Trips to Washington for IMF and World Bank meetings, bargain book sales

We were in the beginning of the year 2005 and the next Presidential election was coming ever closer. CBK had taken Chief Justice Sarath Silva’s advice and had taken oaths as President for the second time soon after the assassination attempt in 2001 in the belief that the balance period of her first term would be added to the tail end of her current tenure. Imagine her consternation when it was held that her second term ended exactly five years after her second oath taking.

It was a double blow in that her faith in Sarath Silva was shattered and her plans to undertake a year of reforms and groom a successor were now stymied. Sarath’s decision was tailor-made for his friend Mahinda Rajapaksa for if CBK had another year she may not have selected him to be the standard bearer of the PA in the forthcoming Presidential election. At this stage with Lakshman Kadirgamar’s demise, the odds on favourite was Anura Bandaranaike. But he was getting deeper into the cups and was not as proactive as his erstwhile protege MR.

The MR camp was busy demoralizing Anura. At the SLFP convention held in Kurunegala there was a well orchestrated hooting when Anura arrived on stage. Day by day pressure was brought on CBK to turn to MR and she was not helped by Anura’s reputation for drinking and indolence. No one knew that he had developed a cancer in his liver which Tissa Vitarana – a superb doctor, told me was caused by excessive drinking. The UNP which worked hand in glove with Mahinda to embarrass CBK now discovered that their favourite SLFPer (MR) whom they had nurtured could become a formidable candidate.

They filed a case through Kabir Hashim challenging Mahinda’s conduct in setting up “Helping Hambantota”, as a fund to collect money for the rehabilitation, presumably, as its name indicates, of Hambantota District. If found guilty he could have been imprisoned for four years as Sarath Silva proclaimed in retirement many years later. The “Helping Hambantota” fund created a dilemma for the Finance Ministry. Only the Treasury is entitled to set up special funds and when I was questioned about it in Parliament I had to frankly admit that “Helping Hambantota” was not properly constituted.

However MR’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga had managed to get a letter from the Treasury stating that they were aware of this fund which proved to be a sufficient handle to save Mahinda. Kabir Hashim not only lost his case but was reprimanded by the CJ. He narrowly escaped being thrown in jail instead of MR.

Alternate Governor

As a prelude to a budgetary exercise the Ministry of Finance undertakes many discussions about foreign financial contributions which help in formulating our “foreign exchange budget”. All such inflows are depicted in the national budget under the relevant subheads. These discussions are held with both multilateral and bilateral donors. Among multilateral donors we transact business mainly with the IMF, the World Bank group and the ADB. In all these cases the Minister of Finance is an Alternate Governor who attends the annual sessions of these institutions.

The IMF-World Bank meetings are held twice a year as spring and autumn sessions and ADB meetings are held once a year. All these institutions have a practice of having their meetings in Washington and Manila as the case may be. However on every third year meetings are held in a member state. I was the Alternate Governor of these institutions from 2004 to 2015 which adds up to a considerable amount of travelling to all parts of the world. While innumerable ‘pilgrimages’ were made to Washington and Manila during this time, I also travelled to Ankara, Nagoya, Tokyo, Astana, Hyderabad, Singapore, Bali, Shanghai, and Bangkok for these multilateral sessions. Since most Finance Ministers of the world tend to attend these meetings, we also had fruitful meetings with many of them on bilateral issues. It was a good opportunity to review existing projects as well as discuss new requests. Many Ministers were accompanied by heads of their organizations that funded development efforts in the Third World. For instance the heads of the Saudi Fund, Norad, CIDA, UNDP, the Gulf Fund and many others who were funding Sri Lankan projects were present for a review of our joint efforts.

The agenda for IMF meetings was not too complicated. It began with the address of the heads of the IMF and World Bank followed by an overview of the global/regional economy and projections for the future by its Chief Economist. During my time, the post of Chief Economist was held by Raghuram Rajan, the distinguished scholar of Indian origin from the Economics Department of the University of Chicago. He was the first economist to predict the impending economic crisis of the late 20th century beginning with the failing housing market in the US.

He later became the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India at the invitation of Finance Minister Chidambaram. However having fallen out with the Modi government he went back to Chicago. We then had a meeting of the G40 which was a grouping of the developing countries. Here the concerns of the “receivers of aid” were articulated in the presence of the MD of the IMF and the President of the WB. At these meetings I was invariably asked to intervene by our group. Accordingly I characterized our plight as those of “innocent bystanders” whose economies were hit by the financial crisis which enveloped the developed world.

