Undermining a Popular Regime Considered Inconvenient

Some regimes are popular, and remain so. Some quickly outlive their appeal. An unpopular regime could stay in power by deploying brute force with the approval of its friends. Bahrain is an illustration of this phenomenon. Of course, for reasons described below, countries like Bahrain do not come under sustained criticism from the defenders and ever present gurus of human rights.

As we witnessed in Eastern Europe in 1989, mass discontent can drive an unpopular regime from power even where it commands overwhelming force. Where the credibility of a government is in balance and its popularity with a critical sector of the population is uncertain, especially the middle class, its exit can be precipitated with outside encouragement. The speed with which the yesterday's favourites in Egypt and Tunisia were first dropped from favour and then disposed of illustrate this. In Libya, a new found friend was quickly emasculated, deposed and humiliatingly killed.

Even regimes popular with their own people could be driven from power by manipulating critical segments of the public and carefully inserted external elements. The Thakshin government of Thailand may fall into this category. The opportunism of the domestic malcontents convert to "popular" demonstrations, the international (western) media highlights the negatives, INGOs denounce the use of force when hitherto non extent armed groups suddenly emerge, the CNN and the BBC show the bloodshed with hardy disguised glee, High Commissioner Navi Pillay joins in wringing her selective hands in pain and we are well on the way to regime change. All this can be carefully orchestrated. The once popular regime of Robert Mugabe has been vilified by a minority, especially the white settlers, and has been pushed against the ropes, ably assisted by European states and the Western media. He has survived only because he enjoys the entrenched support of his own people and the loyalty of his neighbours.

The process of undermining a government, considered undesirable in the eyes of certain vested interests, could be facilitated in many ways. A willing agent of change are the international NGOs (INGO). Almost all of them are based in the West and are heavily funded by Western governments. Published records of national aid agencies such as USAid, Ausaid, CIDA, and Noraid bear testimony to the extent to which western aid donors support INGOs such as AI, HRW and ICG and selected local NGOs. Interestingly non of the major INGOs are headquartered in developing countries. They are the ones to first raise the banner of human rights and humanitarian principles, with justification or not, in a country meeting with their disapproval. Libya is a case in point. The bodies of the thousands of civilians allegedly killed by Quadaffi are still to be found by the new governing authorities in Libya although the poor man is now history.

The INGOs, which have quietly spread through local communities in many countries, purportedly to assist those communities, have ready access to donor governments and multilateral organisations. The credibility level of their reports increase with the likeness of skin colour. One notes the shrill campaign, very similar in style to what occurred in Libya and Sudan, now being conducted with regard to Syria. The numbers of dead, with no authentication, are bandied about with gay abandon and publicised by the media. The BBC has begun to tally the number of dead on a daily basis but with no verifiable basis. Atleast one young women supposedly brutally abused and killed by government forces (INGO story) has emerged hale and hearty on government television.

Selected groups of local NGOs also play a crucial role undermining governments considered undesirable. Their campaigns and research projects are funded heavily by bilateral aid donors ((essentially Western) and these funds may constitute their major source of income. Publicly provided funds are channelled through NGOs with little accountability. Host governments may remain blissfully unaware of the extent to which selected NGOs are funded by western aid donors and of their efforts at undermining legitimate governments. The writer has been told of the massive funding received from western donors by the CPA based in Sri Lanka. The CPA and its spokesmen have been consistently critical of government actions even while the population at large has been overwhelmingly supportive of the government.

Small groups with little mass appeal but with their own sectoral agendas, including rump LTTE elements, have obtained critical access to western diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka. This may explain the strikingly, disproportionate portion of the aid provided to Sri Lanka by Ausaid ($140 million), US aid ($129 million) and by the EU (over $120 million) being channelled to the North and the East causing resentment elsewhere in the country as significant pockets of poverty remain elsewhere. Such resentment may become a factor impacting on the standing of the Government in the future.

The INGOs were the first to scream of human rights violations by the advancing Sri Lankan Security forces while they had studiously avoided confronting the brutal LTTE for over 27 years. The same INGOs were a ready source of intelligence for their own embassies during and after the conflict. However, obnoxious the LTTE may have been, many were firmly sympathetic to the LTTE. The writer recalls an interview with a Sri Lankan official, who referred to a conversation he had with a spokeswoman for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) who wept at the prospect of her friends in the LTTE hierarchy in Killinochchi being killed in combat.

