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South Asia’s Arab Spring

06 Apr 2022

  • Protests amid hybrid economic war in Pakistan and Sri Lanka 
BY Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake South Asia’s Arab Spring is here, amid global Cold War tensions and slow tectonic shifts in power and wealth eastwards to Asia and the Indian Ocean region, hastened and heightened by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, Western pressure mounted with almost simultaneous visits from various British, European, and US emissaries who cautioned and questioned Delhi’s historic and close ties with Moscow. Simultaneously, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan who had visited Russia on a pre-planned trip a few weeks earlier was subject to a no-confidence motion, which was later deflected with the dissolution of the Parliament. Khan pointed a finger at the US as the foreign power behind events in Islamabad and a regime change operation through the buying of politicians and political parties. Khan showed material evidence of the foreign conspiracy and named names: Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu. A letter from Washington, D.C., dated a day before the no-confidence motion was actually tabled, had stated: “Pakistan would be forgiven if Khan lost the no-confidence motion!”, proving Washington had foreknowledge of events in Islamabad. Ironically, Khan – who saved Pakistan’s economy from the economic destruction that almost two years of World Health Organisation (WHO)-recommended Covid-19 lockdowns caused in Sri Lanka and India, and protected the Pakistani people and the economy by refusing to lockdown Pakistanis by stating that the resulting poverty would kill more people than the virus – has been accused of economic mismanagement, even though he was proved right. The World Bank has lauded Khan’s handling of the Covid-19 “panic-demic” in Pakistan.  Khan’s friendship with China and recent visit to Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin, he noted, had irked Washington, and that that was the reason that Pakistan was targeted. Washington however, has been much softer on its Indian Quadrilateral Security Dialogue Group partner’s friendship with Russia. India and Pakistan seemed to be on the same page vis-à-vis Russia this time. Indeed, there may be a new Asian confluence, with China, India, and Pakistan all refusing to follow North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) condemnation of Moscow, following the NATO debacle in Afghanistan last year. Staged US dollar crisis and the protests in Sri Lanka The same week that Pakistan’s Khan faced a no-confidence motion, Sri Lanka too saw an Arab Spring-style “colour revolution” unfold, with protests against former US citizen President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the Rajapaksa brothers’ regime, given the soaring cost of living, fuel, and food shortages due to a much-hyped US dollar shortage in the country and downgrades by rating agencies. Of course, Sri Lanka’s debt is peanuts compared to America’s whopping $ 20 trillion. A few weeks earlier, the Sri Lankan rupee crashed and lost 70% of its value – a precursor to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) “bailout”, or is it “bail in” negotiations in Washington, D.C.? Although in real terms, Sri Lanka is one of South Asia’s wealthier countries with high social development indicators, a fuel and electricity crisis materialised after the rupee crash, and there were long queues at petrol sheds and gas shops. But Sri Lanka’s crisis also may be more about geopolitics and less about economics. Since the Easter Sunday attacks on tourist hotels and churches in 2019 and the economy and the island’s rejection of America’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact, this strategically located island, in the Indian Ocean’s sea lanes of communication, appears to have been subjected to a form of hybrid economic warfare. For the past four years, there have been lockdowns in the months of March and April on some pretext, as well as cyber and maritime trade disruption also with burning and sinking ships – the MV X-Press Pearl last year and MT New Diamond. Sri Lanka, which was once referred to as a “valuable piece of real estate” by American diplomat Alice G. Wells, appears to be vital for the maintenance of America’s free and open Indo Pacific. So too does the Sinhala diaspora appear to have been weaponised: Basil Rajapaksa, the brother of the President and the Prime Minister and former Finance Minister in Sri Lanka is a US citizen. Governance in Sri Lanka during the past three years has been a family affair of the hybrid American-Sri Lankan Rajapaksa family. Basil Rajapaksa was set to fly to Washington DC to the IMF, after a staged parliamentary debate on 8 April.  IMF as deus ex machina Remarkably, the Sri Lanka Government, many in the Opposition, and some protestors see the IMF as a sort of “deus ex machina” solution to the crisis triggered by an apparent US dollar shortage after rating agencies downgraded the island in concert last year, making it difficult for the Government to roll over the Rs. 7 billion debt to be paid this year, owed primarily to sovereign bond traders. Sri Lanka’s debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is around 110% partly as a result of economic mismanagement and the Covid-19 policy debacle of the past two years. But then Japan’s debt to GDP ratio is over 200%. Compared to America’s US $ 20 trillion of debt, Sri Lanka’s debt is peanuts, around Rs. 67 billion. Is Sri Lanka, whose currency steeply depreciated as a precursor to the IMF negotiation in March because of an apparent US dollar shortage to clear goods and fuel from the Port, being targeted? The saucy island had the temerity to refuse the US MCC Compact and the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2019, and since then, the economic crisis has escalated to the point that default and an IMF bailout now appears inevitable. The island was repeatedly downgraded by rating agencies and could not roll over its debt. The Euro-American financial system comprises rating agencies, sovereign bond traders, and of course the Washington Consensus and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or the Paris Club.  