The Subtle Enemies Lie Ahead

• Relief and rehabilitation for the displaced. Where will the money come from?
  
• Address alienation of the Tamils. Factor in Sinhala sentiment, but not make token gestures to Tamils.
  
• Build credible Tamil leadership to pull community from the mire it's in. Tamil politicians badly divided presently, making consensus difficult.
  
• Wind down the military machine

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Cornered to an area of 100 metres by 100 metres, the top Tiger leadership, including Prabhakaran, his elder (24-year-old) son Charles Anthony, and intelligence head and LTTE No. 2 Pottu Amman broke out in the early hours of May 18 and attacked troops of one of the divisions advancing from the north. Though initial reports said Prabhakaran had tried to escape in an armoured ambulance and was hit by gunfire, it was later confirmed that he had been shot while on foot, surrounded by a security entourage, near shrub area close to the Nathikandal lagoon. In that same last stand, 18 other top Tigers died at various locations in the narrow strip they still held till May 18 morning.

The news of the army's triumph sent a tide of celebrations across the country. Yet, it took another 24 hours for the Sri Lankan government to furnish definite proof of Prabhakaran's death. In that interval, the Tiger international network—led by Selvarasa Pathmanathan, who is likely to assume the leadership of the rump LTTE—issued a statement saying that Prabhakaran was alive. On May 19, about an hour after Rajapaksa had addressed the country, national television stations began airing footage of the body of the Tiger leader—his body intact, but the top of his temple blown off.

The death of Prabhakaran and the loss of its top leadership is a bind the Tigers are unlikely to recover from. "The LTTE is structured on a 'Prabhakaran-centric' hierarchy with no second-in-command or successor," says Shanaka Jayasekara, associate lecturer at the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism at the Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. "All combatants would take an oath of allegiance to Prabhakaran and no one else could substitute this authority." Structured as a cult around the personality of Prabhakaran, the removal of the object of deification has to be devastating. In addition, Jayasekara says, the rump LTTE neither has the network nor the resources to rejuvenate and reclaim its once-awesome prowess.

The total annihilation of the LTTE should enable Colombo to direct its energy towards addressing the alienation of the Tamil people. Can a victorious Rajapaksa, arguably the country's most popular president ever, win the peace for Sri Lanka? In his May 19 speech to the nation, he acknowledged that the challenges ahead were more political than military. "It's necessary," he said, "that the political solutions they need should be brought closer to them faster than any country or government in the world would bring. However, it cannot be an imported solution. We do not have the time to be experimenting with the solutions suggested by other countries. Therefore, it is necessary that we find a solution that is our very own, of our own nation." Rajapaksa allayed fears among the Tamils that they would now be targeted, drawing a distinction between them and the LTTE. "The defeat of the LTTE and the breakdown of their armed strength will never be the defeat of the Tamil people of this country."

This distinction can scarcely gain currency without the Tamil community expressing reciprocal sentiments. Tamil politicians, both within the government and outside, feel that they should act as a united lobby—and press for an acceptable political solution.

"The LTTE problem and the Tamil issue are two things, not one," said federal minister Douglas Devananda, a Tamilian himself. "What the Tamil people have is a political problem. We have already begun talking with other Tamil parties and now we will move ahead." Such efforts, however, can't succeed unless the largest Tamil party in the Sri Lankan Parliament—the Tamil National Alliance (TNA)—undergoes a change of heart and ceases to function as what most believed was a proxy for the LTTE. "The TNA has to look at other parties and change its policies," says Tamil United Liberation Front leader V. Anandasangaree. Agrees former LTTE eastern military head, Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan alias Col Karuna, who helped identify Prabhakaran's body. "They have been subservient to the Tigers, that's where the biggest block to consensus has been."

Perhaps the TNA will have to redefine itself in the inevitable process of adjusting to the new reality—of the LTTE vanquished and its dreaded leader dead. Sivanathurai Chandrakanthan, one-time Karuna ally and now the chief minister of the demerged eastern province, said as much: "This is a war that went on for over 20 years, there are those who supported the Tigers, and importantly, there are those among Tamils who resisted the Tigers. The Tigers are over now, and no Tamil should feel that he has been defeated, we should work for the improvement of the Tamils as a whole."

The government's task is cut out. There's the immediate problem of providing relief and rehabilitation to over 2,60,000 civilians now living in welfare camps in the four northern districts. "The task now facing the people of Sri Lanka is immense and requires all hands," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said two days before he arrived on the island for a two-day visit between May 22 and 23. He identified three critical areas: immediate humanitarian relief; reintegration and reconstruction of the war-ravaged territory; and a sustainable and equitable political solution.

The US endorsed Ban's call. Apart from expressing concern for the welfare of internally displaced persons, state department spokesperson Ian Kelly said, "To truly defeat terrorism, the government of Sri Lanka needs to begin to heal the wounds of the conflict and work toward building a democratic, prosperous, tolerant and united Sri Lanka and work toward justice and reconciliation for both sides. A lasting peace in Sri Lanka depends on Sinhalese, Tamils and all other Sri Lankans working together to achieve new power-sharing arrangements that safeguard and promote the rights of all Sri Lankans."

ndia too has been harping on hammering out a political solution to the ethnic problem. Foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and national security advisor M.K. Narayanan were the first high-level foreign delegates to have discussion with Rajapaksa after the death of Prabhakaran. India has finalised a rehabilitation package of Rs 500 crore and hopes Colombo will soon work towards reconciliation and offer a political solution. Most observers applaud Rajapaksa for reaching out to the Tamil people. "He made all the right points in the speech," says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, "now there needs to be a viable political solution to match them."

What that viable political solution will be remains a subject of debate. In the '80s, the controversial Indo-Lanka Accord proposed a devolution package to the alienated Tamil population, subsequently given effect through the 13th amendment to the Lankan Constitution. It provided, among other things, for the merger of the northern and eastern provinces, declaration of Tamil as another official language and arming provincial councils with well-defined powers. The Sri Lankan Supreme Court demerged the northern and eastern provinces in 2006. Several aspects of the package could never be implemented because of the war between Colombo and the LTTE.

No one can really tell what the contours of the political package now will be. Weeks ago, in an interview to Outlook, Karuna had said, "Devolving powers to the provincial council level is the maximum that can be done. There's no point people fighting for policing power and things like that. They should demand things that would be useful for the development of the region." Obviously, the powers bestowed on provincial councils won't measure up to the authority the LTTE once commanded in the territory it controlled. Will the Tamilians, weaned on the notion of Eelam, willingly accept a poor imitation of their dream? Will it stoke their existing grouses and kindle new political pathologies?

Even as Colombo conceives a political package, Rajapaksa will have to be mindful of Sinhala nationalism that provided him the popular support for his controversial conduct of war. Does he have the deftness to reconcile the contradictory claims of Sinhala and Tamil nationalism to evolve a political package acceptable to all? Should he succeed in achieving that, it's equally important that the Tamil community throws up credible and astute leaders willing to grab the opportunity the new era offers.