of
International, Political & Strategic Studies at the Australian National University,
for his lucid and restrained analysis of the LTTE; my colleagues and friends at
the United Nations, whose valuable work goes often unsung; staff at the British
Library for their help; contributing members of the Sinhalese communities of
Australia, France and the UK, who did not wish to be named, yet reviewed the
chapters on the JVP, the early history of Sri Lanka, as well as my conclusions;
contributing members of Australia’s Tamil community who did not wish to be
named; and the many, many full-hearted and boisterous Sri Lankans of casual
encounters and more profound friendships, who shed so much light on the
complexity of the island.
My thanks, not least of all, to all my family—my father Zdenek and mother
Angela for her vigilant reading of the text and proof suggestions, my stepfather
Alwyn for the legal reading, my sister Rachael for her Sheffield cottage, sisters
Suzanne and Alexandra, nieces and nephews—but above all others to my
daughters Anna and Catalina, and to their mother Olga, who brought joy and
warmth, insistently, even as they endured the months of writing.

Preface to the American Edition

IF I WERE AN AMERICAN browsing through a table of books, I would surely
ask myself what on earth could tempt me to read a volume dedicated to a distant
war fought on a small Asian island. Toward the end of The Cage, originally
published in mid-2011, I rhetorically posed a similar question to American
political leaders: Why should they bother with Sri Lanka? Fortunately, the US
administration answered the question on its own, in a fascinating diplomatic
battle won just this year.
When the civil war ended in Sri Lanka on May 18, 2009, few knew what had
transpired. To those outside the Sri Lankan circle of knowledge, the news
sounded like a cause for celebration: the end of a 27-year-long civil war, the
destruction of a ruthless terrorist organization, and the return of a legendary
island paradise to a state of peace. In our Age of Terrorism, this was surely a
good thing. Weren’t we in the West engaged in the same kind of struggle?
Just a month after the war, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva resolved
to praise the government of the island nation. But in March 2012, a very
different US-initiated resolution was negotiated through the same body. This
time, prompted by public outrage over evidence of war crimes, the US and 23
other nations resolved to discover what had really happened in the months
leading up to the final day of fighting. Between these two resolutions much had
changed.
For years, the government of Sri Lanka had promoted their version of events.
It was, they told their people and the outside world, an unprecedented “historic
victory.” Their freeing of almost 300,000 Tamils from the control of the Tamil
Tiger rebels had been “bloodless”; moreover, it was “the world’s largest hostage
rescue.” They touted a set of anti-insurgency principles that had governed the
campaign, and even offered to train the US military, struggling in Afghanistan.
Then, inevitably, contradictions began to emerge. There had always been
rumors coming from the vanquished Tamils. Stories of mass executions;
government forces targeting civilians, hospitals, and schools; prisoners taken in
the dead of night from refugee camps after the war, whose silent removal
became permanent disappearances. But now there was fresh, compelling
evidence that ran roughshod over government claims.
Young Sri Lankan soldiers had unwittingly documented their crimes. These
troops did what is increasingly common among today’s soldiers: they had used
their cell phones to film scenes of civilian and combatant executions. These