The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Losses for all in eastern Sri Lanka

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Monday, Apr 18, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Losses for all in eastern Sri Lanka

V.S. Sambandan

The past year has seen opportunities missed by all concerned — the LTTE, `Col.' Karuna, Colombo, and the international community — in the quest for a viable political solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic problem.

`Col.' Karuna ...raising major issues

A YEAR after a rebellion within the organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is yet to regain control of eastern Sri Lanka, particularly the politically and symbolically significant Batticaloa and Amparai districts.

It is a truism that lasting peace in Sri Lanka will have to dawn in the east, given its volatile mix of the three main ethnicities — Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims.

A failed east means a failed peace prospect, and the current vacuum does not augur well. A weakened LTTE in the east means an escalation of violence as the Tigers try to establish their "sole representative" claim.

Key issues

When Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan (`Col.' Karuna) rebelled last March, he raised key issues that still remain, especially the first — his questioning of the "Eastern domination by the North" — as the LTTE's military appointments demonstrate.

One significant conceptual poser raised by `Col.' Karuna was "internal autonomy" within a putative "Tamil Eelam," in rebel-held areas in the north and the east. Yet another, and the one most devastating to the LTTE, is his direct challenge to the "traditional homelands" concept, and by direct implication, to a merged north-east, the basis of the Sri Lankan Tamils' decades-long call for separation. These prompted a political analyst to assert recently that `Tamil Eelam' was a "failed state."

The rapid slide since the revolt marked a brutal throwback to the early years of militancy, when "hit-and-run" attacks and internecine killings dominated. Militarily, `Col.' Karuna failed to deliver on his claim that the LTTE would be reduced to a guerrilla organisation after his split.

Missed opportunities

An international community single-minded on delivering `peace' failed to recognise political plurality and the multiplicity of concerns, by implication, endorsing the LTTE's claim for a `sole representative' status.

The LTTE, which fought the state in the name of autonomy and self-rule, failed its own moment-of-truth when one of its most respected battlefield commanders demanded the same. It lost, irrecoverably, that test of internal tolerance and autonomy.

By all indications the LTTE's individual power centres, another issue raised by the Colonel, also continue.

For his part, `Col.' Karuna, who then commanded the awe of many a Tamil, did his cause no good by a hurried split, but there could have been no option for a rebel in an organisation where dissent means death.

However, as the revolt was before a general election, his non-opposition to the eastern Tamil National Alliance (TNA) candidates, most of whom were his nominees, meant the loss of political bargaining power.

Nursing hopes that the Ceasefire Agreement would come to his rescue after the split was his second miscalculation.

These two early mistakes cost him considerably — politically and militarily.

Now, as the only LTTE veteran to have challenged the monolith and lived to tell his tale, much of his success will depend on his ability to survive.

Government's failure

The Sri Lankan state, in turn, failed to utilise the division with tact, relegating it to yet another "Tamil-killing-Tamil" internecine combat, to the benefit of the LTTE.

The two major parties — the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance and the Opposition United National Party — count on the support of the 22 LTTE-backed Tamil National Alliance MPs, and through them the critical votes of the Tamil population in any subsequent poll.

The eastern districts, with their critical mix of Sri Lanka's main ethnicities, continue on a downward spiral, taking along with them the hopes of any early solution to the decades-long separatist conflict.

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