To be fair, the IMF has never pretended that it cares about poor people or inequality, but rather prefers to impose austerity measures on the common people, which should instead be imposed on luxury-living politicians and business elites with, for, and through which the IMF works. Is the IMF a fake solution that is offered by all political parties who are bought for a national Government yet to be formed? Unlike Pakistani Prime Minister Khan, known for his courage and integrity on and off the cricket field, the hybrid American-Sri Lanka Rajapaksa regime would not point a finger at the external actors behind Sri Lanka’s 2019 Easter attacks, the blow to the tourism-dependent economy followed by lockdowns and travel warnings, and the compounding economic debacle of the past three years. Four years of hybrid economic war Retrospectively, the mysterious Islamic State-claimed Easter Sunday attacks on coastal hotels and the tourism dependent economy in 2019, 10 years after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the dawn of peace in Sri Lanka, may be seen to herald the onset of a hybrid economic war in Sri Lanka. The attacks used religion as a cover to hit China’s Shangri-La Hotel, where the terrorist leader Zahran Hashim and another suicide bomber perished, signalling that this was the most important target. The hybrid war-style Easter Sunday 2019 attacks were followed by two years of Covid-19 bio-war and fear narratives, and economically destructive lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. There was massive health-sector expenditure (almost 38% of the budget), also on the purchase of 16 million useless and expensive Pfizer-BioNTech booster injections by Basil Rajapaksa, the Head of the Covid-19 Task Force, and in 2022, there were no funds to purchase essential drugs. All health institutions were also captured through digital colonialism by external actors promoting the Covid-19 narrative and lockdowns.  For the past four years, a pattern has emerged: every March-April, a new round of destabilisation starts, and since 2019, Sri Lankan citizens have been routinely put in lockdowns and curfews. Meanwhile, foreign Navies stage war games off the coasts of this strategic island, as was the case with the Malabar war games that beached and killed pilot whales, while Lankans were in lockdown in 2020. This is a pattern.  Has the island been systematically targeted because it sits on the Indian Ocean sea lanes of communication vital to secure America’s “free and open Indo Pacific” after it refused the MCC Compact and the SOFA? Geography is history in this strategic island in the Indian Ocean. In a similar manner, Pakistan was targeted for regime change after Khan’s visit to Russia. Lawfare: Solutions when conspiracy theories come true We live in a post-Covid-19 world when conspiracy theories increasingly seem to come true. Protests may be useless without creative alternatives to the proffered IMF “solution” that would also require foreign legal firms taking over the island’s economic negotiations.  Strategic Sri Lanka may need to look to Asia for help and development at this time of national humiliation and develop a strategy to de-dollarise and trade in a basket of currencies. It may consider an independent economic, trade, energy, and foreign policy, and source its oil, gas, and other energy needs from Russia at discount prices like India is doing. Going to the IMF and its aid conditions means that Sri Lanka loses policy autonomy and sovereignty, and will be unable to have an independent foreign, economic, trade, or energy policy that serves the interest of her citizens. At this time, Sri Lanka seems to be also subject to the phenomenon of lawfare and full-spectrum dominance and remote over-the-horizon operation. Lawfare, as documented in the regime change operation against Brazil’s Leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is, as identified by Lula, the process whereby a country’s legal system is subverted and weaponised against justice.  At this time, there is a pattern of fundamental rights cases against Government actions being dismissed while the people are distracted with food and fuel shortages and/or Covid-19 lockdowns. Petitions that have been refused leave to proceed, sometimes by five-judge benches, include challenges to the sale of the Kerawalapitiya Yugadanavi Power Plant at this time of energy crisis to a US company named New Fortress in a midnight deal by the President; the Central Bank bond scam cases; the cases challenging the Covid-19 mass injections gazette of 2022 which would impose digital vaccine certificates and discriminate those who are not injected from public places under a fake health emergency, and would also enable surveillance, stop crowds and protests, stymie democracy, and promote digital colonialism and the control of citizens. Is – as Khan said of Pakistan – Sri Lanka being targeted in an over-the-horizon full-spectrum dominance operation as the Cold War returns to South Asia with America’s ominous “Pivot to Asia” and disengagement from Afghanistan? (The writer is a social and medical anthropologist) …………………………………………………………………………………. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.


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