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Three-way struggle in Sri
Lanka
By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO - As a triangular struggle for
control of the island country's restive east
worsens among the Tamil Tigers, a renegade faction
led by the so-called Colonel Karuna and the Sri
Lankan army, observers fear the fragile truce
brokered by Norway in February 2002 is about to
come unstuck.
"It is impossible to talk to
the government, when it is waging a shadow war [by
supporting the renegade faction]," S P
Tamilselvan, who heads the political wing of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), said
after emerging from a meeting with truce monitors
and officials of the Norwegian mission in Colombo
last week.
The monitors have been lobbying
for a high-level meeting between government
officials and Tiger representatives to break a
deadlock over transport facilities in the
tsunami-devastated East of the country and also to
retrieve a rapidly deteriorating security
situation.
"We are trying to organize a
meeting, but so far no luck," said Helen
Olafsdottir, spokeswoman for the Sri Lanka
Monitoring Mission.
Following a botched
claymore mine attack on a bus carrying Tiger
personnel on June 26, the LTTE has been demanding
that government security personnel accompany its
cadres in the East as a guarantee of security from
such attacks, carried out allegedly by the
renegade faction of Colonel Karuna
(Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharana).
The
Tigers also want paramilitary troops operating in
government-held areas in the East to be disarmed
as a pre-condition to the initiation of any
dialogue. So far, the army has refused to comply
with either demand.
Karuna defected to
government-held areas in the East after a failed
rebellion in April 2004 and has since been
carrying out attacks on Tiger ranks.
"In a
remarkable reversal of roles, a motley group of
various anti-Tiger, Tamil elements, aided and
abetted by the security and intelligence networks
of the state, is providing the LTTE a taste of its
own bitter medicine," a seasoned analyst of the
Tamil militancy suggested in the July 24 edition
of the Sunday Leader, an English-language weekly.
As international concern grew for the fate
of the Oslo-brokered truce, President Chandrika
Kumaratunga appealed on Monday to diplomats from
Norway, Japan, the European Union and the United
States to exert pressure on the Tigers to scale
down violence and keep peace on course.
But the co-chairs of the Norwegian-led
peace effort are not entirely convinced of the
government's sincerity in sticking by the
provisions of the February 2002 truce, which
include security conditions.
"Unless
security is guaranteed, a central pillar of the
ceasefire agreement will be undermined," the donor
countries said in a skeptically worded statement
released last week.
In the statement, the
co-chairs were at one with Tiger demands that "all
paramilitary groups are disarmed and prevented
from any activity that might lead to acts of
violence" and that the government guarantee "the
security of unarmed LTTE cadres in
government-controlled areas".
However on
Monday, the government disagreed with the
co-chairs and insisted that it had no role in the
attacks on the Tigers, which were purely the
result of factional fighting between LTTE cadres
and Karuna's renegade faction.
"The
government does not condone nor support the
activities of the former LTTE cadres of the Karuna
group or any others, who are engaged in clashes
with the LTTE in the Northern and Eastern
provinces," the official statement said.
The Tigers are not buying the government's
arguments and have threatened to use their own
military capabilities on land, sea and air if
security provided by the government is deemed
inadequate.
Tamilselvan announced two
weeks ago that cadres would be armed hereafter
when they enter government territories. The threat
has not been carried out, but the Tigers have
closed most of their political offices in
government-held areas and moved senior cadres to
safer locations.
The military reacted to
the threat by saying that it would not allow armed
LTTE cadres to enter government areas. "It is a
violation of the ceasefire agreement and we will
act accordingly," military spokesman Brigadier
Daya Rathnayake said.
Rathnayake
maintained that the Tigers were preparing for
hostilities and last week the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that for the first
time since the tsunami late last year, recruitment
of children by the Tigers had increased.
Tamilselvan reportedly said this month that war is
inevitable.
UNICEF spokesman Jeffery Keele
said in July that 28 cases of child recruitment
were reported, compared to 18 in June, with most
of the recruitments taking place in the East. The
Tigers said the children volunteered to join their
ranks due to the prevalent situation.
Violence has increased alarmingly in the
East. Last week, a police post near a tsunami
warehouse, used by the International Organization
of Migration (IOM), came under attack in
Akkaraipaththu in the East.
"These sort of
incidents are always of concern to us because they
can disrupt the reconstruction effort," Gina
Wilkinson of the IOM said. The East, which has
seen the worst of the fratricidal violence between
the Tigers and the Karuna faction, also suffered
the worst in the tsunami.
Tensions have
worsened since the Supreme Court on July 15
blocked a controversial plan announced by
Kumaratunga to apportion some US$3 billion in
international tsunami aid between the government
and the LTTE.
The court ruling, citing
constitutional issues, turned the tsunami
aid-sharing deal from a potential
confidence-building measure leading to resumed
talks between the government and the LTTE into
another point of conflict.
At least 31,000
people died while a million became homeless as
result of the December 26 Asian tsunami, with
two-thirds of the destruction estimated to have
been in the conflict-ridden East and Northeastern
parts of the island where the LTTE is dominant.
Already, July has seen some of the worst
bloodletting since 1983 when the LTTE, led by its
leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, declared war by
attacking an army convoy in its stronghold of
northern Jaffna and killing 13 soldiers.
The incident set off the worst ethnic
riots in Sri Lanka since independence, resulting
in the killing of scores of Tamils in the south.
Thousands were left destitute while others fled
for safety to the north or migrated abroad and
began contributing to the coffers of the LTTE and
other militant groups.
At least 60,000
people have died in the LTTE-led war to carve out
a separate homeland for the Tamils, who are mostly
Hindu, and form less than a fifth of the largely
Sinhalese-Buddhist population of 20 million.
And now the conflict in the East threatens
to revive the war. "The only way for talks to
resume is if there is a dramatic decline in the
killings in the East," Olafsdottir said.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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