Sri Lanka: On the Edge

Time Magazine

Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006

If last-ditch negotiations to save a faltering cease-fire fail next week, Sri Lanka's 23-year-old civil war could resume in full force

BY ALEX PERRY/ MULLAITIVU

As she squats alone on the floor of her one-room hut, untwisting and retying a torn fishing net, it becomes clear that Rosa Nobert, 43, shares her days with the dead. The walls are hung with faded photographs: her husband, shot and burned in his fishing boat by the Sri Lankan navy; her two nephews, Tamil Tiger guerrillas killed in battle; and 17 relatives, including 13-year-old daughter May Linda, washed away by the tsunami. As Sri Lanka once more flirts with civil war, Rosa expects she will soon be adding one more picture to her gallery of ghosts: her 23-year-old son, Anthony. He joined the Tigers five years ago and she hasn't seen him since. "I remember golden days here when I was a girl," she says. "Playing on the beach, swimming, running through the trees with my friends. I learned to stitch and sew under those palms. I thought I'd be happy with whatever life gave me. I was wrong."

For two decades, Sri Lanka lived with war, as the Tigers fought for a Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island. Now, after a four-year cease-fire, many fear it is drifting back into full-blown conflict. Norwegian facilitators have persuaded the Sinhalese government and the Tigers to meet in Geneva later this month, the first time the two sides have come together in three years. The sole item on the agenda is to discuss better implementation of a cease-fire agreement, signed in Feb. 2002, but which is now on life support. "There will be some pretty important people from both sides there," says a Western diplomat in Colombo. "And the hope is that if you get them together in a room, they'll move onto the big picture." But the Tigers have already threatened to pull out of the Geneva talks after suspected paramilitary death squads kidnapped eight Tiger social workers on Jan. 29. For its part, the government wants to amend the truce, which it claims gives the Tigers too much freedom of movement. On that point, the Tigers won't give an inch.

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