Tackling The Tigers

The Dawn

May 28, 2006

By Irfan Husain

DRIVING into Colombo from the airport, one does not get a sense of a country on the brink of civil war. But within the city, you can see discretely located machine-gun positions behind sea-green sand bags.

Despite the government’s desire to downplay the prospects of a complete breakdown of the crumbling ceasefire, the number of tourists has fallen sharply. Given the economy’s dependence on this source of foreign exchange and employment, this is a disastrous consequence of the renewed fighting in the north and east.

Many observers had foreseen a collapse of the peace efforts once the Sinhala nationalist and extreme left JVP joined the ruling coalition. Ranil Wickremsinghe’s narrow defeat in the presidential election last year was the final nail in the peace process’s coffin. ‘Ranil’, as he is popularly known, was widely regarded as the peace candidate, having earlier pushed negotiations forward vigorously, and gained a ceasefire as prime minister. But his government was dismissed by a power-hungry Mrs Chandrika Ranatunga who was then President.

The LTTE ruthlessly enforced a boycott of the presidential elections, depriving Ranil of key Tamil support, thus allowing Rajapakse to squeak through by a handful of votes. My friends in the south of the country speak darkly of rigging, but the bottom line is that the more rigid Mahinder Rajapakse is now in power for another seven years.

Most outsiders blame the LTTE leadership for the current situation. While Prabhakan and his deadly Tigers are more than capable of sabotaging the peace process, the fact is that they have been seriously provoked. A breakaway faction led by ‘Colonel Karuna’ operates freely from army-controlled areas, so that when the LTTE retaliates against them, this is depicted routinely by the government as anti-army attacks. Local friends privately accuse the JVP of carrying out murderous attacks against Tamil civilians.

So given Ranil’s commitment to peace, why did the LTTE boycott the election, effectively sabotaging his campaign? Many theories have been advanced, but according to the most credible one, Prabhakan calculated that with Ranil in power for the next seven years, he would be under great pressure to negotiate seriously and make some concessions to preserve the spirit of the federal solution that had already been agreed upon. But if Ranil lost, he could say that serious talks were not possible with a government headed by the committed unitarian Rajapakse, and supported by the JVP and the Buddhist monks’ party, the JHU.

One problem with the stuttering peace talks has always been that the LTTE is not answerable to voters or to the international community. The government, on the other hand, needs to attract tourists and foreign investment, as well as abide by a certain code of conduct. The LTTE can simply refuse to engage in serious talks, finding all sorts of excuses to derail them, while the government is under pressure to settle the 25-year old civil war. After all, Prabhakan and his group wield absolute power in the territories under their control, raising taxes as well as performing all the functions of a government. So why compromise?

Meanwhile, the economy is performing far below its potential, the Sri Lankan rupee and stock market are both plunging, and unemployment is rampant. According to a recent calculation, the economy could be growing at 10 per cent annually were it not for the uncertainty caused by the civil war.

And yet, despite the escalation of violence, the government is keen not to let the situation reach a breaking point. All sensible Sri Lankans dread the outbreak of open warfare, and except for the extreme Sinhala, Buddhist chauvinists, everybody knows there is no military solution available. A guerrilla war is a nightmare for an army that tried for years to break the LTTE. The Tigers have shown repeatedly that they can send their suicide bombers to any corner of the country. A few weeks ago, they almost succeeded in killing the army chief outside his headquarters in Colombo.

Given the intractable nature of the conflict, is there a political solution in sight? Clearly, as long as the JVP and the JUH are key components of the ruling coalition, the government will be unable to make the concessions and compromises necessary. However, if Ranil Wickremsinghe is invited to head a new government of national unity and given a free hand, it is just possible that a war can be averted and a peaceful solution to the conflict found.

The stakes are high: the international donor community has put together an aid package totalling four billion dollars if the two sides can reach an agreement. But although the rest of the world has a juicy carrot to dangle, it has no stick at its disposal. While the ruling coalition would love to get its hands on the money, the LTTE is collecting taxes locally and receiving millions of dollars from its supporters in the Tamil Diaspora.

A lawyer friend in Colombo who has been a serious student of conflict resolution put the problem in perspective: “When the older son fights his six-year old brother, the father normally sides with the younger child because he is weaker and more vulnerable. In Sri Lanka, because the Tamils have a genuine sense of grievance, the state should listen to them and not allow the bigger Sinhalese majority to bully them. Instead, successive governments in Colombo have viewed the conflict solely from the perspective of the majority.”

Perhaps there are lessons here for Pakistan. Maybe Islamabad should have been listening more closely to complaints and protests from the smaller provinces instead of acting almost exclusively to safeguard the interests of the largest province. Had it acted in the national interest, we might not now be facing so much internal dissent and violence.