TO win its war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, Sri Lanka inducted tens of thousands of men and women into its army, navy and air force. With active combat no longer a reality, the country is facing a dilemma: What to do with all that militarized manpower? Two years have now elapsed since the end of the war but it is becoming increasingly evident that the decommissioning of its bloated armed forces is not part of the government's plan. There is no effort even to shed its surplus troops while preserving a core fighting force. Instead, soldiers, sailors and airmen are being given work that traditionally falls within the ambit of civil society. The government likes to call it “nation building” and thinks nothing of it. But a debate has started about whether it is appropriate, if not dangerous, to encourage such high levels of military participation in civilian life. The rationale of deploying the military as a solution to fixing ineptitude in the public sector is also being questioned. Using soldiers to carry out duties that the state cannot get its civilian employees to perform is nothing short of a quick fix to a multi-layered problem that will not go away unless tackled at the root. For instance, when the government found that unscrupulous middlemen controlled the trade in vegetables causing prices to spike exorbitantly, it assigned soldiers to sell produce at affordable rates to the public. It suddenly became commonplace to see uniformed men weighing tomatoes and cabbages and parcelling them out to queues of people while civilian vegetable vendors looked on, bemused. The navy in March opened a vegetable shop near one of its biggest camps on the outskirts of Colombo to extend “more relief to the public over the high commodity prices”. The navy is to buy produce directly from farmers to ensure better prices for their harvest. Why the government cannot do this through its vast civilian machinery – including departments and institutions expressly set up for purchasing, marketing and distribution – is unfathomable. The military is also involved in cultivation, not only of vegetables but of such produce as grapes, cashew nuts, Japanese cucumbers and bananas. The excess after use in military kitchens is sold on the open market. The army has even launched a ticketing agency, Air Travel Services (Pvt) Ltd, through which the public can reserve tickets for overseas travel. One of the more controversial post-war uses of the military pertains to “leadership training” for university students. A first batch of 10,000 students is expected on May 23 to participate in this compulsory program which will be conducted by the military in army camps under the supervision of university authorities. Students will rise at 4 A.M. for physical training followed by lectures. The state-run Daily News said students will “learn about waking up on time, how to do exercises, working on time, how to study well, how to do team work, how to eat properly and how to respect others”. It seems to be understood without question that only the army can teach these skills to university students! The military engages in construction, often implementing projects that local companies could handle. For instance, soldiers erected an international stadium while renovating another in time to host several ICC Cricket World Cup matches. They build roads, bridges and housing for the internally displaced. This is a more convenient, if not cheaper, option for the government than the open tender procedure but it will not encourage a thriving private sector. In the Jaffna Peninsula in the North, the military is still very much present despite the war's end. Most restaurants along the A9 highway to Jaffna are owned or managed by the military. Ideally, such businesses should be left to civilians, many of whom are in dire need of income. In some parts of the country, the military even wields de facto authority over local government bodies. At Kankesanthurai, Jaffna, the army has converted a former army officers' mess and circuit bungalow into a 22-room luxury holiday resort. The army runs two holiday resorts elsewhere in the country. The navy conducts a canal boat service in Colombo, offers whale watching tours off the Southern coast and operates another boat service for tourists who want to visit the sand banks between India's Rameshwaram and Sri Lanka's Thalaimannar. The government has now tasked the army with supervising garbage collection in Colombo city. While mopping up the dirt would continue to be the responsibility of private companies contracted by the Colombo Municipal Council, soldiers will supervise the process. Army bikers will travel in the city in the early morning to monitor whether private contractors have done their job. Class monitors, anyone? Ranga Jayasuriya, a defense writer, observes in the weekly Lakbimanews newspaper that the government has also employed a disproportionate number of retired and serving military personnel in senior government jobs and diplomatic postings. President Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime continues to expand the military role in civil affairs, presumably to induct surplus manpower of the country's hefty military into development work. “However, the government's strategy also highlights a disturbing aspect: The spreading tentacles of the military machine into areas which were not traditionally under the purview of the military,” Jayasuriya warns. “In other words, the militarization of civil society.” He reveals that Sri Lanka, not coup prone Pakistan, is the most militarized country in South Asia in terms of the ratio of military personnel to population. So what? If Sri Lanka has a sprawling, multi-faceted military that can do a job of work better than anyone else, why grouse about it? One reason is that it excuses poor performance by the public sector in more ways than one. It's akin to saying that it is fine for the public sector to fail as the military can be sent in whenever necessary. Continuing to depend on the military will not empower or improve civil society. Is Sri Lanka to dismantle all civilian institutions of governance or let them go to rot merely because it's simpler to get the armed forces to tackle the responsibilities civilians are too lazy, too ill trained or too poorly disciplined to discharge? Another reason is that militaries are typically created to conduct duties of a military nature. Once the margins blur excessively, the process of militarization could become irreversible. When militaries get ahead of themselves, something nasty inevitably happens. The government's actions also help propagate the myth that the military, which is hallowed for its defeat of the Tamil Tigers, is infallible and above corruption. Because of the fear that personnel in military gear engender, civilians may quail at reporting misdemeanors and, indeed, may be easily borne upon not to do so. The Rajapaksa regime trusts the military but it is worrisome that it does not evince the same degree of confidence in civilian arms of governance. “It is the failure of the public sector that has propelled the penetration of the military into civilian affairs,” Jayasuriya notes. “That's exactly what happened in some of the newly independent former colonies, of which latent civilian bureaucracy was eclipsed by a better organized military which later ousted the civilian political leaderships.” This country, he cautions, is playing with fire. But perhaps Sri Lanka feels it will not get burnt? The writer is a senior journalist in Colombo. __
