Red Sea, Gaza and Sri Lanka’s foreign policy

by Lasanda Kurukulasuriya

Sri Lanka’s remarks at the meetings of the 19th Summit of the Non Aligned Movement in Uganda, must surely have had observers of international relations, especially relating to West Asia, scratching their heads. President Ranil Wickemesinghe in Kampala on Friday (19 Jan.) said he welcomed the fact that the 19th Summit gave “highest priority to the crisis in Gaza and the inalienable rights of the people of Palestine to self- determination and the realisation of an independent and sovereign state of Palestine,” according to the Foreign Ministry.

At the Ministerial Meeting on Wednesday 17th Foreign Minister Ali Sabry asserted that “Non-alignment forms a cornerstone of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy.” At the Ministerial Committee on Palestine the following day, he expressed Sri Lanka’s “deep concern on the tragedy that is continuing to unfold” in Gaza, stressing that “a humanitarian ceasefire is the only solution to halt the mounting civilian death toll.”

These remarks would appear ironic, coming a fortnight after Wickremesinghe announced a decision ‘to deploy a ship from the Sri Lanka Navy to the Red Sea, contributing to the security of the region against Houthi activities.’ It would contribute to a US-led operation to counter attacks on merchant ships by Yemen’s Houthi militants in the vital trade route. The Houthis say they are targeting Israeli-linked vessels in solidarity with Palestinians, and to bring pressure on Israel to end the assault on Gaza.

It is not clear how the President’s decision came about. There has been speculation that he was possibly responding to a request from the US, to support its military action against the Houthis. His disclosure on January 3, at an event at the BMICH, came on the same day that the White House issued a joint statement from the US and some allies, warning that the Houthis would bear the responsibility of the ‘consequences’ if they did not stop the attacks.

There has been a marked reluctance on the part of even the US’s western allies to be associated with the exercise. Some countries, like India, reportedly deployed their ships in the region to protect their own maritime traffic, but not under US command. The call to join a US-led military adventure in the Red Sea cannot be seen as simply an exercise to protect international shipping for the common good, comparable with, say, the multinational effort launched some years ago that effectively countered piracy in the seas off Somalia.

This was a call to ‘take sides’ on a political issue – one that has shaken the conscience of the world. Sri Lanka, a founding member of the NAM and part of the global South will be seen, not only to have taken the wrong ‘side’ on this issue, but will end up on the wrong side of history with this wrong-footed decision – if it is carried out. It doesn’t help that amid the crisis, Sri Lanka dispatched a group of workers to Israel, possibly to meet a labour shortfall arising from the ongoing war on Gaza.

Charge of genocide

The UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza, while UN agencies deplore the catastrophic proportions of the humanitarian crisis. Israel now faces the charge of genocide before the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest legal body. The charge brought by South Africa is one that “fits clearly under the definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory,” wrote Prof. John Mearsheimer, Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Programme on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. He described the application as being “comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented.

” Anuradha Chenoy wrote that “South African lawyers unpeeled the layers of Israel’s actions in each sphere of Gaza’s people’s life to show that ‘a people are being destroyed.” The retired Dean and Professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University went on to say, “The argument and evidence presented by South Africa, is been watched by the world over the last three months. What South Africa has done is to systematically bring it together, in a compelling, convincing and courageous way.”

The US has joined Israel in rejecting South Africa’s charge of genocide.

This is the backdrop against which the Sri Lanka government seeks to support the US-led Red Sea military operation. The government’s argument is that the re-routing of ships around Africa, resulting from disruption of shipping in the Red Sea, would lead to a rise in the cost of goods and would be harmful to Sri Lanka’s economy. It is anybody’s guess whether this rationalisation would fly with ordinary Sri Lankans, who may find reasons for the ‘rising cost of goods’ nearer home.

Related events

It does not appear that the Sri Lanka Navy has been consulted on matters such as readiness of its vessels and weaponry to counter attacks by drones and anti-ship ballistic missiles reportedly being used by the Houthis, or the costs (that experts suggest could far exceed the government’s estimate of Rs 500 million a month – calling into question the argument of ‘rising cost of goods.’) A decision relating to the crisis in Gaza would anyway call for an approach that goes beyond pedestrian considerations of a ‘cost-benefit analysis.’ This was amply displayed in the high priority accorded to Palestine and Gaza at the 19th NAM summit.

At this summit Sri Lanka strongly supported the call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and stood by Palestine’s cause, alongside other leaders of the global South. The apparent desire, at the same time, to appease the US by acceding to a request to join its military operation against Houthis in the Red Sea, is inexplicable. Has the government failed to see any connection between the two? The relatedness of these events was noted by Russian envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzya. The developments in the Red Sea are the “direct projection of violence in Gaza, where the cruel operation of Israel continues already for three months,” he is reported as saying at a UN Security Council meeting,

Analysts looking at the bigger picture say that what the US and UK are doing could lead to further escalation of conflict. “The US and UK are ignoring the source of the crisis, which is the genocide in Gaza, but they’re also enabling it,” said Omar Rahman, a fellow with the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he observed “They’re trying to prevent a wider regional escalation by taking military action against the flashpoints that are occurring as a result of what’s happening in Gaza.”

President Wickremesinghe has often said Sri Lanka will not join any big power or ‘take sides.’ But observers have sometimes found it difficult to fathom the rationale for seemingly contrary positions adopted by the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government in its foreign relations. Could a remark by the president at an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment in New York last year, give a clue to the thinking? The question put to him, in the context of US-China rivalry, was whether Sri Lanka was ‘hedging back and forth to extract as much as possible.

’ In the course of his reply he said “We have to deal with all powers that come in. We may have played one against the other, but that’s for our survival.” Can such an approach, if that is the case, be justified with the crisis in Gaza, with its deeply moral dimension, and a genocide case before the ICJ? One can only hope the government’s seemingly principled stance in Kampala will translate into course-correction, even now, on the matter of sending a Sri Lanka Navy ship to the Red Sea.