It must be remembered that this was the time when the global financial architecture was shaken to its roots following the American financial debacle. It was aptly described as a system “too big to fail”. The G40 meeting was followed by a luncheon hosted by the Indian Finance Minister for the South Asia group. Our geographical group comprised India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. In my time our hosts were P. Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee who were the relevant Finance Ministers of India.

Afterwards many bilateral meetings were held on the sidelines of the main meetings. We invariably had meetings with India, the Gulf States, US, Japan, China and the Nordic countries where we could discuss progress in the projects underway funded by those countries as well as future funding for projects which had been submitted by the External Resources Division of the Finance Ministry. The grand finale was the plenary session where member states could make their interventions. Usually only eight minutes were allocated for each country.

The meeting ended with the formal responses of the heads of the IMF and WB to the concerns raised by delegates and a “family photograph”. I also had short “one to one” meetings with the MD of the IMF and the head of the World Bank. When De Rato the MD of IMF retired I called on him and presented him with a few packages of Ceylon tea and thanked him for his support extended to us particularly during the Tsunami. He remarked ruefully that I was the only representative of the developing countries who came to bid him farewell.

Country meetings

Perhaps the most important of our meetings were the “country meetings” when the senior officials of the IMF and WB reviewed the status of our economy as well as country projects spanning all aspects of the aid programme. I began the meeting with an introduction which reviewed the economy of Sri Lanka since our previous meeting. This was followed by a statement by the Governor of our Central Bank Nivard Cabral or his representative. One of the senior most officials of the IMF – Dr Kato a Japanese national, would then respond and turn over the discussion to the divisional leaders who would take up specific issues in project implementation. For example the Director overlooking education projects would review their activities in Sri Lanka while the Director in charge of budgetary reform would present his divisions analysis of our current budget and their recommendations for the forthcoming one.

It was an interesting high level discussion since we had come to know each other over a period of time and could speak frankly about our concerns. At the end of these discussions I would host the participants for a lunch usually at a top class Chinese restaurant close to the IMF building. Since we had an officer of the Central Bank attached to the IMF in Washington he took care of all these arrangements. He took care to invite a few other senior officials attached to the Maaging Director’s secretariat for that meal.

These and other public relations operations, including arranging a tour of our tourist hotspots when they were on mission in Sri Lanka, helped in smoothing our conversations and we were able to create a sense of goodwill which was very useful when it came to gaining the assent of the governing board which depended heavily on staff recommendations.

IMF ideology

A constant refrain about the IMF is that it follows a neo-liberal economic agenda. Since the West led by the US are the main shareholders of the IMF its Board usually toes a line which is favourable to Western interests. These interests include the regulation of the banking system and careful management of the global currency and exchange system which depended on US money supply and interest rates. Since the US dollar was the reserve currency of the world it held all the cards in the global financial game.

Part of our discussions were with the US Secretary to the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. When I first participated in IMF meetings the head of the Fed was Alan Greenspan [1987-2006] the legendary economist who dominated US economic policy for decades. He was followed by Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen. They all participated in IMF meetings and Yellen in particular had special meetings with Finance Ministers to warn them of the possible consequences for their economies due to changes in the monetary policies of the US. For instance when the US raises interest rates money invested in developing countries tend to flow back to the US. When the US Fed reduces its interest rates there is a reverse flow to the poorer economies which offer higher rates.

Discussion with IMF officials in Colombo

When it comes to developing countries facing economic crises the IMF helps “by offering loans, technical assistance and surveillance of economic policies”. Loans are conditional on the following of a mutually agreed recovery programme for which funds are released in tranches after staff reviews which are endorsed by the Governing Board of the IMF. Sri Lanka has had 16 such programmes but none of them have been completed because the Sri Lankan side has aborted them mid stream due to political considerations.

In countries which go to varying types of polls almost every year, leaders find it difficult to accept the bitter economic recommendations of the IMF and the Central Bank. This is particularly true of Rajapaksa regimes because an electoral loss meant that “their occupation is gone” to use Shakespearean language. Subsidies however deleterious to growth is sacrosanct in this country and governments of the day prefer to pass on the hard decisions to future generations even if it means the breaking of its understandings with the IMF.

