Vol. XVII,
No.1 Fall, 2002
ARTICLES
Terrorist
or Freedom Fighter? The Impact of Trauma and Injustice
Lessons
From John Bull's Troubled Island
Rebuilding
A Damaged Palestine
Not
All Is Lost
Sri
Lanka Stops War To Talk Peace
SRI LANKA STOPS THE WAR
TO TALK PEACE
by Stanley W. Samarasinghe
Provided by Common
Ground News Service with permission to publish
At a time when the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is bogged down in violence with little prospect of immediate
peace, Sri Lanka's protracted ethnic conflict has taken a dramatic
turn towards peace. Sri Lanka is the small pearl shaped island
located on the southern tip of India. For twenty long years it
has experienced one of the bloodiest civil wars anywhere in the
world at a cost of over 60,000 lives. The government in Colombo
controlled by the 75% majority Sinhalese has been
fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who want
a separate homeland for the Tamils on the northern and eastern
parts of the island. Tamils constitute about one-eighth of the
island's population.
LTTE is known as one of the most
ruthless guerilla organizations in the world. It has used suicide
bombers regularly to kill its enemies. The victims include a
former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, one of Sri Lanka's
own presidents, Ranasinghe Premadasa, a large number of other
officials of various ranks, and many ordinary civilians who happened
to be around when the bombers struck. LTTE is considered a terrorist
organization by many countries around the world.
However, even with this bloody
history of assassinations, suicide bombings, and military attacks,
fighting between government forces and LTTE came to a stop last
December with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU)
by the two sides. The MOU was brokered by Norway the same
country that set the Oslo peace process in motion and is
expected to lead to peace talks in the coming months. A Scandinavian
Monitoring Mission is supervising the enforcement of the MOU.
Although there have been several violations of the MOU, mostly
by the LTTE, the ceasefire is holding.
Why is it that in Sri Lanka the
government can sit at the table with leaders of a terrorist organization,
even though three past efforts at peace talks have led to new
violence? There are a number of reasons, part international and
part domestic.
September 11th and the U.S.-led
anti-terrorist war have sent a strong signal to the LTTE that
the international community would no longer tolerate terror tactics
to win political demands. But the real impetus for the MOU and
peace process has come from some significant changes in Sri Lanka's
own political situation. Between 1994 and 2000, President Chandrika
Kumaratunga tried and failed to bring peace though negotiation
and constitutional reform. In December 2001, Kumaratunga's party
the People's Alliance (PA) lost parliamentary elections
to the United National Front (UNF) led by her arch rival Ranil
Wickremasinghe, who is now the prime minister leading a new government.
In his campaign, he promised talks with the LTTE; the MOU is
the first step towards delivering on that promise.
In seeking peace, Wickremasinghe
has made a virtue out of a necessity. The economy under Kumaratunga
performed sluggishly and, for the first time since independence
in 1948, produced a negative rate of growth in 2001. The annual
war budget of over US$800 million is simply beyond the means
of the country. The donors who keep Sri Lanka financially afloat
are putting pressure on the government to talk with the Tigers.
The public in general is weary
of war and is willing to go along with Wickremasinghe, at least
for now. In the recently concluded local government elections,
UNF won a sweeping victory in the face of a call by a small radical
Sinhalese nationalist party to turn the poll into a referendum
against the government on the peace issue. President Kumaratunga
and her party say that they are for peace, but that they oppose
many of the specifics in the MOU that give "concessions"
to the Tigers. To be sure, the Tigers are testing the limits
of Wickremasinghe's patience and political credibility with his
Sinhalese support base.
The government is banking heavily
on making life as normal as possible for the people, both Sinhalese
and Tamil, in the hope that it would build up a strong peace
constituency. There are signs that this strategy is succeeding.
Donors are willing to fund a huge reconstruction effort. The
tourist industry is picking up. Peopleto-people contact
between Sinhalese in the south and Tamils in the north is breaking
down the barrier between the two groups that the war had erected
for twenty years. People in the north and east, who suffered
tremendously due to the war, are beginning to lead a more normal
life. Most importantly, there are no more suicide bombers and
no body bags of dead soldiers delivered to villages in army trucks.
All the above does not mean that
Sri Lanka has achieved permanent peace. That is a long way off
with arduous and protracted negotiations that lie ahead. But
for now, the two sides that were sworn enemies have stopped the
fighting to talk.
One hopes that Sri Lankans will
learn from the Palestinians and Israelis that setbacks to negotiation,
even violent ones, should not deter leaders from negotiating
and achieving peace. One also hopes that Israelis and Palestinians
can take a lesson from this nascent peace process, that even
failed negotiations and a bloody past should not be a barrier
to leading their people back to the negotiating table.
The writer, who is a Sri Lankan,
teaches international development at Tulane University, New Orleans,
and is also a board member of the International Centre for Ethnic
Studies (ICES), Sri Lanka.
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