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CHALLENGES 2006-2007: Dim Prospects for Peace in Sri Lanka

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Dec 11 2006 (IPS) - If 2006 saw a four-year-old Norwegian-brokered truce between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil rebels falling apart, the prospects for respite from ethnic warfare in the coming year look even bleaker.

More than 3,500 people died in this year&#39s spiral of violence, according to the government. Of the dead 800 were civilians, mostly ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the island, who international aid agencies and advocacy groups have repeatedly warned, are trapped in the deadly fighting.

The Tamil Tigers have retaliated with attacks on ‘high value&#39 targets in the Sinhala dominated south. On Dec.1 defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, narrowly escaped a suicide attack on his convoy. But the attack left three dead and 14 injured and images of charred bodies and burning vehicles in the heart of Colombo reminiscent of pre-ceasefire times.

Soon after the attack, the hardline allies of the government, the People&#39s Liberation Front (PLF) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHL) launched a public campaign to slap a formal ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tigers are formally known, and thus nullify the truce. Posters appeared in Colombo calling for a ban and Sinhalese Buddhist monks staged a support protest.

And the government responded by bringing back into play anti-terrorism laws that were non-operational since the Feb. 2002 ceasefire. "Taking all this into consideration, our government decided to reactivate provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act to face this cruel and senseless terrorism. We also have for the first time defined terrorism, and brought in special provisions and regulations to curb it. I wish to tell you that our government took this decision giving due consideration to all relevant facts and making a deep study of the situation," Rajapakse said.

LTTE&#39s political head, S.P.Thamilchelvan, in an address on International Human Rights Day, Sunday, delivered at the Tamil headquarters of Kilinochchi in northern Jaffna, described the revival of the anti-terror laws as a move by the government to ‘&#39deprive the Tamil people of their fundamental birthrights such as the "right to life, right to national identity and the right to homeland&#39&#39.

Thamilchelvan also said that by reactivating the anti-terror act, the government had ‘&#39disabled&#39&#39 the ceasefire – though the deal has long existed only on paper.

But in fact, the attack on the defence secretary was a warning from Tiger supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran, that the truce was now defunct. "The Rajapakse regime hopes to decide the fate of the Tamil nation using its military power. It wants to occupy the Tamil land and then force an unacceptable solution on the Tamils. Due to this strategy of the Rajapakse regime, the CFA (ceasefire agreement) has become defunct. The Rajapakse regime, by openly advocating attacks on our positions, has effectively buried the CFA," Prabhakaran said in his annual speech delivered on Nov. 27.

"You expect this kind of talk from the Tigersà this is what they know, to threaten," defence spokesman and minister Keheliya Rambukwella said.

Prabhakaran&#39s speech defined the mood in a year in which many feel that the gains of four years of relative peace were reversed. Soon after Rajapakse was elected on Nov. 18, 2005, the Tiger leader did offer to work with the new President towards building peace but warned Rajapakse that he would have to prove a willingness to accommodate Tamil aspirations and not succumb to the demands of his pro-Sinhala supporters, the PLF and JHL.

In effect, the President had very little time. Three days after the Tiger leader&#39s offer violence erupted in northern Jaffna when two Tamils who had been active in organising pro-Tiger events were murdered. Retaliatory strikes left 16 soldiers dead. Thereafter, despite two significant lulls when the two sides met in Europe for negotiations, the bloodletting has been relentless.

"A new twin-track process emerged, in which a more hard line military strategy mixed uncomfortably with a political strategy attempting to build a southern alliance," the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a report on Sri Lanka, referring to the contradictory approach of the new Rajapakse government.

The twin-track approach was also fuelled by the Tigers who stepped up attacks on government forces. As the year progressed, skirmishes were replaced by full throttle confrontations between the two sides in which hundreds of combatants died. Air strikes on areas under the control of the Tigers became frequent as were suicide attacks in the south. Before the attack on the defence secretary, army commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka survived a similar assassination attempt in April.

Fonseka&#39s third-in-command and the deputy of the government peace secretariat were both killed in Colombo as also a parliamentarian from the pro-Tiger Tamil National Alliance (TNA), sending out a chilling message that the war could indeed be carried into Sinahalese-dominated areas.

President Rajapakse said last week that it was the attempt on the army commander in April that prompted retaliatory strikes by the Sri Lankan armed forces. But there have been provocations by both sides that clearly violated the ceasefire from December 2005 onwards.

The deadliest attack in Sri Lanka&#39s 25-year-old conflict took place in October when more than 100 sailors were killed in a truck bomb in north central Habarana. The conflict has claimed more than 67,000 lives since it first began in the early 1980s and the lines were well and truly drawn by the ‘Black July&#39 anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo that left more than 3,000 people dead and 85,000 others homeless.

And now both sides are, in effect, calling for a military solution to the conflict. The stepped up violence and the attacks on high ranking government officials has predictably intensified calls for the abrogation of the truce agreement. "In his speech, Prabhakaran admits that there is no ceasefire, their actions proved it so, and now he is admitting it," PLF parliamentary group leader and a moving force in the National Patriotic Movement, Wimal Weeravansha, said.

Extra judicial killings and abductions are now commonplace. "In Sri Lanka the conflict has flared up again. In the past six months, the country has descended further into violence with the death toll climbing to include an increasing number of civilians," U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louis Arbour said during the session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in December.

The government has been fending off international calls for the setting up of an international human rights monitoring mission in the country. It has established a special presidential commission to inquire into 16 selected cases, including the murder of 17 aid workers with the French charity Action Contre le Faim in north-eastern Muttur in August. However, the commission itself and the group of international observers tipped to work with it, have been criticised by rights groups.

"Amnesty International wishes to emphasise that the Commission of Inquiry and the IIGEP (international observers) do not address the need for an effective and on-going international human rights protection presence that can also investigate human rights abuses in Sri Lanka," the rights watchdog told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The government has also come under fire from the U.N. on alleged complicity of troops in incidents of child recruitment. The claims, first made by the truce monitors, were given wide credence when U.N. envoy Allan Rock went public with them after a visit to the island in November. The allegations are supported in a report compiled by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

While the government has sought evidence to prove Rock&#39s allegations, the U.N. envoy has informed Rajapakse that he was in possession of them. Rock is expected to submit a report to the U.N. Security Council&#39s working committee on children in armed conflict in January.

The standoff between the government and the Tigers has severely hampered supplies to Jaffna, home to more than 500,000 people. The Tigers demand the reopening of the main land route, the A9 highway, that has remained closed since Aug. 12 when the Tigers launched an attack on the army&#39s defences. The government has sought to move in supplies by sea and says that the A9 would be open only after strict guarantees are made by the Tigers with the backing of the international community.

For their part, the Tigers have refrained from providing security guarantees to ships supplying Jaffna, forcing relief agencies including the ICRC to suspend accompaniment of ships. On top of all this, the prevalent security situation has constrained supplies to Tiger-held areas in the north and east where hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled the fighting remain trapped.

As the year draws to a close, fighting has once again erupted south of the Trincomalee harbour and thousands, mostly Sinhalese, have fled the area to escape the fierce artillery duels between the LTTE and the army.