As Sri Lanka teeters on the brink of renewed conflict, the international community was yesterday trying urgently to restore the fragile Norwegian-brokered cease-fire agreement of February 2002. At this crucial moment both the government and the Tamils should be asking themselves what earthly good further bloodshed and misery will achieve. The peace that is in danger of being lost now was bought at the cost of over 60,000 lives in the last 30 years. Will peace at some future date be one jot better?
Sri Lanka’s long years of bitter conflict have proved that neither side could win. Military men in Colombo who insisted that one more push would defeat the Tamil rebels were proved wrong time and again. Even had the rebels been defeated and control of the areas they ran fully restored to the government, that majority of the Tamil population would have probably remained disaffected and the embers of future rebellion kept alive.
As it was, Tamil militants managed to maintain the hegemony of significant areas and imposed their own sometimes-brutal rule over the Tamil population. Their use of child soldiers and their murder of moderates who tried to resist them have rightly been deplored. However, until a lasting peace could be established it was inevitable that the extremist elements would continue to hold sway. The end to conflict will however bring an end to their hegemony and more moderate Tamil voices will come to the fore.
It is perhaps the fear of this loss of influence that has encouraged the rebels to keep the threat of renewed conflict simmering. They pulled out of peace talks in 2003. The recent upsurge of rebel attacks, culminating in 18 deaths in a single day last week can be laid at nobody else’s doorstep except the rebels; the statement by their political leadership that the attacks took place in government-run Tamil areas and therefore had nothing to do with the rebels is specious nonsense. Some Tamil fighters were responsible and if the rebels’ political leadership denies responsibility, then it is as good as admitting it does not fully represent Tamils.
Nor does quibbling over the location of emergency talks to finally implement the three-year-old peace accord suggest Tamil politicians are serious about settlement. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake will be under mounting pressure from Singhalese hard-liners to meet fire with fire.
The representatives from the United States, the European Union, Japan and Norway, the quartet known as the “co-chairs” have been warning that a return to violence will jeopardize billions of dollars of promised reconstruction aid. This is however an empty threat since both sides know the money will still be there when the conflict does finally end.
The cancer that is causing this slide back toward conflict is the total lack of good will on both sides. The cease-fire was supposed to allow the rebuilding of trust. Tragically, Colombo’s niggardly handling of tsunami relief distribution to Tamil areas did much to dissipate what little trust had grown.
