For many years, it was widely assumed there was no military solution to the Tamil Tiger insurgency in Sri Lanka. Suddenly that would seem to be all wrong. The capture yesterday of Elephant Pass by government forces indicates that the Tiger occupation of much of the north of the island is on the verge of collapse. There is now a road route open to Jaffna that government forces recaptured from the Tigers in 1995. But as the Sinhalese majority celebrates what has been a stunning series of government victories and advances in recent months, there are ominous signs that Colombo is already laying the groundwork for fresh violence once the Tiger resistance has been broken.
The rebels have demonstrated their ferocity and fanaticism in their long uprising to gain an independent Tamil state on the island. At least 75,000 people have perished in the last two decades of violence. The Tigers always faced a difficult strategic choice. When they confined the insurgency to classic hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, the regular military forces, as in every other insurgency around the globe, struggled to contain them, because the initiative on where to attack next almost always lay with the rebels. But as their successes against government forces increased, the Tigers began to occupy ever-larger areas of territory that they administered as a quasi-Tamil state. At this point the nature of their rebellion changed. Their guerrillas could no longer melt away in the face of superior forces. With territory to defend, they simply had to stand and fight.
The marked improvements in the equipment, quality and training of the Sri Lankan armed forces have meant that the Tigers, for all their zealotry - fighters are given cyanide pills to bite on if they are captured - and militaristic structures in the territory they occupied, have finally been outfought. But the government must realize that if they are not careful, in the Tigers' defeat could be their rebirth, once again as a hard-to-tackle guerrilla organization. To avoid this, Colombo should be reaching out now to the Tamil community, offering them safety, security and respect within a reunited and peaceful Sri Lanka. If Tamils believe that they will experience peace with dignity and equal opportunities alongside the dominant Sinhalese, then they will be unprepared to provide the sustenance and support without which a renewed classic guerrilla campaign could not be mounted by the Tigers.
Unfortunately, however, Colombo is sounding disturbingly triumphant. The succession of military victories seems to have gone to its head. Too much is being heard about winning the war and far too little about how the government intends to win the peace. The majority moderate Tamil opinion needs to know now that they will be treated fairly, in a way for instance that scandalously they were not, when international aid following the 2004 tsunami failed to reach stricken Tamil fishing communities. If the issue of the peace is not addressed now, all these epic government victories today will probably count for nothing in a few years' time.
