Book Review: Mark Salter, To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement with Sri Lanka
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916676939 |
| Author | Patrick Hein |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsAsia and the Pacific |
Book Reviews 165
To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace
Engagement with Sri Lanka by Mark Salter.
London: C. Hurst & Co., 2015. 512pp., £25.00
(h/b), ISBN 9781849045742
This book presents an analysis of how the
Norwegian facilitation of talks between the Sri
Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) unravelled and ultimately failed.
The main argument runs that the responsibility for
the failure of the peace talks facilitated by
Norway’s Erik Solheim (former Norwegian
Development Minister and Special Envoy to Sri
Lanka) and Vidar Helgesen (former Norwegian
Deputy Foreign Minister) lies solely with the Sri
Lankan government and the LTTE and not with
Norway, as the limited mandate given to Norway
by both sides was to facilitate discussions between
the parties but not to mediate between them.
According to one source, for example, the Sri
Lankan conflict became a ‘foreign policy tool to
ensure that the main world powers would be inter-
ested in talking to Norway’ (p. 44). Unlike many
others, Mark Salter does not blame the Norwegian
negotiators for failing to understand the complex-
ity of the Sri Lankan situation. However, his judge-
ment is rather benign. He quotes, for example, a
Norwegian diplomat who tried to reassure readers
that in the end ‘it was not Norway that failed’ but
the international community as a whole (p. 383).
The book leaves no doubt that mistakes
towards a durable peace agreement were made
by all sides. One of the main lessons learnt
according to Solheim is the need to ‘engage
with everyone and speak to everyone’ (p. 426).
The Sri Lankan key stakeholders express a
more critical viewpoint. Former Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe talks tough when he
says:
Having a third party and a framework is good, as
they did, but [the third party] should not get
involved in domestic politics. You have to deal
with everyone: you can’t pick your favourites
and then decide and then pit them against each
other (p. 403).
His internal political rival and contender, former
President Chandrika Kumaratunga, accused
Norway of having acted more like a mediator
than a facilitator when it tried to persuade the
LTTE to attend the Tokyo donor conference in
2003 (p. 464).
This book is a general source of informa-
tion describing the logic of Norwegian peace-
making in Sri Lanka. However, it leaves many
questions unanswered, especially those that
would help to understand the basic premises of
Norway’s involvement. As others have argued,
Oslo’s peace and development agenda was
greatly hampered by its ambiguous approach:
if facilitation was the ultimate goal, why did
Norway aim at ‘transforming the LTTE, trans-
forming southern politics and reaching an
agreement that addressed the interests of both
sides’ (p. 402)? Did Norway try to push its own
agenda, pretending to act as a neutral and hon-
est broker and go between?
Patrick Hein
(Meiji University, Japan)
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916676939
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Other Areas
Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks and a
Century of Genocide by Vicken Cheterian.
London: C. Hurst & Co., 2015. 400pp., £22.00
(h/b), ISBN 9781849044585
The centennial of the Armenian Genocide wit-
nessed the publication of several new books on
the subject, but while most, rightly enough,
consider the relationship between past atroci-
ties and present-day policies, especially
Turkey’s ongoing denial of genocide, only
Vicken Cheterian’s Open Wounds thoroughly
examines the century-long relationship
between the perpetrators, victims, their respec-
tive descendants and various others wrapped
up into this larger history.
Cheterian opens with the 2007 assassination
of Hrant Dink, a noted Armenian writer and
publisher living in Turkey who had long faced
hostility for attempting to publicise the history
of the genocide. The event and its aftermath,
which included global condemnation and
mourning, provide the cornerstone upon which
Cheterian builds his narrative of the evolving
‘Armenian question’. As the author uncovers
the titular ‘century of genocide’, he includes his
encounters with various players in the story,
from Turkish scholars struggling with the state
of inquiry in their country to those individuals
who have discovered long-hidden Armenian
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