| SRI LANKA WATCH |
| CIVIL WAR RETURNS TO SRI LANKA
By Rüdiger Falksohn and Padma Rao Still recovering from the December 2004 tsunami, Sri Lanka is once again enmeshed in a civil war. With the world's major powers choosing to look the other way, the victims of the island's latest round of violent clashes have only international aid organizations to turn to for help. On a rainy evening in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, Kethesh Loganathan hears a knock on his front door. It's late and he isn't expecting visitors. Nevertheless, Sri Lanka's acting peace coordinator gets up and opens the door. He peers out into the dark, and perhaps he even notices a minibus nearby with its engine idling, but what he doesn't notice is a group of shadowy figures who seem to emerge out of the earth in front of his house. The men are his murderers, the last people Loganathan, a Tamil intellectual who sought to achieve reconciliation between the island nation's warring factions, will see before he dies. The killers fire five rounds into Loganathan's body, jump into their minibus and speed away into the night. A bomb attack in Colombo perpetrated by the Tamil Tigers Violence flares up again two days later on a busy shopping street in downtown Colombo, not far from Liberty Plaza. Although his Mercedes is guarded by a military escort in a white Land Rover, this doesn't stop Pakistani Ambassador Bashir Wali Mohammed's would-be assassins, who have rigged one of the city's ubiquitous covered moped taxis with explosives and parked it inconspicuously between trash bags set out on the curb. When the ambassador's small convoy passes the moped taxi at 1:25 p.m., his killers detonate two Claymore mines by remote control. The diplomat remains uninjured, but his bodyguards are not as lucky. The full force of the exploding three-wheeled vehicle throws their SUV against a nearby wall, killing four bodyguards and three bystanders. The 15 injured on this gloomy Monday include young schoolchildren who, still in a state of shock from the explosions, are rushed to a nearby emergency room. The attack was apparently the work of the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), separatists who, as the self-appointed representatives of Sri Lanka's 3.5 million Tamil minority, have been waging a war to establish their own state for more than two decades. The Tigers launched their armed resistance movement in 1983, when suppression and persecution of the Tamils by the ruling Singhalese became unbearable and began escalating into pogroms against the minority group. Tsunami and civil war The LTTE has controlled the north and the eastern edge of this tropical paradise for some time. And although the group signed a peace treaty with the Sri Lankan government in February 2002, that agreement is now worth less than the paper on which it was written. The latest round of violence began when the country's foreign minister was assassinated -- exactly one year before Loganathan was shot to death two weekends ago. Since then, old animosities between the two rival ethnic groups have flared up again in the form of political murders in Colombo and government military reprisals on the fringes of the Tiger belt. "We must respond in a language they understand," barked government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella in the wake of the most recent Tamil Tiger attacks. "Attack is our best defense!" Rambukwella's threats were apparently serious. A short time later, a handful of the Sri Lankan air force's Kfir jets took off for the Tigers' strongholds in the north, where they promptly flattened a building in the town of Vallipunam. According to government sources in Colombo, the target was a barracks building where they claimed the LTTE was training child soldiers who, in the government's eyes, are just as culpable as their adult counterparts. The Tigers promptly retorted that the building was a school for orphans, and that the children were in the midst of a first aid course when the bomb struck. But United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) observers who quickly arrived on the scene corroborated the Tigers' story. One of the basic truths about this civil war, a conflict characterized by its brutality and by the two sides' ongoing reciprocal assignments of guilt, is that both sides play dirty. It's also true that 16 bombs rained down on Vallipunam last Monday at 7 a.m. local time. At least 51 girls were killed and 155 wounded. The air attacks became yet more intense on Thursday. Perhaps the saddest of truths facing the island nation is that those who have been forced to bear the brunt of this vicious conflict -- in which neither the LTTE nor the government's army, the SLA, has managed to gain the upper hand in more than two decades of fighting -- are ordinary Sri Lankans, still reeling in the aftermath of the deadly 2004 tsunami. The suffering being visited on this spice island and popular holiday destination, where ongoing flare-ups of terror form a jarring contrast to the Sri Lankans' famously broad smiles, hasn't attracted much international attention. Far from stepping in to help resolve the conflict, the world's major powers have instead chosen to witness the slaughter from afar, content to periodically issue boilerplate statements of consternation. While China and Pakistan supply