Endangered Peace

The trail of destruction that accompanied the attemptedassassination of Sri Lanka Army Commander, General Sarath Fonseka, on April 25,2006, when set against some of the earlier massacres by the Liberation Tigers ofTamil Eelam (LTTE) in Colombo, appears relatively small. It may be recalled thatthe slaughter of civilians in the city on a much larger scale occurred in thebazaar areas of Pettah (1987, 114 deaths) and Maradana (1987, 33 deaths); atArmour Street (1993, 23 deaths); at an election rally in Colombo North (1994, 54deaths); at the Dehiwala Railway Station (1996, 55 deaths); at the Central Bank(1996, 89 deaths); in an omnibus at Panchikawatte (1998, 40 deaths); at theIndependence Square (1999, 23 deaths); in an attack on a political procession atthe Dehiwala Junction (2000, 22 deaths), and at the door-step of the PrimeMinister’s office (2000, 15 deaths). The death toll on April 25 was confinedto eleven soldiers and, of course, the suicide bomber. The General, thoughseriously injured, has survived.

Even as an operation targeting military establishments in Colombo, the recentattack is not without precedence. There was, for instance, the massive explosionat the Headquarters of the Joint Operations Command in 1991 that killed almostfifty, and the twin explosions at the entrance to the Army Headquarters at SlaveIsland in 1995, where the number killed was about 15. There were, in addition,the assassinations of General Ranjan Wijeratne, (Minister of Defence) andAdmiral Clancy Fernando, the Chief of the Sri Lanka Navy during the early 1990s.

These numerous excesses provide a context for, but are not particularlygermane to an assessment, from a short-term perspective, of the significance ofthe April 25 assassination attempt. Perhaps the foremost among theconsiderations genuinely relevant to such an assessment is that this incidentrepresents an escalation of the war of attrition which the LTTE, despite itsproclaimed commitment to preserving the four-year-old Ceasefire Agreement, hasbeen waging against the government over the past months in the form of sporadicbut deadly attacks on Security Forces’ personnel, military encampments locatedin the northern and eastern parts of the country and some civilian targets.According to a government press release dated April 10, 2006, about 150 armedservices personnel have, in fact, been killed in such attacks since MahindaRajapakse was elected President of Sri Lanka in November 2005. Thus, althoughthe LTTE had not suspended the practice of targeting individual ‘enemies’including those living in Colombo (the most illustrious among its recent victimsbeing Lakshman Kadirgamar assassinated on August 12, 2005), the attack on theArmy Commander could be regarded as signifying the actual extension of its warof attrition to the capital city.

The LTTE decision to broaden thescope of its belligerency should be understood in the context of certain recentchanges in the political configurations that pertain to Sri Lanka’s ethnicconflict. One of these is President Rajapakse’s remarkable success inconsolidating his grip over the politics of Sri Lanka’s ‘South’. Electedto office with a wafer-thin majority, and despite formidable opposition fromwithin the ranks of his own party, including that of the mercurial PresidentChandrika Kumaratunga, Rajapakse has, since, violated almost all his campaignpledges concerning both the macro-economy as well as the ‘nationalquestion’. 

The strange irony is that, precisely for this reason, hehas gained in popularity and, far more significantly (political popularity beingephemeral), succeeded in a way that none of his predecessors in the office ofPresident had done, in achieving a higher level of inter-party consensus for hisapproach to the ethnic problem. The message he conveys with all the gravitas athis command, that he remains unswerving in his commitment to the ‘Mahinda Chintanaya’(ideology) as proclaimed in his election manifesto, appears to carry sufficientcredibility to attract at least the guarded support not only of the JanathaVimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), widely perceived asrepresenting exclusively Sinhalese-Buddhist interests, but also of the Sri LankaMuslim Congress (SLMC) and the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) of theplantation Tamils, both of which were aligned with Ranil Wickremasinghe of theUnited National Front (UNF) in last year’s race for the Presidency. 

The UNF, his arch parliamentary rival, reeling from theeffects of ignominious electoral defeats (presidential and local government),cannot help but endorse Rajapakse’s essentially pacifist stance. Indeed, asmatters stand at present, it is only from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA),branded as proxies of the LTTE in mainstream politics, that Rajapakse does notdraw support. Apart from the broad internal consensus which he now enjoys,Rajapakse appears to be gaining increasing endorsement and support from those ofthe ‘International Community’ proactive in Sri Lankan affairs, who at thetime of the presidential election left hardly any doubt about their preferencefor Ranil Wickremasinghe.

President Rajapakse’s gains serveas a constant reminder of the tactical blunder of the LTTE demigod Prabhakaranwho, by preventing the voters of the north and parts of the east fromparticipating at the presidential polls of 2005, deprived Ranil Wickremasingheof almost certain victory. The LTTE strategy was based upon the premise thatWickremasinghe, hailed internationally as the ‘peace candidate’, if elected,would place in serious jeopardy the secessionist cause, and thus make itimpossible to sustain its ‘liberation struggle’. 

The expectation was that Rajapakse, when elected, impelledby his hawkish allies in the JVP and JHU, will actually attempt to implement hiscampaign pledge, repeated at many a platform, to jettison the existing CeasefireAgreement with the LTTE and to evict the "White Tigers" (Norwegians) fromtheir role of facilitator of the peace efforts. This, the LTTE undoubtedlyhoped, would pave the way for a resumption of the Eelam War in earnest, backedby vastly enhanced international sympathy and support for the LTTE.Rajapakse’s performance as President has blasted that hope. He and his alliesare probably aware that nothing could be gained from negotiating with theTigers. But they are equally aware that everything could be lost by anythingless than total overt commitment to the pursuit of peace through negotiation.

