Editorial

On Friday, the Iranians targeted the US military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, firing two long-range missiles; one was shot down, the other landing in the sea. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had hardly got back home after making a statement to Parliament outlining the Government’s neutrality in the war between the US-Israel axis and Iran, pointing to how he acted when an Iranian warship was sunk off Galle and did not allow US aircraft to use Hambantota as a staging post for military action. These incidents bring home the message, if indeed any further emphasis is needed, that the oft-quoted saying “This is not our war” is not correct, as it really is.

US President Donald Trump, who started the war which he called an ‘adventure’ clearly at the behest of Israel, seems to have caught a ‘tiger by the tail’, the idiom describing a situation difficult to control, dangerous to handle and risky to abandon. The equivalent local proverb may be that of the woodpecker that pecks on a banana trunk getting its beak stuck in the fibrous bark, unable to extricate it in a hurry.

In Sri Lanka, as if the coal fiasco wasn’t enough, the Government now has to contend with the very real risk of power cuts after April, should it fail to secure diesel and furnace oil in sufficient stocks to run the Ceylon Electricity Board’s oil-fired plants. With the Lakvijaya plant unable to generate optimum electricity from recently procured coal stocks, the only way to meet night peak demand is to burn diesel and furnace oil.

It used to be that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation would follow a structured procurement process and firm up its supplies – including ships and schedules – in advance, thereby ensuring sufficient supplies for transport, power generation and other needs at regular intervals. The war in West Asia has turned that formula on its head, forcing Sri Lanka, like other countries, to suspend the tender procedure.

This week, the President announced that the Government would purchase fuel outside of the usual procurement process. Even so, getting hands on available global stocks (priced at a premium now, not even counting shipping and insurance) will be increasingly difficult. And with force majeure, the contractual clause that frees parties from liability at times of war, declared by several suppliers, the goods are likely to be diverted to the highest bidder – something Sri Lanka will not be able to compete with.

Aviation fuel is in such short supply that international carriers are cutting flights. The International Energy Agency has set out guidelines, including working from home, cutting vehicle speeds and avoiding flying. The situation will get much worse, much faster, before it gets better, and the public will need to brace itself for anything but “not our war”.

And imagine the consequences had this country agreed to entertain foreign military bases.

Maritime affairs: Lanka’s passive neutrality not an option

If Japan’s complaint is that the North Korean missiles fell ‘close to’ its EEZ and that even so, they were a danger to its shipping and air routes and fishing industry, how much more is the case for Sri Lanka when a warship is sunk inside its EEZ?

While local authorities are still studying the environmental impact, such as oil leaks from the sinking of the warship only 19 nautical miles off the southern coast of Galle, marine biologists have expressed concern over the safety of the whales that frequent this location as a result of the intensity of the after-effects of the explosion.

The dynamics of the two situations – one inside Sri Lanka’s EEZ between two external states, and the other in the Sea of Japan outside Japan’s EEZ and framed as a direct risk to Japan – are very different. In Sri Lanka’s case, there was no direct risk as a neutral third party. However, the fact is that its ‘Exclusive’ Economic Zone was transformed into an Active Conflict Zone without its prior knowledge. Friday’s firing of the two long-range missiles at the US base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, not far from Sri Lanka and its EEZ, catapults this country right into the eye of the militarised storm. On Friday, the Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN’s maritime ‘waterdog’ – at its landmark Extraordinary Session – highlighted the risks that ‘geopolitical conflicts impose…on the global community that depends on essential trade transported by sea’.

UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas), one of the international laws that Sri Lanka was at the forefront in drafting years past, is quoted liberally by the Government to stay neutral in the ongoing conflict in West Asia. But the country also chose to remain silent on the rights afforded to states by international laws even in the face of a complete breakdown in the old rules-based international order. Treaty provisions put in to protect the interests of countries like Sri Lanka will be worthless, even as these same conventions and treaties are liberally used against Sri Lanka by the big superpowers, or parties at war, when it suits them. Freedom and safety of navigation, marine environmental protection, limits of military activities, and ‘due regard’ obligations are all relevant to the rights of neutral coastal states with respect to the EEZ under international law.

At the IMO session in London this week, a historic declaration co-sponsored by 113 countries condemned Iran and the closure of the Straits of Hormuz; upheld safety and freedom of navigation and the marine environment; and decided on the establishment of a temporary and urgent safe maritime corridor to evacuate ships in the Persian Gulf through the Straits, as proposed by Japan and the UAE. Like at the UN Security Council, Sri Lanka seems not to have signed the resolution claiming ‘neutrality’ but made a brief statement ‘remaining hopeful that navigation routes will soon return to normalcy’, even if these UN declarations at times of war are ‘mere scraps of paper’.

Sri Lanka’s neutrality need not be a ‘passive’ neutrality. Non-alignment does not mean always ‘sitting on the fence’. It was an active player on the world stage, especially in maritime affairs, and it must continue to play that role.