weapons to the SLA (which explains the attack on the Pakistani ambassador), the country's powerful neighbor to the north, India, concerned about a possible arms buildup in its backyard, limits itself to providing logistical support, including the delivery of radar systems. US President George W. Bush has shown no interest whatsoever in this small island nation. Germany, for its part, threatened last week to cut off development aid if the violence continues. Northern European mediators have been working for years to help bring peace to the region, either in the form of autonomy for Tamil-controlled areas or at least an interim solution both sides can accept. But after the European Union banned the Tigers as a terrorist organization in May 2006, furious LTTE officials demanded the withdrawal of EU observers by Sept. 1. The Europeans have been quick to comply, fearing retribution from rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his rival Karuna, who controls the eastern portion of the island. The EU contingent, which consists of Finns, Swedes and Danes, is expected to leave Sri Lanka by the end of this month. The only international officials who will remain on the island after Sept. 1 to help minimize the damage are the non-governmental aid organizations, or NGOs, that have been active in Sri Lanka since the December 2004 tsunami, and a handful of about 20 Norwegian and Icelandic "observers." Since both Norway and Iceland are not members of the EU, the Tigers consider them -- and their observers -- neutral. "The international community was ultimately a total failure here," says Norwegian chief mediator Jon Hanssen-Bauer, staring gloomily from behind his thick glasses. Hanssen-Bauer is visibly exhausted from a job that is both hectic and stressful. He negotiated unrelentingly with the Tigers when they recently sealed off and then mined a small group of canal locks in the east of the island. The effects of the Tigers' move were devastating. Fifteen thousand farmers were cut off from their water supply for weeks, and some lost their harvests. The campaign was so spectacular that even the global press took notice, highlighting the LTTE's reputation for perfidious ingenuity. Although Colombo sent a force of 3,000 troops to the region, it remained ineffective, as is so often the case in Sri Lanka, and ultimately resorted to shelling the locks on the Maavilaru canal. President Mahinda Rajapakse had to do something, and bombing the locks was ultimately little more than a PR campaign to show the public that he was in fact doing something against the Tigers. Ulf Henricsson, the Swedish head of the observer mission, was almost killed by artillery fire while accompanying the Tigers to the locks on August 6. Two days later, after almost three long weeks, the rebels finally opened the locks and released the water. The battle for Trincomalee The east is Sri Lanka's trouble spot. Although the government still controls the city of Trincomalee, no one knows how much longer it can hold out. The Tigers are intent on capturing "Trinco" as a crown jewel and as the capital of a state they would call Tamil Eelam -- or at least an autonomous region with practically full sovereignty. Hanssen-Bauer compares the region -- populated in almost equal parts by Muslims, the Buddhist Singhalese and the mostly Hindu Tamils -- to a spotted leopard skin in which the government and LTTE struggle for territorial dominance. Holding or capturing Trinco is a matter of prestige for both sides, while being forced to abandon it would be deeply humiliating. Caught between the poorly delineated fronts in recent days and weeks, tens of thousands have already fled to camps run by the NGOs. At least 800 rebels and government soldiers were killed in the space of only one kilometre. Merely driving into the crisis zone is a highly dangerous endeavor. Two-thirds of the 280-kilometer (174-mile) route, up to the city of Habarana, are still relatively safe and well traveled, but then the road crosses into new terrain and a critical dividing line. The jungle gives way to a charred, bush-like topography. SLA roadblocks -- many of them little more than rudimentary barbed wire barriers nailed to branches, interspersed with impromptu corrugated metal checkposts that are reinforced with sandbags -- become increasingly frequent on what is now a lightly traveled road. As nervous travelers hand over their documents, uniformed soldiers patrol open stretches of road between the checkpoints. The A6, the east coast's main highway, is dotted with observation posts perched like sore thumbs on earthen mounds. The army's rickety reconnaissance vehicles, some clad with corrugated metal as armor, look as if they could barely withstand an overly enthusiastic elk, not to mention enemy fire. Like the naïve young faces emerging from a wide range of uniforms, these vehicles merely highlight the SLA's fundamental inadequacies. Like rebels the world over, the supposedly liberating Tigers recruit their human cannon fodder from within the very population for which they claim to be fighting. With no support from any foreign government, the guerillas buy their weapons on the world's black markets, partly with contributions from overseas Tamil exiles. In an effort to put a legal plug on this flow of cash, the EU placed the separatists on its list of terrorist