Building States, Building Peace Global and Regional Involvement in S
Sánchez-Cacicedo provides a critique of liberal peacebuilding approaches and of international interventions in statebuilding processes, questioning how 'global' these initiatives are, using case studies from the Asian region including Sri Lanka and Myanma
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External Involvement in Sri Lanka’s Peace Process
5.1
Introduction
Third-party facilitation did not turn out to be as ‘cheap’ or simple for the Norwegians or other external actors as Solheim, Norwegian minister for International Development and chief facilitator during the 2002 Sri Lankan peace process, makes it seem in the following statement: Peace making is cheap. That is the cheapest in foreign policy decisions. What is incredibly expensive is war. Wars are far more expensive than peace making ... We can say that the core aspects of peace making are cheaper. It is basically paying the salary of a few persons, the cost of maintaining peace secretariats of the two parties, travelling and accommodation expenses.1 Proof of this is Göran Schill’s view. The Swedish diplomat who was stationed in Colombo during the 2002 peace process expresses what became the increasingly prevalent view of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka among the Western actors as the peace process fell apart: Both parties to the conflict are pursuing very different agendas; how can we reconcile them? If there is no will to achieve peace, why are external actors pushing for it? For humanitarian reasons? There is ongoing scapegoating towards external actors when the causes for protracted conflict are internal. The culture is simply not mature. Maybe it is better for external actors to speak loud and clear about a particular situation, put the blame where it belongs and withdraw on time; in the meantime domestic parties need to internalise the need for a compromise.2 The Swedish diplomat’s critique indirectly alludes to the futility of external involvement, and particularly to external actors’ insistence on remaining on board despite the virulent domestic politics. Yet throughout the manifold 117
10.1057/9781137274168 - Building States, Building Peace, Amaia Sánchez-Cacicedo
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to New York University - Waldmann Dental Library - PalgraveConnect - 2015-05-11
5
Building States, Building Peace
fieldwork interviews that I conducted in Sri Lanka, few foreign diplomats based in Colombo at the time referred to an overly donor-driven, exclusivist and pragmatic peace process. Fewer still acknowledged that the quest for a liberal peacebuilding success failed to address the core issues sustaining the asymmetrical balance of power.3 To this day, Oslo does not readily accept public criticism of its involvement in Sri Lanka, and when it does, it will only admit to a moderate amount of responsibility. It has, however, assessed its role in private, and in 2011 it commissioned an evaluation of its engagement in the 2002 peace process that included external evaluators.4 The focus of this chapter is the complexity of the external involvement in the 2002 peace process in Sri Lanka. I evaluate the way in which material and normative differences among the external actors played out with regard to domestic actors. Below, I analyse structural- and process-related aspects of the non-regional and permanent regional
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