So there. Now, noone can even pretend anymore that there is a ceasefire on Sri Lanka.

There is probably just as much concentrated insanity on Sri Lanka as in the Middle East. The upside is that, unlike with the latter, noone else is affected. Even if Sri Lanka burned to the ground, it never could set half the world ablaze.

In this informative op-ed (kronikk) from the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, two researchers at the Christian Michelsen Institute for human rights studies explain why the situation in Afghanistan is no better than that in Iraq. They also offer constructive proposals for the Pentagon to blithely ignore.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY has since November 2001 engaged in two distinct and partly contradictory processes in Afghanistan. On the one hand is a diverse peace building project involving economic reconstruction, political elections, reform of the state administration and the courts, and support for human rights; on the other hand, warfare.

The war has primarily been prosecuted by US forces against al-Qaeda elements and the Taliban. Since 2003 the US has switched to a classic counter-insurgency strategy whereby the enemy is to be crushed militarily while the population is won over with economic assistance, humanitarian aid, and political initiatives.

Yet innocent lives are often claimed. In May, some 35 civilians (women, children, and elderly men) were killed in a US airstrike against a village in the Kandahar province. Such incidents have occurred several times before. Every time, President Karzai expresses regret and asks the Americans to wage war without harming the civil population. Every time, tempers rise as it becomes clear that Karzai’s pleas are unheeded. When even mosques are bombed — as recently in Kandahar — the conflict is further intensified.

WAGING WAR against a locally entrenched guerrilla force without harming the civilian population is exceedingly difficult in the first place. Nor is Washington interested in advice from the Afghan government, and it has therefore not signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), as standard protocol between sovereign states demands.

When Karzai traveled to Kandahar to convey his regrets for the incident, the inhabitants of the local village requested that foreign forces be pulled out. The coalition forces do not contribute to people’s highest priority: enhanced protection against “everyday violence” at the hands of local strongmen. The international troops are waging a war in Afghanistan that at best does not concern the village and at worst affects it directly and adversely.

US forces have also adopted a mode of operation that provokes counter-reactions almost whereever they go. In Kabul they disregard every traffic rule for their own security. When a lot of such minor issues add to a deeper sense of anger and frustration, things may turn explosive — as recently in Kabul.

THE MAJOR GRIEVANCES are related to much of what has been done in the names of both warfare and peacebuilding. The ambitious program for economic reconstruction and the visions of modernization, democracy, and human rights have created expectations as well as fear. Many were hoping for peace and progress in terms of a restored house, a job, and security. Every poll shows that most Afghans still consider lack of work and security the biggest problems. Meanwhile, others have quite visibly become staggeringly rich; largely, it is assumed, on corruption, smuggling, and drug trade. Similarly, one person’s hopes for greater freedom is another person’s threat against fundamental religious and traditional social values. This conflict plays out both in the public sphere and the interface to the private sphere, as when a female TV host, known for her liberated demeanor on camera, was murdered.

Development invariably fosters contrast and conflict, but the Afghan case is unique. The development is programme-bound to be extensive and swift, and is mainly to be financed by means of development aid. Only some 8 percent of the national budget stems from domestic taxes. Foreigners are conspicuous both in Kabul and on the countryside as advisers, development managers, and so on. This makes the reconstruction — which effectively has become an extensive modernization project — appear to be promoted and owned by foreigners.

When in addition foreign forces wage war in a way that harms ordinary people and militants alike, there is fertile ground for broad mobilization against foreigners, the regime, and those who have gained most from the peace. The Kabul riots targeted them all.

IS THERE A WAY OUT OF this misfortune? Previous attempts to swiftly develop Afghanistan under King Amanullah in the 1920s and President Daoud in the 1970s misfired. When Afghan communists backed by Soviet forces set out to modernize the country while waging war, they failed even worse. There may be a lesson here.

One could likely diminish the antagonism toward the peacebuilding by slowing down the reform programme, putting more weight on basic needs like jobs and security from everyday violence, and lowering the profile of foreigners.

As to the warfare, it does not appear feasible to crush the Taliban guerrilla militarily, nor by letting the military forces assume more humanitarian tasks. In fact the militants have multiplied in proportion to the growing number of foreign troops since November 2001. ISAF and the coalition forces now count some 32,000 combined (USA 23,000, NATO 9,000). Yet the security (as measured by the numbers of military or civilian casualties, or the number of combat incidents) has been weakened, especially since 2003.

Blaming Pakistan — where the Taliban is openly mobilizing — serves to obscure how complex the opposition to the international presence is. Schools for girls are torched in areas where the Taliban never had a foothold, such as the areas where Norwegian troops were attacked, and drugs are cultivated all across the country. Besides, Pakistan’s role must be understood in a regional context and in terms of the fear of being “surrounded” by India, which has now forcefully entered Afghanistan and enhanced its relations with Washington. Political innovation and agility are called for here.

Those are also needed on the military front. The planned US force reduction gave NATO an opportunity to rethink ISAF’s role. Instead, it decided to follow in the coalition’s footsteps by branching out to the south and east and operating with a more offensive mandate. The Brits are going to wage war on the drug smugglers of Helmand; another war they are unlikely to win. The Canadians in Kandahar have already launched offensive operations. This makes not only them, but probably all foreign forces, magnets and targets for the militants.

ONE ALTERNATIVE is actually to deescalate the offensive warfare in the south and east, and lower the profile of foreign forces by concentrating them in a few urban settlements. If such a strategy of stabilization is tied to a more active diplomacy of reconciliation with respect to the Taliban, it needs not spawn garrison towns in a negative sense.