organizations at the end of May. Though LTTE has only a handful of aircraft in its arsenal, the "Sea Tigers" operating off the coast of Trincomalee are highly effective. They already appear to have made up for the destruction the 2004 tsunami inflicted on their fleet, as evidenced by the thousands of east coast residents who have now fled from their attacks. A growing refugee crisis The scene behind a railroad embankment in Kantalai, where the area's largest refugee camp stretches along a canal, reveals the full scale of the region's misery. Camp Perathuvelee, where 7,334 newcomers were registered last Tuesday, is populated exclusively by Muslims. Less than a week earlier, the camp was home to as many as 13,000 IDPs, the aid workers' acronym for "internally displaced persons." According to the official count, by last Tuesday 52,501 Sri Lankans had chosen to endure the hardships of life in a refugee camp, the jostling for food and the lack of privacy, over the prospect of returning to their homes on the coast. Although refugees have been given the option of returning home, and some have done so, aid officials are reluctant to send anyone home and possibly into harm's way. Those who choose often do so to escape the madness of camp life, where three to four families share crude tents fashioned from blue or gray tarps and the entire camp must make do with a dozen latrines. Forty-year-old Fatima stands in front of her tent watching her children. The youngest play with dark red stones on a sheet of cardboard spread out on the ground in front of the tent flap -- their only toy. Inside the tent, the grandfather dozes on a grass mat, surrounded by cardboard boxes, tin bowls and a plate of five tomatoes -- a meal for the family of seven. This isn't the first time the war has driven Fatima from her town, Muttur, where her husband runs a small pharmacy. But in the past Fatima and her family sought shelter in SLA camps. This time Muttur came under fire from both warring parties, prompting the family to flee inland. "The government would prefer to load us onto buses and send us home now," says Fatima in a deep, raspy voice, "because they claim it's quiet there now. But no one believes them." Indeed, "Samadhanam," the Tamil word for peace, is a long way off for Sri Lanka. On Aug. 6 Muttur, on the southern edge of the large bay surrounding Trincomalee, became the scene of an outrageous act of bloody violence and the epitome of the horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war. Fifteen local employees of French aid organization Action Against Hunger (Accion Contre la Faim) were found lying face-down on the ground, executed with shots to the head. Two others were found dead in a nearby car. All but one were Tamils. No one has claimed responsibility for this taboo-breaking massacre, with each side claiming it was the work of the other. The lack of a plausible motive made the incident all the more shocking. "If the SLA loses Muttur, it will lose the war," says Amjad Mohamed-Saleem, head of the British organization Muslim Aid's Sri Lankan operation. Judging by the amount of effort the government has put into holding on to little Muttur and larger Trinco, he may be right. Trinco, where soldiers almost outnumber civilians, has the air of a ghost town. Two soccer fields on the seashore are deserted and the adjacent playground is empty. "Club Oceanic," a resort, is offering a 15 percent discount "on everything" and, in an effort to shield its guests, prefers not to tune its TV sets to the news. Only a year ago, the hotel was booked solid and the remains of a 40-foot dugout canoe lying off the hotel's beachside deck, ripped apart by the tsunami, were practically a tourist attraction. Today the shattered canoe is testimony to the double burden that's been hoisted on the Sri Lankan people, both by the devastating force of the giant wave and one of the world's longest-lasting civil wars. A hotel employee nicely sums up this double whammy against Sri Lanka when he says: "I hate myself for having been born in this part of the world." In the evening, heavy clouds hang over the Bay of Trincomalee. The good people from the NGOs and the UN gather around a large table for supper in the dining room at the Club Oceanic. This evening they're discussing a warning that has just arrived by text message. The LTTE announced its first-ever attack on the city and encouraged everyone to leave Trinco by no later than the next morning. The news hasn't stopped Katey, a cheerful employee of the UN's Trincomalee mission, from spreading her good spirits. Sullen Damian, who works for an NGO in Kantalai, pensively rotates his wine glass back and forth. Lars, a German who runs a medicine project, constantly harps on the bad luck that brought him to this place and the even worse luck that will take him to Sudan next year. The assembled aid workers talk and fiddle with their electronic organizers and mobile phones, as if communication technology were the only salvation in their current, difficult situation. The power suddenly fails at 9 p.m., bringing conversation to an abrupt end. It's pitch-black inside the hotel, as black as the night over the bay. And it's silent, so silent that everyone in the room hears the Tigers setting of an explosion in Trinco. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan SPIEGEL, 23.8.2006 |