However there are some critics who challenge the model of growth adopted by the IMF. ‘Ihey find an alternative in closed economies where consumption is curtailed through a regime of restrictions and production is more for a domestic market. The economic models of such closed economies (also called “fortress economies”) have failed in the last 50 years and with the fall of the Communist blocs and the new trade policies of China, such an alternative is now hardly credible as a viable economic solution. Russia, China and Vietnam are keen members of the IMF and they jealously guard their interests in a globalized economy.

Donor meetings

In 1978 Ronnie de Mel established the practice of holding an annual meeting with our donor community as a prelude to preparing the budget. Since the new administration under JRJ was popular with western countries there was no dearth of supporters from among non-Communist countries. This was best seen in the foreign financing of the giant Mahaweli scheme. A large amount of money was provided as grants while many of the loans were given on concessionary terms.

The funding of this “Jumbo”project – both bilateral and multilateral – was so extensive that it is unlikely that such funding would be repeated in the future. Germany, Canada, Sweden and the UK financed the building of dams in Randenigala, Rantembe, Kotmale and Victoria. Japan which wanted to join the bandwagon but could not be accommodated under Mahaweli, opted to donate a whole new TV system and a 1001 bed hospital in Jayawardenepura as outright grants. When Scandinavian countries and Canada drew up “short lists”of developing countries earmarked for foreign funding Sri Lanka ranked among the top three.

Donor meetings were held because it was difficult to manage foreign funding on a one to one basis. It was more feasible to bring our donors together with the External Resources Division of the Treasury for a three-day long meeting when project performance could be reviewed and new funds pledged for the coming year and sometimes even beyond on a three year cycle. The World Bank agreed to host such a meeting and its European office in Paris was selected as the venue.

Thus from 1978 Treasury officials and the Minister of Finance wended their way to Paris for this much anticipated donor conference. Pledges were wrapped up and the meeting concluded with a grand dinner at the Ritz hosted by Ronnie in which all heads of relevant financial institutions participated. This model was so successful that the World Bank prescribed such meetings for many countries which were on the “beggars list” for extensive foreign support. This procedure worked well under the JR regime but was reduced to a shambles by Premadasa who preferred private foreign investment particularly for his garment manufacturing enterprises.

Discussion with IMF officials in Colombo

It must be stated here that this strategy did not entail obtaining a range of loans which would come home to roost later. Funding was provided by private investors. Premadasa’s favourite official in the Treasury – the super efficient Civil Servant Paskaralingam and his handpicked Treasury officials managed to steer the foreign exchange budget to success as well as start many urban infrastructure projects which began to alter the Colombo skyline. But the raging war – LTTE in the North and East and the JVP in the South – put paid to Premadasa’s dream of making Sri Lanka economically resurgent like Singapore, South Korea and Germany – countries that he admired. He was no great fan, unlike JRJ, of the USA and UK.

When CBK took over the reins in 1994 she had to confront an ongoing northern war. Premadasa had by then physically eliminated the JVP and its top leadership. All CBK’s efforts to quickly solve the “national question” became a tragic failure which blighted her regime. It particularly affected her management of the economy which declined over time to zero growth. As Minister of Finance I managed to reverse this trend and achieve a five percent plus growth and a significant increase in per capita income.

Her presence at the Paris donor meetings enabled western countries and Japan to complain to her about the escalating war in the North and East. To add to the countries security concerns several senior ministers Kadirgamar, CV Goonaratne and Jeyaraj Fernandopulle were assassinated and she herself had a narrow shave – all highlighting the stresses in a war torn country which were noted by the donors. Her strategy of taking her deputies GL Peiris and SB Dissanayake to Paris backfired in that they were exposed to the details of our economic debacle and the persisting concerns of western donors.

As SB told the media later he and GL realized at these meetings that CBK could not meet the challenge of managing the economy and therefore decided to cross over to Ranil and the UNP. To add to the misery the Tsunami of 2004 derailed all her plans and called for a concerted effort to put our foreign funding on a sounder footing.

