An independent point of view on the war

The civil war in Sri Lanka turns 25 years old this July. With no end in sight to the conflict, the (mainly Sinhalese) Sri Lankan government recently stated that it would not renew the ceasefire agreements signed with the paramilitary Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which were brokered by the Norwegian government in 2002. The LTTE reaffirmed its commitment to abide by the ceasefire, but anyone who has been near the island state during the last two years will realize that there has been anything but peace. To give some idea of the scale of the war, Sri Lanka in 2007 was the most dangerous country in the world for journalists after Iraq and Somalia. The ceasefire has been all but a laughable notion in recent times.

Unlike the recent events in Pakistan, this brutal civil war has barely hit the news networks outside Asia during the past quarter of a century. For this length of time, two different peoples have been fighting over an island that could fit comfortably into Scotland. It is a brutal and senseless conflict between two peoples for a motherland. The LTTE has demanded a separate state in the north and east of the country. In the meanwhile, they have subdued the area under their control with a mixture of fear and terror. Add to that their record of ethnic cleansing and their use of child soldiers and suicide bombers.

The Sri Lankan government on its part has resisted this movement with a mixture of incompetence and butchery. Noted for its casual use of rape and torture, the government has gone out of its way to scupper peace deals in order to maintain its grip on power and therefore money. Corruption reigns supreme in Sri Lanka with opulence for those that can afford it, while on the east of the island there are still people living in tents constructed with old rice bags, three years after the tsunami struck.

This is a war that has both sides using extreme views, encompassing religion, culture and dubious heritage claims, in order to justify their points of view. Some of the more extreme elements of Sinhalese society believe, almost fanatically, that the whole island of Sri Lanka is their rightful home. They argue that the Tamils have the state of Tamil Nadu in neighboring India to live in. The Tamils themselves are in the grip of a siege mentality and have left the island in droves, setting themselves up in countries such as Australia, Canada and Britain. As a result of their experiences, they supply funds for the "war effort" through remittances sent back home.

It is interesting how the recent ceasefire seemingly evaporated after the Boxing Day tsunami hit the island. Almost immediately, the two sides went back to killing each other. Initially the LTTE seemed to gain the upper hand with daring air raids on the country's only international airport in Colombo. However, as the latest break in the ceasefire continues, it seems that the government has the caught the LTTE on the break with the East being recaptured and the killing of prominent members. This has come at a huge price. Sri Lanka's army is now larger than the major powers of Australia or South Africa. The human cost has been devastating with an "official" figure of 68,000 dead since 1983 (nearly half being civilian casualties). The conflict has produced an unprecedented brain drain in a country that was once noted as a beacon of education in the Indian Ocean.

The saddest thing about Sri Lanka's civil war is the seemingly trivial way in which it began. The issue over language was one of the first acts by the Sri Lankan government that irked the Tamil people. Instead of choosing sensible policies that represented and nurtured the multicultural island, post-independent Ceylon took a path of divisive nationalism that eventually escalated with the burning of the culturally irreplaceable Jaffna Library. Seventeen years later, the LTTE would bomb the sacred Temple of the Tooth in Kandy as revenge for the burning.

The Sri Lankan war is about to get a lot worse before it gets any better. The army is now on the ascendant and President Mahinda Rajapaksa (ironically a former actor in the Tamil film industry of India) has made it his mission to quash the LTTE militarily. The LTTE on their part are too fanatical to cave in and, while tactically overwhelmed by the might of the government's forces, their experience in the field over the last 25 years means that they will not be defeated easily. As a result, thousands more will become needless casualties of this war. Atrocities will continue to be perpetrated by both sides and the misery looks set to carry on -- a tragedy given the optimism in 2002 at the then newly brokered ceasefire.

Even if the civil war were to end tomorrow, the reconciliation of the island would be nigh impossible. Firstly, there are too many guns in too many hands. It would mean that those who fought as Tigers would have to readjust as civilians and those in the Sri Lankan army being laid off and returning to a rural lifestyle. Economically, that would be unacceptable to either side and so the potential for banditry is there to be exploited. However, even ignoring the seemingly vast rebuilding of the infrastructure, what has been lost over the past generation has been the trust and sense of unity on the island. Despite their differences, the Sri Lankans are ethnically quite similar. Intermarriage has been a fact for many Sri Lankan families since the colonial era. Culturally, too, there is more in common than either side would like to admit. However, 25 years of war and hatred has left a deep scar upon the psyche of the nation. These two "brothers" have continuously fought over the same patch of grass, until all that has been left is a quagmire of mud.
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