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Thursday, Feb 24, 2005

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AN AWKWARD THIRD ANNIVERSARY

A MEANINGFUL ANNIVERSARY usually has inbuilt implications of progress and improvement and holds promise for the future. It is difficult to summon up such a subtext for February 22, 2005, the third anniversary of the ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Certainly, the ceasefire has afforded the longest pause in the country's internal conflict, and the respite this has given to all sections of the Sri Lankan people cannot be undervalued. But any hard assessment has to take into consideration that the "no war" situation of the last three years has failed to yield any substantive movement towards a lasting peace. Instead, in a few weeks it will be two years since the LTTE decided to boycott further peace talks unless a separate administration, to be fully controlled by it, was put in place in North-East Sri Lanka. Since April 2003, the peace process has remained stalled on this demand, which later took the form of the "Interim Self-Governing Authority of the North-East."

The stated objective of the peace process, as agreed upon by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government in Oslo in December 2002, was to find a solution along federal lines to the Tamil question. But the ceasefire, which granted the LTTE de facto control of a large part of the North-East right at the beginning, seems to have acted like a tonic to its extremist resolve to press ahead with its goal of establishing an independent Eelam. Post-tsunami, the LTTE has fused its demand for a virtually independent administrative structure with a demand for control over reconstruction and rehabilitation work in the North-East. This has effectively held up the formation of a joint mechanism, involving both the LTTE and the Government, for disbursing tsunami aid funds in the North-East — in the process prolonging the misery of thousands of victims of the calamity in the Tamil areas. For her part, President Chandrika Kumaratunga has consistently reiterated her willingness to discuss an interim administration for the North-East, stipulating only that this be followed by negotiations on a final settlement of the conflict. The Opposition United National Party, which negotiated the ceasefire agreement when it was in power, accuses the Government of not doing enough to revive the peace process. The interesting question is how differently the UNP would have responded to the LTTE's maximalist demands had it been in office.

The ceasefire monitoring committee is quite right in pointing out that the absence of talks puts pressure on the truce. But despite a series of threats from the Tigers of an imminent breakdown of the ceasefire, there appears no immediate danger of war. This is so for one overriding reason: the LTTE is at this juncture militarily vulnerable in a way it has not been in a decade. If the revolt by Karuna and the consequent emaciation of the LTTE cadre base in eastern Sri Lanka dealt a body blow to its capacity to wage land battles, the tsunami has devastated its sea fighting resources. Nonetheless, there can be no complacency that the existing truce can continue indefinitely without being backed up by substantive peace talks. Here, history does not provide much encouragement. The LTTE has always claimed it will not talk to the enemy from a position of military weakness; the problem is that it will not talk substance while militarily ascendant. This is a monster of a Catch-22 for every peace process and initiative Sri Lanka has experienced post-1987. The main challenge now, especially before Norway, the facilitator of this peace process, is to persuade the LTTE to engage in meaningful talks with President Kumaratunga's Government before the fragile "no war, no peace" situation begins to slip out of control.

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