The Afghans have ancient traditions for negotiating as well as fighting. Karzai is a skilled negotiator in this game, as e.g. his selection of governors shows. He has long stressed the necessity of a political solution. To send in Canadian troops or American A-10 aircraft can only clutter up this strategy and bring out the drawback of deploying military force when what is needed is the will to innovative thinking and political solutions.

I might add that another compatriot of mine, the legendary anthropologist Fredrik Barth, is making the same argument. According to Barth, what is characteristic of Afghanistan is the ever changing alliances. By continuing to bomb the Taliban one has effectively solidified it outside the power-sharing cabal instead of coopting it. — Sirocco

In “news” from the failed state of Sri Lanka, a certain H. L. D. Mahindapala at an “online newspaper” known as the Asian Tribune bleats:

The Asian Tribune, which I refuse to dignify with a link, is perhaps the most dishonest online publication I’ve yet encountered in twelve years on the Internet. Basically a shrill propaganda outlet for Sinhala extremism of the absolutely crudest kind, it has shied away from nothing to undermine the peace process by constant bitching about Norway being “biased” toward the LTTE. Not content with accusing the peace broker of ulterior motives too lame to repeat, it has insinuated that the Norwegian peace envoys have masterminded terrorist attacks to boost their importance.

The evidence? “Analysts state,” “analysts agree,” “analysts note.” These are the Asian Tribune’s euphemisms for “we have pulled this out of our rectums, aren’t we great?”

No, you are shameless hacks. If the “pilot” has indeeed left the “plane” — and at this point I only wish that were the case — rest assured that Asian Tribune helped push him out. Now, as the aircraft is tailspinning to the ground, it scolds him for having been so ejected.

Oy, that’s rich.

PS. The aforementioned H. L. D. Mahindapala won’t be affected by the civil war. He’s an expat in Australia.

In the Sri Lanka conflict, Norway’s angelic patience is wearing thin:

I never thought I would feel this way, but here I am: Just ditch these lying fools and let them slug it out. It’s what they want and what they do best.

More from the mad little island:

News bulletins on Sri Lanka have a certain bland and repetetive character: international envoys arrive in ‘bids’ to ‘jump-start peace talks’ in the face of ‘escalating violence’. There is abundant precedent for this.

One is tempted to say: enough is enough. The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) are child-recruiting, suicide-bombing terrorists whose moral standing is somewhere between Hamas and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. The government in Colombo consists of corrupt, craven, and benighted extremists who, to illustrate, just became the first in the world to ban The Da Vinci Code over its alleged blasphemic nature.

Such leadership explains why Sri Lanka ranks as the 25th most failed state in the world, between Rwanda and Ethiopia. Though the country is utterly impoverished by two decades of civil war and dependent on foreign aid, its overall rate of absorption of such aid is a humble 20 percent, according to the Institute of Policy Studies. The utilization rate of tsunami aid, according to the US Auditor General’s Office, is 13.5 percent. Think about it: in Aceh, the tsunami ended the war, whereas Lanka couldn’t even agree on how to distribute the aid! Indeed, five weeks after the disaster only 30 percent of the affected in government-controlled areas — to say nothing of the rest — had received any assistance whatsoever.

If there is a silver lining to the new flare of civil war, it is that the $4.5 billion in aid that international donors — the EU, the US, Japan, and Norway — have made conditional on peace may soon be put to better use elsewhere than on dysfunctional and perhaps forever hopeless Sri Lanka.

The New York Times:

So what is it these people want?

Both sides have shown through their actions that they do not desire peace at the price exacted: a federal Sri Lanka. Nor does either side want relapse into full-scale civil war. Unless they are idiots, they must have learned that it is unwinnable as well as unbearable. It is simply not an option.

Each must also know that the other is not all of a sudden going to fold. This is not a game of chicken.

That leaves only one possibility. What either side prefers is precisely this teetering on the edge of the abyss in an apparent show of strength.

Too bad gravity is getting the last laugh.

Begged by a war-weary Sri Lanka government to facilitate peace, Norway brokered the 2002 cease-fire that gave respite from a quarter century of carnage. Ever since, despite no end of insults and abuse designed to eject it, it has striven to get the psychotic Tamil Tigers and the rigid hardliners in charge of Colombo to meet and work out a compromise.

Not a chance. In fact, if not for pressure by the international community, the peace process would have ended long ago.

As with the Oslo Accords for the Middle East, neither side was interested in preparing its population for compromise. Instead, the prevailing faction on each side saw the process as a means of wringing concessions from the other side without giving up anything of substance in return.

There is little to do now but to leave this mad little island to war, until it tires of it once again. Though some of them will doubtless be trying, the Sri Lankans — unlike Iraqis — will have noone to blame but themselves.

The representative of 1.2 billion Chinese found himself manhandled on the White House lawn on Thursday by the so-called leader of the free world.

But that — and screaming protesters — were not the worst indignities Mr. Hu had to endure: in another protocol gaffe, China’s national anthem was announced as the anthem of “the Republic of China.”

This brings to mind a Norwegian official visit to China sometime around 1980, during which the PM, at the formal banquet, called a toast to the Republic of China. And so it was that a dining hall of Communist cadres were forced to drink to independent Taiwan.

I fondly think of that as an unintended high spot of Norwegian diplomacy.

News from Sri Lanka:

I don’t usually cover the Sri Lanka conflict on this blog. There are times, though, when the sheer inventiveness of the lies and duplicity in Lankan politics just leaves me awestruck. The Bush administration, the Khartoum regime, both sides in the I/P conflict — they could all take lessons from many of the operators on that troubled island.