We in the Finance Ministry decided to take the bold step of holding the Development Forum in Kandy. Earlier an attempt was made by Japan to host the Forum in Tokyo. It was decided then to move the venue from Paris to Tokyo largely due to the initiative of Japan’s roving ambassador Akashi who was well known for formulating his “Akashi Doctrine”. According to this policy Japan pledged substantial funds for development if the countries’ domestic conflicts were ended. It had been tested and tried successfully in Cambodia. This approach had been welcomed by Ranil’s regime.

But the LTTE had pulled out at the last minute and the Tokyo meeting had to be canceled. Our decision to shift to Kandy was welcomed by the donor community. We invited Bill Clinton for this meeting and he responded positively by sending a recorded message through his “alter ego” Erskine Bowles, the son of Chester Bowles – the former US ambassador to India, who attended on his behalf. The Deputy Managing Director of the IMF Praful Patel and deputy MD of the ADB Li Jin (who later headed the China backed Asian Infrastructure Development Bank) also attended together with senior officials of the World Bank.

The Ceylon Observer newspaper reported “More than 150 representatives from over 50 countries and international donor agencies will participate at this meeting. According to sources, the Government aims to cut down the budget deficit for 2005 with the assistance from donor countries and agencies. Sri Lanka maintains a 5.6 percent economic growth rate even in the midst of its largest ever disaster”.

After the ensuing discussions in which attention was drawn to the need to increase funding for Tsunami relief and strengthening the peace process, more specifically P-TOMS (Post-Tsunami Opertionl Mnsgement Structure), the international community pledged three billion US dollars for reconciliation and reconstruction activity in Sri Lanka. The holding of the development Forum in Sri Lanka was welcomed by the donors and it was continued the next year in Galle. However with the change of management a few years later it was abandoned by MR and successive administrations. Those Finance Ministers preferred to have bilateral discussions by themselves with donors and their contractors which led to many accusations of corruption which became more strident by the day. Instead of donor meetings emphasis was placed by MR and Basil Rajapaksa on “unsolicited proposals”.

Sunday off

Sunday in Washington was a free day which we used to visit the bookshops in Washington and go to the theatre. There was a bargain bookshop near Dupont Circle close to our hotel which was patronized by our delegation. It had many rare books donated to it by publishers since the sales collection went to charities. It was manned by students from top universities who were only too happy to engage in discussions about new books. Another memorable event was the closing down sale of the famous Borders bookshop since the company had gone bankrupt.

All books in the shop were sold at one dollar apiece. Borders bookshops in downtown Washington and Georgetown were stormed by “egg heads” who bought up not only books at a dollar each but even the shelves and safes which were on offer in the fire sale. I also visited my Peradeniya friend and colleague Professor HL Seneviratne and his family in Charlottesville, Virginia. Once I visited Stanley Tambiah my old teacher at Peradeniya. He had retired from teaching at Harvard and was installed in an old folks home by his ungrateful family. That was my last encounter with our much loved teacher from the fifties since Tambiah died a few months later.

The practice then was to attach a senior Central Bank officer to the IMF for a two year stint. It began with AS Jayawardene who later became Governor of our Central Bank. He was followed by Karunaratne, Jayatissa, Herath, Nandalal Weerasinghe, Dheerasinghe and Ranasinghe (the last three of whom we referred to as the “The three Sinhas”- lions). They all entertained us to dinner in their homes in Maryland. There were a large number of IMF and World Bank professionals who lived close to each other in the district.

It was no surprise therefore to learn that the Democratic Senator representing Maryland was Christopher Van Hollen Jr., the son of Chris Van Hollen, a long serving US Ambassador in Colombo who was a good friend of mine. Senator Van Hollen had his early schooling in Colombo. He was a Sri Lanka supporter who was always available for meetings with us. I was happy to present a book edited by his father to mark the historic relations between Sri Lanka and the USA to mark the bicentennial.

Our Ambassadors in Washington also assisted us. They participated in our IMF-WB meetings and arranged receptions so that we could meet IMF-WB staffers socially and also meet important US politicians and officials. As they say, Washington “inside the beltway” is the happy hunting grounds of politicians and bureaucrats. I particularly remember an Ambassador joining me for a memorable concert by Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka held at the Kennedy Centre. Though our work in Washington was arduous and we had to burn midnight oil, we also had a lot of fun during our visits to the US capitol.

