Given my deep affection for all things British, I had been wondering for some time whether we had not been unfair to Des Browne, in refusing to accept him as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to Sri Lanka. The poor man might have been hurt and I had been told by someone who had worked for him that he was comparatively one of the nicer people to have been Secretary of State for Defence, not an easy task in the midst of the British offensive against non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Under Des Browne's kindly guidance, the British had not engaged in the massacres of Shias that had characterized their performance in Iraq in the twenties. Nor had they done the contrary, and massacred Sunnis instead, which some British political dispensations might have thought suitable compensation for their excessive support for Sunnis in the twenties and again under Saddam Hussein, seen once as the hammer of the Persians and the Shiaa before he got out of hand.
Given his comparatively decent record, it could have been argued that, since Des was now once again willing to take up an onerous responsibilty, we should have been honoured that his not quite namesake Gordon Brown had selected Sri Lanka for the purpose. Having been elevated when the big Brown became Premier to two Cabinet positions, it must have been upsetting when the boss told him that, if he could not stay the course, he might as well go away immediately. Since we already had a Malloch Brown in action, it would not have hurt us too much to have a Des as well, though a Desmond or even a Desideratus would have been more desirable, if colonial proprieties were to be observed. Imagine a Trinity of Brown(e) Sahibs, Gord and Mal and Des, all dabbling enthusiastically in Sri Lanka - those of us devoted to the old Queen, Victoria rather than Elizabeth, could not have asked for more.
But as it happened, the President was much wiser than all us sentimental old anglophiles (Scots not excluded), when he decided that this was a mysterious Mr Brown, on Agatha Christie lines, rather than the genuine article. He would come with baggage so, since the whole affair had not been formally arranged, it was best to have none of him.
So poor Des had to take his baggage elsewhere. And where better than where it came from, namely the British Tamil Forum. Unfortunately for him he had to play second fiddle there too, to the Rev Jesse Jackson, but whereas the latter seems to have engaged in generalizations, only one of which was actually silly (comparing the 'freedom struggle of the African Americans and the Tamils), Browne went the whole hog (as in Charu Latha) and said nasty things about the Sri Lankan Government. This evidently brought great joy of his hosts, who gave him far more space in their press release than the more responsible American keynote speaker.
Apart from his claim that he could not understand why the Sri Lankan government had rejected his appointment after it had been 'mutually agreed', dizzy Des said that the 'often quoted figure of 70,000 killed is a gross underestimation of the lives that have been lost as a result of war in Sri Lanka' and that 'the pressing need is the humanitarian crisis facing Tamil civilians remaining in the conflict zone'. No reference was made to what period or numbers he used for his estimate, no reference to who had kept restarting conflict despite agreements in 1987 and 1990 and 1994 and 2006, leading to the SLMM query as to whether there was in fact a Ceasefire still in existence. There was no mention of whether victims of terrorism figured in his statistics, or why Tamil civilians had been forced to remain in the conflict zone.
Then, whilst he 'acknowledged that the largest number of casualties continues to be in the government declared safety zone and strongly condemned these acts of violence', he made no mention of the recorded evidence that it was the LTTE who used violence in that zone. Instead Browne claims that 'the UK government was doing everything it could to bring about a ceasefire ever since Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for it in the Parliament'. Why Des Browne should think Gordon Brown calling for a ceasefire in the British parliament should be considered relevant in Sri Lanka is anyone's guess. Perhaps this is another example of British diplomacy at its most imaginative, like David Miliband's lecture about Kashmir to the Indians.