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In Sri Lanka, a ceasefire under siege

B. Muralidhar Reddy

The government should consider re-crafting the ceasefire agreement so that the people are not affected even as the LTTE is curbed militarily.

FEBRUARY 22 marked the fifth anniversary of the Norway-facilitated Ceasefire Agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). With parts of the island-nation in a state of war and more than a million people internally displaced, the date had only academic value. For all practical purposes, the agreement is dead in letter and in spirit.

For the last few months, especially after the stepped-up offensive by the Tigers and the abortive attempt on the life of Sri Lanka's Army Chief in April last year, a debate is raging within and outside the country on the pros and cons of the agreement in general — and whether it makes any political sense to let it remain even on paper. In sharp contrast to the dominant opinion within Sri Lanka, which seems to pin all the blame on the accord, the perception outside is mixed with more voices in praise of some of its achievements.

Solid achievements

For all the inherent deficiencies in its very structure, an objective assessment would show that the agreement has some solid achievements to its credit. Neither the Sri Lankan Government nor the LTTE, who keep accusing each other of observing it more in the breach, wants to call it quits. Both have the choice to walk out after giving 14 days advance notice. Yet they have not and it is not only for fear of adverse international reactions.

The first thing that strikes anyone who ventures on to the LTTE `Peace Secretariat' website (www.ltte.org) is the reminder that the agreement `enters into ... days today.' For instance, on March 12, one was informed the agreement had been in place for 1,845 days. Right below was a chart giving a break-up of those killed (1,627), displaced (2, 52,000), disappeared (697), and evicted (300,000) since February 22, 2002, the day the agreement came into vogue.

Day after day, the Tigers' Peace Secretariat deems it necessary to record the age of the agreement. The practice did not stop even after the last "Heroes' Day" speech of its leader Velupillai Prabakaran on November 27 that "Sinhala duplicity of war and peace" had left Tamils with little option but to strive for "political independence."

The story is no different with the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government. It does not miss any opportunity to complain how the Tigers have used the ceasefire to strengthen themselves militarily and politically and subvert the authority of Colombo. A prominent feature on the Sri Lanka Government's Secretariat for Coordination of the Peace Process (SCOPP) website (www.peaceinsrilanka.com) is a summary of the ceasefire violations. Quoting statistics from the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the mechanism created under the agreement to monitor the ceasefire, the website notes that from February 22, 2002, to December 31, 2006, the SLMM had indicted the Sri Lankan Government 346 times for violations and the Tigers 3,827 times. In other words, the ceasefire was breached 4,173 times, or 2.5 violations a day! Abrogation of the ceasefire agreement and termination of Norway's services as facilitator were two of the main planks of Mr. Rajapaksa's presidential election campaign in November 2005. After being elected to office, he has not once articulated such a wish.

There were several criticisms against the ceasefire agreement and most of them pertain to its structure, provisions, and mechanisms. The main charge levelled against the architect of the accord, Ranil Wickramasinghe, was that through it legitimised `de-facto Eelam' and paved the way for a possible dismemberment of Sri Lanka at some stage. Apart from the politically motivated attacks against Mr. Wickramasinghe and his approach to the peace process, some of the serious reservations about the agreement have emanated from neutral quarters.

These broadly include legitimisation of the LTTE's claim as `sole representative' of the Tamil people at the expense of other groups that renounced violence and took to parliamentary politics. Barring a general mention of Muslims as not directly party to the conflict but as victims of the consequences of the war, the accord is silent on the other stakeholders in the ethnic strife.

Besides, it seeks to "freeze the military balance" between the Government and the LTTE as of February 2002 but does not envisage any mechanism to ensure that non-state actors such as the LTTE do not take advantage of the ceasefire period to indulge in the four `Rs,' to borrow a phrase from Colonel Hariharan of the IPKF. The four `Rs' are rest, re-coup, recruit, and re-train. One could add another `R' to it: re-charge. That is precisely the strategy the Tigers have followed.

The question is: given the circumstances under which the Wickramasinghe Government initialled the ceasefire, was it possible at that time to have incorporated all these safeguards and address all the apparent inherent weaknesses in the document? The agreement became a reality when Sri Lanka was reeling under a serious economic crisis and the morale of its armed forces had touched the nadir. More important, would the Tigers have agreed to any provision that challenged their supremacy and introduced notions such as human rights, democracy, and pluralism?

Besides, the opponents of the agreement fail to appreciate the basic objective behind it. The accord in itself was not a solution; it was supposed to be a peace interval to move towards a negotiated settlement by pushing the Tigers to come under the scrutiny of the international community and to the negotiating table in the presence of international facilitators. The ceasefire proponents can at the most be charged with forgetting the history of the Tigers.

It is instructive to remember that the Tigers began to develop cold feet over the agreement in less than a year and chose to withdraw from formal negotiations after accusing Mr. Wickramasinghe of pushing them into an "international safe net." The Washington conference prior to the Tokyo donors' meet provided the perfect excuse for Mr. Prabakaran to leave the talks, holding which was the basic objective of the agreement. It proved beyond doubt that the Tigers dread international scrutiny of their conduct.

Many myths have flourished about the agreement and its supposed benefits to the LTTE particularly in enhancing its military and political muscle. It is important to remember that the LTTE, which believes in one party, one leader, suffered the worst blow in its entire history when Karuna revolted virtually with the entire rank and file of the Tigers in the east. It happened when the LTTE was supposedly ruling the roost in the north and the east. Little is known to date what caused it and how much the atmosphere created by the ceasefire agreement played a role. As for the growth of the LTTE war machinery during the ceasefire period, it is a bit early to hazard a guess.

There is little doubt that the ceasefire resuscitated an economy on oxygen. Prior to 2002, Sri Lanka had registered a negative growth and in 2006-2007, the growth was hovering between 7 and 8 per cent. Economists believe the credit entirely goes to the accord. Tourism thrived and people moved from the south to the north and the other way round for the first time in two decades.

The problem is not with the agreement but with the ruthless nature of the Tigers' leadership and the refusal of Mr. Prabakaran to negotiate on anything other than Eelam. Nevertheless, the ceasefire agreement is not about the LTTE alone. The Government should consider re-crafting it in a way that ensures the benefits to the people continue to flow even as the LTTE is constrained militarily. The need for easing restrictions on the people and their livelihood is more urgent today than ever before with more than one million internally displaced across the island.

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