In Sri Lanka, a New Eelam War?

Amid mixed reports of a rebel withdrawal and relative calm, there continue to be fierce and bloody clashes on the island nation of Sri Lanka between military forces of the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers.

Some analysts have begun dubbing the ongoing violence the beginning of 'Eelam War IV' -- a reference to the repeated failure of peace talks in the 20-year-old civil war in the tiny country off India's southern tip. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa continues to deny such, saying instead that government forces have merely been engaged in recent "defensive action to thwart rebel offensives."

Rajapaksa's position, however, appears to contradict that of his own military. Sources in the Sri Lankan military boasted Aug. 19 that 80 Tamil Tigers had been killed during a prolonged 48-hour period of artillery fire in the Muhammalai area of Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula, a northern corner of the island where the Tigers have long been active. Several Sri Lankan government soldiers reportedly also were killed and a dozen wounded by Tiger attacks during the clash, although numbers were not specific.

If nothing else, the recent violence has undermined a February 2002 ceasefire agreement between the government and the rebels that had been brokered by Norway -- a country long favored by both sides as a mediator in the conflict for its neutrality. With more than 1,000 people, including civilians, rebels and security forces, killed over the past year, these days the ceasefire seems mute.

The Tamil Tigers Peace Secretariat, the executive office under the political wing of the LTTE since January 2003, claimed that at least 141 ethnic Tamil civilians have been killed in aerial attacks and Army shelling from Aug. 8-15. The list of civilian casualties carried on the Tigers' Website included 15 Tamils killed in an air strike on the St Philip Neri church in Allaipiddy in the Jaffna Peninsula and over 50 killed in an air strike on a school camp in the Mullaitivu district.

Government sources argue the school was a child soldier camp. 

Looming Humanitarian Emergency 

With Sri Lanka still struggling to recover from the devastation of the December 2004 tsunami, which left an estimated 35,000 people dead on the island, the humanitarian situation resulting from the recent violence has been worsened. 

According to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate, about 135,000 people have fled war-ravaged northeastern Sri Lanka since April 2006 and thousands of families are still trapped on the islands off the Jaffna Peninsula.

"In a country which has still not recovered from the devastating December 2004 tsunami, the continuing creation of [internally displaced people] places a great strain on the international and national organizations working to ease the plight of internal and external refugees," said Nicholas Mele, a spokesman for the Non-Violent Peace Force, an independent international conflict mediation group active in the region.

"Every time there is an increase in fighting, or even a rumor of violence," Mele said, "NVPF teams in Sri Lanka see great numbers of people flee their homes to seek safe haven." 

Gone are hopes that had been expressed in the tsunami's immediate aftermath by both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government that both sides may be able put their differences aside in the face of disaster recovery. Instead, the Sri Lankan government now finds itself scrambling to deliver immediate humanitarian assistance to victims of the recent clashes.

Officials in the capital city of Colombo have arranged for a batch of aid to be delivered to internally displaced people in the Jaffna peninsula. A vessel carrying 3,800 tons of essential food items under the International Committee of the Red Cross flag was dispatched from Colombo to Jaffna on Aug. 22. The vessel is under the active supervision of President Rajapakse himself, according to a Defense Ministry press release.

The worst affected are children, women and senior citizens. About 50,000 people have been displaced by the upsurge in violence in the northeastern district of Trincomalee in the last month, according to the UNHCR. Many are fleeing to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. More than a hundred of them have reached the Indian coast since mid-July.

There is growing uncertainty and fear, meanwhile, among international aid workers and local volunteers who have been at work in Sri Lanka's northeastern region since the tsunami -- a fear amplified at the start of August when news broke that 17 employees of the French non-governmental organization Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger) had been massacred. 

The employees, 13 men and four women, were shot dead on Aug. 5 and found lying face down at the organization's base in Muttur, according to an Action Against Hunger news release. While the pro-LTTE Web site Tamilnet.com and other rights groups, including the New Delhi-based Asian Center for Human Rights, blamed the government for the killings, the Sri Lankan Army says the Tamil Tigers were responsible. 

There have been other sporadic attacks on aid workers. Last May, a driver for the Norwegian Refugee Council was found dead near a military checkpoint in northern Vavuniya, and grenade attacks on aid workers were reported during May.

Elusive Peace process

More than 65,000 deaths have been reported since the civil war began in Sri Lanka in 1983, when the Tamil rebels initiated an offensive against government forces and triggered an anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo. This was considered the first Eelam War between ethnic Sinhalese and the minority Tamil population. Although the Tigers have maintained a low profile in recent years, things have heated up since the November 2005 election of President Rajapakse, who maintains a hard line stance against the Tigers.

After almost four years of relative calm, the atmosphere became tense when government forces detained over 900 minority Tamil people in a major house-to-house search in Colombo on Dec. 31, 2005. Barely a week later, 15 Sri Lankan Navy personnel were killed in a suspected suicide attack by the Tigers outside the Trincomalee naval base. Nine more naval personnel were killed and eight wounded around the same time when Tigers ambushed their convoy. Following this, sporadic violence erupted in northeastern Sri Lanka, with more rebel and civilian casualties. The whole month of January was marked by blasts and ambushes, fuelling fear of a looming low-intensity conflict.

After the January attacks, both sides agreed to meet for talks in Geneva, but neither side subsequently showed restraint in their actions. The situation took a turn for the worse again in April when a suspected Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up in an attempt to kill the Sri Lankan Army chief.

Then, in May, government launched air strikes over rebel strongholds following a gruesome attack by the rebels. in which over 60 civilians were killed. In late June, a senior Army official, Lt. Gen. Parami Kulatunga was killed in a rebel suicide attack.

The most recent violence is traceable to a July 20 water blockade by the Tigers at the Mawilaru reservoir in Trincomalee district in northeastern Sri Lanka. The blockade caused panic within the Colombo administration. The Government sought to immediately resolve the blockade as thousands in the vicinity of the reservoir were affected. Opening the sluice gate by any means was foremost on the government's agenda.

The Sri Lankan Army responded with 'Operation Watershed," and the sluice gate was reopened on Aug. 8. But the Rajapaksa government seems intent on using the blockade as a pretext for continued attacks against the Tigers.

Hope for lasting peace was further strained by the May European Union placement of the Tigers on its list of terrorist organizations. The terrorist tag provoked the rebels to protest and demand for the withdrawal of Denmark, Sweden and Finland from the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) -- a Colombo-based body of peace negotiators established in 2002 by the Norway-brokered cease-fire agreement. Those countries are now set to pull out of Sri Lanka on Sept. 1, leaving Norway and Iceland in charge of the peace process.

During the height of recent violence, the SLMM declared it would begin a three-phase withdrawal from ceasefire monitoring on Aug. 13. In an Aug. 13 interview with the Daily Mirror, Swedish Major General Ulf Henricsson, the chief of the SLMM, said "Colombo and the LTTE only want to keep alive the ceasefire agreement, without honoring it." Both parties have been using SLMM as "political cover," he said. 

The announcement of SLMM withdrawal notwithstanding, Iceland announced Aug. 18 it would increase its SLMM personnel from an existing four to 10. The decision came in the wake of Norway's decision to increase its contingent from 16 to 20.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently called for peace in the region. He urged both sides to return to the negotiating table, allow aid agencies free access and let civilians leave contested areas.

In the meantime, President Rajapakse has showed an inclination to reach an accord with the Tiger leadership for a cessation of hostilities, but only when the rebels refrain from attacking the eastern port of Trincomalee, a lifeline of the Sri Lankan Army stationed in the Jaffna peninsula.

[Originally published in World Politics Review, August 25, 2006]