The escalation of LTTE violence overthe past months undoubtedly represents its leadership’s response to theseunanticipated political transformations. Understandably, therefore, the Tigershave adopted an approach of brinkmanship in which two objectives can bediscerned – first, directing the resumed negotiations towards strategic gainsfor itself in its confrontations, especially in the eastern parts of thecountry; and second, provoking a retaliatory response of violence either fromthe government or in the form of Sinhalese mob attacks on the Tamils of the typewitnessed in July 1983.

The principal strategic gain which the LTTE hopes toachieve is that of destroying the challenge to its hegemony over the easternlowlands of Sri Lanka from its renegades led by Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, alias‘Karuna’. Ever since the outbreak of the ‘Karuna revolt’ in March 2004,the LTTE (based as it is in the northern plains of Vanni) has been losingits grip over the Tamil areas of the east. Karuna now represents the biggestchallenge ever not only to the LTTE claim of being the sole representative ofthe Tamils of Sri Lanka, but also to its entire secessionist campaign – for,without the East, there could be no viable Eelam. The LTTE insists (as aprecondition for its participation in further peace negotiations) that thesecurity forces of the government of Sri Lanka must disarm the Karuna faction.This, indeed, is a strange demand, given the fact that at least over the firstthree months of the revolt, spokesman for the LTTE, including its leaderPrabhakaran, its chief negotiator Anton Balasingham and the Norwegian ‘specialenvoy’ Eric Solheim, persisted with an almost intimidatory demand, backed by athreat of withdrawal from the Ceasefire Agreement, that the Sri Lanka governmentshould refrain from ‘interfering’ with the Karuna-led revolt. 

The LTTE’s present assertion that the government is boundby the terms of the ceasefire agreement of February 2002 to disarm the Karunagroup lacks substance, given the fact that no such group existed at the time ofthe Agreement. Likewise, its claim that Karuna cadres serve as a paramilitarygroup supported by the government remains a canard which the LTTE has not beenable to substantiate with credible evidence. Indeed, the Karuna hideouts arelocated in the so-called "uncleared areas" over which the government isdenied control under the terms of the ceasefire. 

Karuna’s men, it must also be noted, employ the samewill-o’-the wisp murder tactics which the LTTE has continued to use againstindividuals it wishes to liquidate – i.e. gunmen or grenadiers operatingindividually or in pairs in surprise attacks on their targets. What these implyis that, as past records of murder committed by the LTTE themselves illustrate,the Security Forces of the government are incapable of preventing such attackseven if they are motivated to do so. 

It is in the context of this reality that the undoubtedlywell-intentioned criticism by Philip Alston (UN Special Rapporteur onExtra-judicial or Arbitrary Executions) should be considered. According toAlston, there exists "… a dangerous indifference on the part of the governmentto other armed elements responsible for attacks, including the Karuna group".Alston has stressed, however, that the "LTTE’s characterisation of itspolitical opponents within the Tamil community as ‘paramilitaries’ is agross oversimplification of a complex situation." More categorically, Karunahimself has vehemently denied any involvement with the Security Forces of the government,and had attributed the allegation to the ‘desperate mindset’ of the ‘Vannifaction’ in the Eastern Province.

With regard to the second objectivereferred to above – that of instigating, through acts of terrorism, a governmentor civilian backlash on the Tamils, the LTTE has been perilously close tosuccess, not through its attempted assassination of the Army Commander, but in asequence of events the origins of which could be traced back to the immediateaftermath of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement when the LTTE established several ofits military encampments in the Sampur area south of the Trincomalee Bay, fromwhere it launched occasional attacks on military and civilian targets. AfterMarch 2004, these encampments were also used for its anti-Karunaoffensives. 

In the more recent past, especially since late March 2006,there was a distinct escalation of violence in the Trincomalee area featuredboth by frequent LTTE bomb attacks on Security Forces personnel as well as bythe killing of LTTE activists, presumably by those of the Karuna group. The mostprominent among the latter category of victims was Vanniasingham Vigneswaran, anLTTE activist and ‘president’ of the ‘Trincomalee District TamilPeople’s Forum’, who was murdered on April 7, 2006. The retaliatory killingsthat ensued culminated in a bomb explosion by the LTTE at a crowded market onApril 12, at which the majority of victims were Sinhalese civilians. This eventwas followed by a 3-day backlash of homicide, arson and looting in various partsof the town and its suburbs by Sinhalese mobs consisting mainly of the lumpenelements of the town and of military personnel in civilian clothing. 

According to a report compiled by a prominent journalist(published in the Tamil Times of April 21), the bombing of the market andthe riots that followed caused the death of 20 civilians – 11 Tamils, 7Sinhalese and 2 Muslims. Over the three-day spell of rioting, the LTTE had alsoadded to its score of murders a further 16 personnel of the Army and the Police.Thus, by the time of the bomb attack on the Army Commander on April 25, themutual animosity between the LTTE and the Security Forces stationed in theTrincomalee area had reached fever pitch. This was probably why the LTTEencampments in the Sampur area were specifically identified by the governmentfor its retaliatory air strikes following the assassination attempt.

Each such incident, and the inevitable chain of escalatingviolence that it provokes, strains the fragile peace in Sri Lanka. The CeasefireAgreement has held out despite deliberate, continuous and massive violations bythe LTTE. There is, however, no way to predict what could prove to be theproverbial last straw which would hurl the country into open war again.

G.H. Peiris is Professor Emeritus of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia TerrorismPortal