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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