(Excerpted from vol. 3 of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography) ✍️

““Societies are not made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters by turning the scale one way or another determine the direction of the whole”

Plato (The Republic)

Gotabaya Rajapaksa inherited a lower-middle income country and bankrupted it in two years and five months.

Donald Trump is likely to upend the world in a much shorter time. If he doesn’t immediately – and unconditionally – end the unprovoked and illegal war he began against Iran.

When Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the Lankan presidency with the enthusiastic backing of 6.9 million voters (almost all of them Sinhalese, and the absolute majority of them Sinhala-Buddhist), Dr Steve Turley, a pro-Trump conservative radio talk show host, hailed Sri Lanka’s turn to ‘nationalist right’. “An increasing number of populations are turning away from globalism and re-embracing nation, culture, custom and tradition as the basis for a vibrant political and cultural renewal. Just so another nation embraced the nationalist right. Sri Lanka recently held its presidential election and as a result we can add another nation to the growing number of nationalist populist governments throughout the world” (Sri Lanka Turns to the Nationalist Right!!! – YouTube).

The Rajapaksas could have given Donald Trump lessons on ethno-religious- populism, on the art of weaponising race and religion for political purposes. That mastery, however, was of no use when their errors and misdeeds sent the economy into a tailspin. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was chased out, literally, and the Rajapaksas reduced to three percent electorally.

Now Donald Trump, with his Iran folly, is about to unleash unprecedented economic chaos on America and the world.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa believed that Lankan agriculture (after more than half a century of inundation in chemical fertiliser) could be turned organic in one season. Donald Trump seemed to have convinced that a short sharp war would bring Iran to its knees. According to a recent New York Times report, “On Feb 18, as President Trump weighted whether to launch military attacks on Iran, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in energy markets. Some of Mr Trump other advisers shared similar views in private dismissing warnings that…Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.” With such blitheness did America begin its newest war.

Today, the world’s oil supply is facing an unprecedented crisis. Iran has closed down the Strait of Hormuz and the 20 million barrels of oil that go through it on a normal day is not moving. Donald Trump first promised to use the US navy to escort ships through the channel, then told the shipping industry to show ‘some guts’. No one is likely to heed his call, not after three vessels in the vicinity were hit by Iranian projectiles (In the meantime, Iran is exporting more oil through the Strait than before, according to the Wall Street Journal.). So oil prices are soaring, driving up energy bills in the US – and across the world – less than eight months before mid-term polls with all Congress seats and 33 of the Senate’s 100 seats up for grabs.

Not just oil. Over one-third of world’s fertilizer trade too move through the Strait of Hormuz. Already fertiliser prices are rising globally and experts are warning about falling harvests and increased food prices across the world.

Then there’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Qatar, second largest exporter of LNG gas (handling about 20% of world’s output), has stopped production due to Iranian attacks, leading to soaring prices. An attack by Israel-US on an Iranian bank has resulted in an Iranian threat to retaliate against US and Israeli banking interests. The consequences so far include Citi Group and Standard Chartered evacuating their Dubai offices and HSBC closing its Qatar branch.

If the disruption of energy markets, financial markets, trade routes, and supply chains continues, the world is likely to slip into stagflation – low growth and high inflation with predictable results, from increased poverty and unemployment to socio-political upheavals.

In America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay argue that with his war on Iraq, George W Bush set off a revolution not in “America’s goals abroad, but rather in how to achieve them.” Under Donald Trump, American foreign policy is undergoing an even more momentous transformation. America has gone into Iran without a clear notion of what it wants and how it plans to achieve whatever it wants. With Donald Trump, it is not America Unbound. It is America Unhinged.

Quagmire

“We won,” claimed Donald Trump at a recent rally in Kentucky. Perhaps he has – in some alternate reality.

In this reality, Iran has achieved an unexpected degree of success in using one-way attack drones to destroy several US radars across the Middle East, “degrading the ability of the US and its allies to track incoming missiles,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Military Watch Magazine reports that American air defence systems worth $2.7billion were destroyed by Iran in the first week of the war. These include one AN/FPS-132 radar (a long-range ballistic missile early-warning system) and two AN/TPY-2 X-band mobile radars (from THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems located in US bases in Jordan and the UAE). As a result, the US is planning redeploy parts of or even the entirety of THAAD anti-missile system from South Korea to the Middle East.

The financial cost of the war to the US was $11.3billion for the first six days, according to the Pentagon.

