Ethnic Divisions In Sri Lanka Seem Wider Than Ever
The New York Times
May 11, 2006
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 10 — President Mahinda Rajapakse casts himself as a man ready to walk the road to peace, but equally prepared to face down his enemies in battle, as his country dives into open civil war.
"I'm not a warmonger," he said in an interview Tuesday evening in his heavily fortified residence. "I am ready for talks, I'm ready for peace. But we will also be ready to defend our country. This is not a weakness. Our patience is not weakness."
The president's position reflects a dangerous balancing act. April was the bloodiest month since the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam signed a cease-fire in February 2002 that was supposed to end nearly two decades of killing here.
According to the Nordic truce monitors, 191 people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed in the last month. That compares with a death toll of nine in February 2005, when the warring parties headed to Switzerland for talks on strengthening the cease-fire.
Clearly, students of the conflict point out, the government of Mr. Rajapakse and the guerrilla army of Velupillai Prabhakaran can control the spigot on the carnage.
Yet despite the surge in violence, each side has insisted that it is still abiding by the accord. The logic is one that a foreign diplomat here described as "implausible deniability."
For instance, the Tamil Tigers, on the very day in April that they were accused of a suicide-bomb attack on the commander, sent a letter to the Norwegian peace-brokers accusing the government of breaking the cease-fire and "inciting violence."
As for the land mines that have been systematically used against security forces in recent months, rebel leaders have repeatedly called them the handiwork of Tamil groups not under their control.
On the other side, the government of President Rajapakse, who was elected in November 2005, has studiously maintained that it is not shielding an anti-Tamil Tiger paramilitary outfit, despite evidence presented by the cease-fire monitors.
Allowing armed groups to function in government territory, even those who conveniently help to weaken the government's chief enemy, is a violation of the accord. So, too, were Sri Lankan Army airstrikes last week on Tamil Tiger strongholds.
Those attacks followed an assassination attempt on the army chief, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. Ten people died in the suicide bombing.
"Even after that, there is a cease-fire agreement," the president said of the airstrikes. He chuckled.
In recent weeks, there have also been direct military exchanges. The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission says there are now routine skirmishes near rebel and army front lines.
In the four years since the cease-fire was signed, the distrust between the warring parties is now at its absolute worst.
"I don't see the prospect of returning to hostilities really receding," said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Policy Alternatives. "No one wants to say the cease-fire agreement does not exist or that it's a dead letter, when in fact it is."
Why insist that there is a cease-fire at all? Various reasons are offered, including some that border on the bizarre.
The cease-fire exists because the two sides say it exists, goes one explanation. Without the agreement, goes another, there would be no platform on which to discuss peace, if one day the parties decided they wanted to do so. Or, the agreement cannot be declared dead because then a new one would have to be written.
"We have a cease-fire agreement; we don't have a cease-fire," was the verdict of the commander of the monitors, a retired Swedish major general named Ulf Henricsson.
Hans Brattskar, the Norwegian ambassador, called the agreement "presently the only available tool to bring the parties back to peace talks." Norway, which brokered the accord, has the unenviable task of facilitating any talks.
The war in Sri Lanka is rooted in the grievances of the ethnic Tamil minority against the ethnic Sinhalese, who dominate the island and the government. It was set off in earnest in 1983 by the killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in Jaffna, the Tamil stronghold in the north, an attack blamed on the Tamil Tigers and followed by a vicious anti-Tamil pogrom across the country.
For nearly 20 years, the conflict in Sri Lanka, a picturesque, teardrop-shaped island with a mix of colonial and local cultures, was marked by abductions, disappearances, suicide bombings and killings in the tens of thousands.
If the 2002 cease-fire was an important turning point, so too was the election of Mr. Rajapakse last November. A second-generation politician from the Sinhalese heartland on the southern coast, Mr. Rajapakse, 60, won with the backing of Sinhalese nationalists — and in a way, the help of the Tamil Tigers, who enforced a de facto boycott of the polls in the Tamil areas they influence.
The challenge before Mr. Rajapakse now, beyond halting a slide into full-throttle war, is to carry the Sinhalese hard-liners with him and at the same time convey that he is capable of a peace deal acceptable to Tamils.
The president said in the interview that he did not believe "a military solution" could end the conflict. At the same time, the government raised the military budget this year by 23 percent, to $690 million, and appointed General Fonseka, among other prominent hard-liners, to his cabinet.
One of the president's closest advisers said in an interview this week that if left to him, he would have continued airstrikes on Tamil Tiger positions rather than suspending them in less than 24 hours, as the president did two weeks ago after the assassination attempt on General Fonseka.
"I would have bombed all the targets," was his conclusion. The official, who was granted anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists, said he advocated a Sri Lankan version of the Bush administration's policy of pre-emption. "We must not react to them all the time," he said. "We must take the initiative."
Not only is there no hint that either side wants to engage in peace talks, but the warring parties also cannot agree on whether and how to resume talks on strengthening the cease-fire.
The Tamil Tigers accuse the government of killing Tamil civilians and shielding anti-Tiger rebels in its territory, and they vow not to return to talks until the killings stop. The government, for its part, demands that foreign countries exert pressure on the rebels to open negotiations.
The government may soon get one of its wishes. The European Union, seen here as among those who have kept an open ear for the rebels, is weighing whether to place the Tamil Tigers on a list of banned terrorist organizations, which would be a major political upset for the separatists. They have long been banned in the United States, and Canada recently followed suit.
