A Ceasefire in Fragments

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The latest stand-off between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan defence forces over the closure of the sluice gates of the Maavilaru waterway, vital for farmlands around the Trincomalee region in the country’s north-east is symbolic of the pattern of conflict that has raged. Both sides held the other responsible for the closure; it led to the evacuation of thousands from the city of Muttur, and both sides claimed the high moral ground when the sluice gate was reopened. The ante has been raised with every successive battle in the long running war and the ceasefire drawn up with much optimism in 2002, now appears to have been for the LTTE an opportunistic respite, while the Sri Lankan political parties (fearful of Sinhala chauvinism) for their part did little in the past four years to cement the 2002 pact with a substantive federalism package which would have met longstanding Tamil groups. The despairing question that remains is not when will peace return but if peace ever had a chance.

The realisation of matters having reached the point of “no return” is apparent, though unstated. While both sides continue to piously hark back to the ceasefire agreement, they also accuse each other, metaphorically, of being the first to throw the stone. But also apparent is an increasing desperation on the part of the LTTE that stems in substantial part from its growing marginalisation in the international community and the ban imposed on it by the European Union. This also helps explain the “apology” the LTTE spokesperson issued on television that appeared in part an acknowledgement of the group’s culpability in the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

Despite the military weakening the LTTE may have seen in the recent years, especially with the Karuna faction breaking away in the east, the group’s manner of striking unexpectedly and with terror, ensures that it remains a force to reckon with. The LTTE’s single-minded campaign has led to its obliterating several parties devoted to the Tamil cause; some parties such as the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) and the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) continue to have a marginal presence. The LTTE’s intransigence has fuelled a corresponding chauvinism on the part of Sinhala nationalist parties such as the Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP). The latter recently moved Sri Lanka’s apex court contesting the legality of the 1988 temporary merger of the northern and eastern parts of the country. Moreover, the rivalry between president Mahinda Rajyapakshe’s led Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) government and the opposition United National Party (UNP), with the former repeatedly poaching on UNP members, makes matters less conducive for cooperation – a necessity if a federated solution to the north-east crisis is ever to be reached.

It is suggested that the way forward is for a “new peace process” to emerge, one that involves a realignment of political forces. This, at best, implies a postponement of optimism to a still undefined future. If undoing the past is near-impossible, an objective assessment of the past can perhaps spare future generations from harbouring the same rancour towards the “other”. The rhetoric of “federalism” among the mainstream Sinhala parties is rapidly ceding ground to a no-compromises approach of parties such as the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). Meanwhile, in the last two decades, an entire generation of Sri Lanka’s Tamils has grown up stained by violence; a generation whose childhood has been spent in the confines of refugee camps. Today, in Tamil Nadu alone, there are 103 such camps, housing over 62,000 refugees, in most of them, supply of electricity and running water is non-existent, and sanitation standards abysmal. Nationalism extracts too heavy a price from those whose cause it claims to uphold. EPW

Economic and Political Weekly August 12, 2006