In another incident, the head of the SLMM rushed to characterise a combat training facility of the LTTE bombed by the air force as a school. A number of child recruits were among the dead and injured. Consciously or unconsciously he contributed to the undermining the credibility of the Sri Lankan government in the eyes of donor governments and multilateral organisations. The Dutch NGO, ZOA had inexplicably built a hospital close to a LTTE camp (Stanley Base in Ampara) in the middle of the jungle in Eastern Sri Lanka. The writer knew of a nurse with the MSF (the daughter of a diplomat), so enthralled with the LTTE, that she decided to give birth to her baby in the LTTE controlled Jaffna hospital in the early nineties and was presented with a gold chain with a tiger. The bonds between the INGO community and the LTTE appear to have been substantial.

The same bonds are now being established with the rump LTTE. With a continuous stream of "information" critical of the government being supplied to the INGOs and through them to the donor community. The writer has heard diplomats in Colombo glibly parroting the rump LTTE propaganda. Eg. That Tamil women in the North searching for fire wood at night (?) being propositioned by soldiers.

Similarly, the current barrage of disapproval of alleged government triumphalism ignores the pomp and pageantry that accompanies the annual V Day celebrations in Europe despite the Germans having been defeated over 65 years ago,

The writer was provided a record of a discussion at a well known hangout of the expatriate community down Gregory's Road in Colombo where it became evident that the major INGOs had very little sympathy for the elected Government. A participant had to forcefully remind them that they were guests in the country and they were obliged to abide by the laws of the land. They could not consider themselves above the law or that they could always run with their complaints to their own diplomatic missions bypassing the national authorities.

The UN itself has played a dubious role in these circumstances. While ostensibly neutral, it has progressively tended to adopt and endorse the views of the INGOs and their home governments. It is not a coincidence that the UN's tone became increasingly shrill in the case of Libya and Syria. The tone was not quite so shrill in the case of a number of other Governments in the Middle East suppressing dissent which enjoyed the sympathy of the West. In Sri Lanka, while the senior officials of the UN maintained public neutrality, many middle ranking and junior officials sympathised brazenly with the LTTE despite its brutality, its recruitment of child soldiers, its targeting of civilians, etc.

Hundreds of millions of Dollars worth of cement and steel were shipped to LTTE controlled areas of Sri Lanka by UN agencies and the NGOs and nothing of use to civilians appears to have been constructed. But vast networks of underground bunkers made of concrete remain to this day. Many UN officials operating in LTTE controlled areas were a ready source of intelligence for their national authorities despite the clear prohibitions specified in the UN Charter. The notorious Penny Amma of the UNICEF (an Australian) remained in Kilinochchi for over eight years "married" to a LTTE operative half her age. The one time head of the UNDP in Colombo, Miguel Bormeo, was on the verge of being expelled for his blatantly pro LTTE views. Much of the information supplied to such UN officials was managed and processed by trained LTTE operatives. Rump LTTE elements have in no small measure continued to diminish the image of a government elected by an overwhelming majority of the people of Sri Lanka.

One simple technique the LTTE adopted to influence donor government and UN thinking was to get close to the rank and file of their officers sent to Sri Lanka.

Young, mostly single and lonely, many of the rank and file have little in depth knowledge of the country. Most are there for the money and the opportunity to spend three years in the sun. In Colombo they hang out with each other at expensive night spots or with social contacts critical of the government. (Once, a young UNHCR chick, returning late after a drunken night out marched in to a neighbour's residence and complained furiously about a religious pirith ceremony which was disturbing her attempts to fall asleep!). When in the North or the East, they are regaled with food, flattery and favours by elements favourable to the LTTE creating the ideal background to establish an anti government mindset. A similar development was nipped early in the bud in China with a carefully organised monitoring system.

Developing countries grappling with the daunting challenge of improving the conditions of their own people in accordance with their own priorities have the additional burden of warding off regime change efforts orchestrated elsewhere.

The challenge may become further complicated by those who are supposedly there to help, wittingly or unwittingly contributing to the process of regime change.

- Asian Tribune -