Sri Lanka’s war on several fronts By Emily Wax

With government troops nearing victory, social and political issues still simmer

Sri Lanka’s war on several fronts


A soldier stands guard at a
check point in the Wanni
By Emily Wax

VAVUNIYA — Sandya Kanthi and her husband were once rice farmers. They tended paddies among the lush coconut groves and banana palms just outside this town. Now they are warriors, rifles in hand and neatly pressed khaki uniforms on their backs.

They are among an estimated 45,000 largely Sinhalese villagers who have joined what is known here as the Civil Defence Force — Sri Lanka’s version of the National Guard, a paramilitary civilian group — whose job is to defend villages, often in areas that have been attacked by ethnic Tamil separatist rebels in Asia’s longest-running insurgency. After a few weeks of weapons training, the villagers are given uniforms, guns and a monthly salary of about $140.

"We know our roads. We know the jungle. And we are the most successful when it comes to saving our villages," said Kanthi, 36, wearing a uniform top over her skirt, a rifle slung across her chest. The mother of two is among 400 civilians in Periyaulukkulama, 15 miles west of Vavuniya, some of whom joined forces after their village was attacked on the Sinhalese New Year in April 2007, reportedly by rebels, who killed four female civilian officers. "We want to save our motherland and fight the terrorists," Kanthi added. "We also know the war will end soon."

Arming of civilians

The increased arming of civilians in rural areas illustrates how Sri Lanka’s government has been able to push the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, to the brink of defeat after more than a quarter-century of sporadic fighting, cease-fires and failed negotiations.

The group has been fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in the north of this Indian Ocean island since the 1980s, but in the past few months it has lost more than 2,160 square miles of territory, including its main lair in Killinochchi. It now controls a 34-square-mile patch of jungle.

"At a time when other insurgencies seem to be growing — especially in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan — Sri Lanka has made stunning gains," said retired Lt. Gen. A.S. Kalkat, who commanded an Indian peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka nearly 20 years ago. "Though they have suffered heavy casualties, what they have done, at least in the short term, is a major victory."

End drawing near

But as an end appears to be drawing near, the Tigers continue to practice their brazen, often innovative warfare, including an air raid on the capital Friday night — a flashy show of power that left at least three people dead and 48 wounded. The Tigers invented the suicide jacket, a bomb-laden vest, and the ongoing suicide and guerrilla attacks will persist in Sri Lanka until the Tamil minority is fully participating in society, analysts and diplomats said.

Still, the Sri Lankan government is winning the conventional war, according to military and political analysts, who note that officials took several hard-line steps: They marshalled public opinion to their cause by painting the conflict as a war against terrorism; courted China for weapons without restrictions on their use; and skirted dissent by journalists, aid workers and civil society groups whose public scrutiny of the government and its war efforts was denounced as treasonous, human rights groups have charged.

"In a post-9/11 scenario, ‘terrorist’ became a very dirty word. The government suddenly had an advantage in the international arena in fighting the Tamil Tigers, an organisation that the FBI called ‘the most ruthless and efficient terror organisation in the world,’" said Kusal Perera, head of an independent news web site, Lankadissent.com. "The world scenario changed in favour of the government."

The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, which came to power in 2005 amidst a wave of Sinhalese nationalism, has had a free hand to crush the separatists, diplomats here said. The majority of Sri Lankans were apparently fed up with the war that has killed at least 70,000 people and seemed willing to give the new President any powers necessary to bring about its end.

Enlarged its military

In just two years, the country enlarged its military by 40 percent, adding as many as 7,000 recruits a month. Officials sent text messages to youths and put patriotic pop hits on the radio. Sri Lanka’s military now has about 300,000 troops, military officials said.

The country’s Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapakse, a brother of the President who once lived in California, is seen as the main architect of the government’s new strategy.

"We gave clear instructions: no ceasefires, no negotiations until we defeat the LTTE completely," he said in an interview. "The LTTE would use ceasefires and peace talks to reorganise and resupply weapons. There have been five presidents, eight governments, different political parties and different personalities, dozens of negotiations and more than 10 ceasefires. Everything failed. After every period of negotiation, they came back stronger. We decided enough was enough."

Rajapakse said the turning point in the war occurred in the halls of government when his brother was elected, not on the battlefield.

"For the first time, we have a clear vision. We had to end this militarily," said the Defence Secretary, who survived an assassination attempt by the LTTE. His commitment is personal, those who know him said.