Shimali Senanayake contributed reporting for this article.
May 11, 2006
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 10 — President Mahinda Rajapakse casts himself as a man ready to walk the road to peace, but equally prepared to face down his enemies in battle, as his country dives into open civil war.
"I'm not a warmonger," he said in an interview Tuesday evening in his heavily fortified residence. "I am ready for talks, I'm ready for peace. But we will also be ready to defend our country. This is not a weakness. Our patience is not weakness."
The president's position reflects a dangerous balancing act. April was the bloodiest month since the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam signed a cease-fire in February 2002 that was supposed to end nearly two decades of killing here.
According to the Nordic truce monitors, 191 people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed in the last month. That compares with a death toll of nine in February 2005, when the warring parties headed to Switzerland for talks on strengthening the cease-fire.
Clearly, students of the conflict point out, the government of Mr. Rajapakse and the guerrilla army of Velupillai Prabhakaran can control the spigot on the carnage.
Yet despite the surge in violence, each side has insisted that it is still abiding by the accord. The logic is one that a foreign diplomat here described as "implausible deniability."
For instance, the Tamil Tigers, on the very day in April that they were accused of a suicide-bomb attack on the commander, sent a letter to the Norwegian peace-brokers accusing the government of breaking the cease-fire and "inciting violence."
As for the land mines that have been systematically used against security forces in recent months, rebel leaders have repeatedly called them the handiwork of Tamil groups not under their control.
On the other side, the government of President Rajapakse, who was elected in November 2005, has studiously maintained that it is not shielding an anti-Tamil Tiger paramilitary outfit, despite evidence presented by the cease-fire monitors.
Allowing armed groups to function in government territory, even those who conveniently help to weaken the government's chief enemy, is a violation of the accord. So, too, were Sri Lankan Army airstrikes last week on Tamil Tiger strongholds.
Those attacks followed an assassination attempt on the army chief, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. Ten people died in the suicide bombing.
"Even after that, there is a cease-fire agreement," the president said of the airstrikes. He chuckled.
In recent weeks, there have also been direct military exchanges. The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission says there are now routine skirmishes near rebel and army front lines.
In the four years since the cease-fire was signed, the distrust between the warring parties is now at its absolute worst.
"I don't see the prospect of returning to hostilities really receding," said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Policy Alternatives. "No one wants to say the cease-fire agreement does not exist or that it's a dead letter, when in fact it is."
Why insist that there is a cease-fire at all? Various reasons are offered, including some that border on the bizarre.
The cease-fire exists because the two sides say it exists, goes one explanation. Without the agreement, goes another, there would be no platform on which to discuss peace, if one day the parties decided they wanted to do so. Or, the agreement cannot be declared dead because then a new one would have to be written.
"We have a cease-fire agreement; we don't have a cease-fire," was the verdict of the commander of the monitors, a retired Swedish major general named Ulf Henricsson.
Hans Brattskar, the Norwegian ambassador, called the agreement "presently the only available tool to bring the parties back to peace talks." Norway, which brokered the accord, has the unenviable task of facilitating any talks.
The war in Sri Lanka is rooted in the grievances of the ethnic Tamil minority against the ethnic Sinhalese, who dominate the island and the government. It was set off in earnest in 1983 by the killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in Jaffna, the Tamil stronghold in the north, an attack blamed on the Tamil Tigers and followed by a vicious anti-Tamil pogrom across the country.
For nearly 20 years, the conflict in Sri Lanka, a picturesque, teardrop-shaped island with a mix of colonial and local cultures, was marked by abductions, disappearances, suicide bombings and killings in the tens of thousands.
If the 2002 cease-fire was an important turning point, so too was the election of Mr. Rajapakse last November. A second-generation politician from the Sinhalese heartland on the southern coast, Mr. Rajapakse, 60, won with the backing of Sinhalese nationalists — and in a way, the help of the Tamil Tigers, who enforced a de facto boycott of the polls in the Tamil areas they influence.
The challenge before Mr. Rajapakse now, beyond halting a slide into full-throttle war, is to carry the Sinhalese hard-liners with him and at the same time convey that he is capable of a peace deal acceptable to Tamils.
The president said in the interview that he did not believe "a military solution" could end the conflict. At the same time, the government raised the military budget this year by 23 percent, to $690 million, and appointed General Fonseka, among other prominent hard-liners, to his cabinet.
One of the president's closest advisers said in an interview this week that if left to him, he would have continued airstrikes on Tamil Tiger positions rather than suspending them in less than 24 hours, as the president did two weeks ago after the assassination attempt on General Fonseka.
"I would have bombed all the targets," was his conclusion. The official, who was granted anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists, said he advocated a Sri Lankan version of the Bush administration's policy of pre-emption. "We must not react to them all the time," he said. "We must take the initiative."
Not only is there no hint that either side wants to engage in peace talks, but the warring parties also cannot agree on whether and how to resume talks on strengthening the cease-fire.
The Tamil Tigers accuse the government of killing Tamil civilians and shielding anti-Tiger rebels in its territory, and they vow not to return to talks until the killings stop. The government, for its part, demands that foreign countries exert pressure on the rebels to open negotiations.
The government may soon get one of its wishes. The European Union, seen here as among those who have kept an open ear for the rebels, is weighing whether to place the Tamil Tigers on a list of banned terrorist organizations, which would be a major political upset for the separatists. They have long been banned in the United States, and Canada recently followed suit.
Shimali Senanayake contributed reporting for this article.
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