The Trump administration has finally admitted that around 150 American soldiers have been injured in the war already. This is without any boots on the ground. Israel-American plan to use Iranian Kurds as substitutes doesn’t seem to be working. “This is not our war,” responded deputy prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan Qubad Talabani when asked why Kurds didn’t want to get involved in the Iran war. His message to Iranian Kurdish groups was, he said, “Be cautious, be smart, be strategic. Understand the landscape. Understand what’s on the other side of this border. Don’t rush into anything that could cause you significant damage or cause Kurdish areas in Iran significant damage” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqeT68ukZYI&t=192s).

With the air war not going according to plan and Kurds unwilling to act as cat’s paws, Donald Trump is in a bind. Close to 60% of Americans oppose the war while an overwhelming 80% oppose any commitment of ground troops. According to a recent Drop Site/Zeteo/Data for Progress survey, 52% of likely American voters believe that in starting the war, President Trump was ‘at least partly motivated…to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein’ (40% say he wasn’t so motivated). 46% of the respondents said that Trump is more responsive to Israel than to American people while 47% said he was more responsive to American people.

The controversial Epstein file containing allegations about Donald Trump abusing a minor came out, but barely made a stir since all the oxygen is being sucked in by the war on Iran. Without the war, it would have been the NEWS, for several cycles. If distracting public and media attention from the Epstein files was a Trump-objective in starting the war, it is working, so far. As for Israel, there’s little doubt that Binyamin Netanyahu was the prime mover in the war against Iran, just as he was in the 2003 war against Iraq. In his address to the nation, Mr. Netanyahu said that attacking Iran with American assistance “allows us to do what I had yearned for 40 years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised and this is what we shall do.”

In November 2003, at an event to mark the 20^th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, George W Bush assured his credulous nation that “A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.” Knowingly or unknowingly, he was echoing Bibi Netanyahu’s blithe and misleading words to the US Congress during a hearing on Iraq, “A war on Iraq is a good choice, the right choice… A nuclear-armed Saddam would place the security of our entire world at risk… If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have positive reverberations in the region” (https://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114221/netanyahu-iraq-2002).

Donald Trump is after a third term. A repeat of Iraq in Iran is not in his interests. According the Wall Street Journal, White House officials fear that Israel will continue to attack Iran even if the US tries to end the war. Bibi Netanyahu needs and wants a long war to stay on as PM and to evade a possible long prison sentence for corruption. The extremist parties who back him think that the road to Greater Israel lies through a Middle East engulfed in chaos and anarchy. Longer the war, the greater the chaos. As the deputy PM of Iraqi Kurdistan said, chaos in Iran is not good for Iraq, Kurdistan, the Gulf, or the global markets. The possible exception, he pointed out, is Israel. “They could live with chaos in Iran. They’ve been living with chaos in Syria. As long as threats to Israel are taken care of, distracted, weakened and disorganised…”

According to a report by France 24, Israel drones are spraying herbicides on crops and even fruit trees in the buffer zone between Israel and Syria, destroying them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyp9Xfess3Q). This is despite the pro-Israeli nature of Syria’s new regime. Clearly anarchy and chaos in the region is what Israel is after. A long war in Iran or – ideally – the fragmentation of Iran resulting in a series of civil wars would suit Israel’s purpose perfectly.

Blasts from the Past

Soon after the war began, a non-commissioned officer in a combat unit in the US army, a Christian by faith, wrote to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation on behalf of 15 comrades (at least 11 Christians, 1 Muslim, and 1 Jew). He said that his commander urged them to tell the troops that the war with Iran “is part of God’s Plan” and that Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth.” This complaint was repeated by at least 200 other officers across 50 installations encompassing every branch of the military. 30 Congressional Democrats are now asking the Defence Department to open an investigation into “invoking religious prophecy and apocalyptic theology to justify the United States’ actions in Iran” (https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/2026/03/ms-nows-ali-velshi-covers-mrff-in-superb-segment-on-the-dangerous-infusion-of-religion-into-the-iran-war-by-commanders-pushing-end-times-prophecy/).).