Tamil Tigers have grown weaker

Some say the Tamil Tigers, as the group is commonly known, has grown weaker and lost popularity among civilians for its practice of forcing every family to send at least one fighter, often a child, into battle.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the American government also became more diligent about shutting down funding for overseas insurgent groups. This month, the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of a Maryland-based charity, the Tamil Foundation, that officials accuse of funneling money to the Tiger rebels.

At the same time, the Sri Lankan government forged new relationships with China and Pakistan after the United States cut off direct military aid last year, mainly because of alleged human rights abuses and the use of children by a breakaway rebel faction now under the control of the government in the east, according to a State Department human rights report.

China’s assistance has jumped fivefold in the past year to nearly $1 billion; it is now Sri Lanka’s biggest donor. In 2007, Pakistan increased its annual military assistance loan to Sri Lanka by $31 million, bringing its total annual assistance to $80 million.

Diplomats and political experts said it is also easier for the Sri Lankan government to have a unified vision when the three most powerful people in the country — the President, the Defence Secretary and the President’s top adviser — are brothers.

"It’s a family affair"

"It’s a family affair," said Suresh K. Premachandran, a Tamil Member of Parliament and a critic of the administration. "They might be able to win the war, but they must still address its root cause: discrimination against many in the Tamil community."

Controlling information has also become a weapon in the war. Questioning the lack of transparency in the military offensive is seen as treasonous and often mocked.

Last year, John Holmes, the U.N. Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, called Sri Lanka one of the most dangerous places in the world for aid workers after the still-unsolved killing of 17 people employed by a French aid group in August 2006. Soon after Holmes’s comment, a cabinet minister accused him of being on the rebels’ payroll. Holmes is visiting the country, urging both sides to protect civilians.

"We have senior government officials who came on national TV and called journalists and human rights workers terrorists," said Lal Wickrematunge, whose brother, Lasantha Wickrematunge, 52, a journalist and fierce critic of the government, was killed last month by unknown gunmen. "This is a way to win the war: Keep all outside eyes off the battlefields. Anyone who wants to know the truth will be called unpatriotic."

To defeat the Tigers

Still, many Sri Lankans in this Sinhala Buddhist-majority nation of 21 million people eagerly support the Rajapakse government and its push to defeat the Tigers. Given this support, the Sri Lankan army has become more ruthless, some military analysts said, adopting the guerrilla-style warfare of the Tigers. The military has also lured top rebel commanders away from the battlefield with offers of government jobs.

Meanwhile, the country has become increasingly mobilised. Armed troops and checkpoints are common in this former South Asian tourist haven, with its neon-lit Buddhist shrines and palm-fringed beaches.

More than 150 miles from Colombo, in this dusty frontier town of Vavuniya, thousands of Sri Lankan army forces patrol the streets. Schools and community centres have been turned into military-run camps, sheltering the tens of thousands of Tamil civilians fleeing the civil war’s front lines just 50 miles north.

The heavily guarded camps are sealed off from most outsiders, including foreign journalists, leaving the condition of those inside open to conjecture and rumour.

A 45-page Human Rights Watch report released Friday said the camps are "internment centres masquerading as ‘welfare villages’ . . . where entire families detained in these military-controlled, barbed-wire camps are denied their liberty and freedom of movement." The government has defended the camps, saying they are closed for the security of those inside because Tamil insurgents might be mixing with the population.

End to "terrorism"

Just across from the camps, bright pink bougainvillea flowers dangle over billboards proclaiming an end to "terrorism" and the dawn of a new, united Sri Lanka, with children of the island’s various cultures beaming in their native dress, hands clasped as doves soar over the President’s smiling face.

But those visions will remain only a slogan unless the government addresses deep anger and fear among Tamils, who cite decades of resentment over what they said are discriminatory policies, analysts here said.

Taking shelter at a Vavuniya Buddhist temple amid the wavy aboveground roots of a banyan tree was Gonapinuwala Sumanasara Thero, 76, a Sinhalese Buddhist monk who has fled his home in the north several times since the first rebel uprising in 1983.

"We have been here before," he said. "In 1983, in 1996 and now, I have had to leave my home because of fighting."

This time, he escaped on a tractor with seven others, including a young mixed Tamil and Sinhalese couple and their baby.

"The problem in Sri Lanka is not about ethnicity," he said, adding that he visited the Tamils in the camps, donating water and food gathered by a Buddhist youth association. "It is a political problem that needs a political solution. The military solution is necessary to fight the terrorists. This war might end. But I may be dead by then."

— Courtesy Washington Post