This tendency within a section of the US army to justify the war on Iran using the Bible dovetails perfectly with Bibi Netanyahu’s own propaganda gimmick. In explaining the time of the attack on Iran, he invoked the Jewish holiday of Purim. “2500 years ago in ancient Persia, a tyrant rose against us with the very same goal, to utterly destroy our people.” The story of Purim is contained in the Book of Esther in the Old Testament (Torah in Judaism). Historians doubt the veracity of the tale. Be that as it may, the tale in the Book of Esther is not about Jews rising against Persian oppression; it is about Jews defeating a conspiracy against them by winning over the Persian king.

Haman, a minister of the Persian king Ahasuerus, angered by Jewish leader Mordecai to bow to him convinces the king to kill all Jews within the Persian empire. The king’s chief queen Esther is Jewish (she had married him at Mordecai’s suggestion hiding her Jewish lineage). She manages to convince the king not only to spare her people but also to allow them the right to worship. The historical truth is that Jews lived unharmed in the Persian Empire and often served as auxiliaries in the Persian army for centuries in the war against Christian Rome.

The first time Jewish people regained the right to occupy Jerusalem since the destruction of the Second Temple and their banishment by Roman emperor Titus in 70CE was after Persian emperor Khosrow conquered the Holy City around 610CE with the aid of Jewish auxiliaries. That ‘return’ did not go well either for Jerusalem or its Christian population. According to Pulitzer-winning historian David Levering Lewis, “The horrific sequel is so overlain by partisan hyperbole that little more can now be said other than that the holiest city in Christendom was left a charnel house of smouldering ruins after several days of rape, pillage, and massacre…” (God’s Crucible).

Trying to frame modern wars in the shape of ancient conflicts is a dangerous game. Some of George W Bush’s advisers depicted the war against Iraq as a new Crusade. As history shows, Crusades did the Crusaders no good. “If Richard Cœur – de – Lion and Philip Augustus had introduced Free Trade instead of getting mixed up in the Crusades we would have been spared 500 years of misery and stupidity” Fredrick Engles pointed out (letter to F Mehring – 14.7.1893). But misery is what happens when ignoramuses wear the crown. The misery we went through in 2022, the rest of the world is about to experience, soon.

by Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Ways of Looking: Martin Wickramasinghe and the Currents of Sri Lankan Art”, a lecture on Martin Wickramasinghe’s writings on art and culture, will unveil at The Garden Gallery at the Sapumal Foundation on Tuesday, 31 March 2026 from 04.45 pm.

Organized by the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust, the lecture focuses on Wickramasinghe’s evolving views on art history in the context of early 20th century Sri Lanka and South Asia. It will be presented by Uditha Devapriya. Opening remarks will be given by Avishka Mario Senewiratne, while closing remarks will be given by Hasini Haputhanthri. The session will be moderated by Samindi Warnasooriya of the Open University.

Though not himself an artist, Wickramasinghe commented on art, including on painting. During his most formative years, a number of scholars explored these aspects of Sri Lankan and South Asian society. Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Mediaeval Sinhalese Art was published just two years after Wickramasinghe came to Colombo. In Colombo, he came across the work of scholars like E. B. Havell and Alfred Foucher. He reflected on their writings and formed his views on the subjects they explored. By the end of his life, his reputation as a cultural critic had grown so much that no fewer than six modern artists – including Harry Pieris, Richard Gabriel, and David Paynter – had drawn him.

The lecture at the Sapumal Foundation traces his interest in art to his early life in Koggala and his immersion in art history. It assesses his critiques of scholars of Sri Lankan and South Asian art. Finally, it appraises his reputation as a leading literary figure against the backdrop of cultural modernism in Sri Lanka and in South Asia.

“Ways of Looking” marks the final lecture in a series that were planned and organized by the Wickramasinghe Trust last year. Beginning with a webinar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the UK and a presentation at the India International Centre in New Delhi in November 2025, the lectures involved sessions at Lakmahal Community Library, the Social Scientists’ Association, and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

These explored diverse aspects to Wickramasinghe’s life, work, and thought, focusing on views on subjects like culture, society, politics, and anthropology. Devapriya is also involved in a major study of Martin Wickramasinghe, slated for review and publication this year. Incorporating primary archive material and interviews with scholars and acquaintances of Wickramasinghe, the book marks a culmination to nearly two years of research into one of Sri Lanka’s most iconic literary and cultural figures.

For more information on the lecture, contact Uditha via email at or WhatsApp and phone at (+94)716419646.