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Feb. 24, 2005 The year is 1995 and the month is April. The resumption of the full scale armed conflict between government troops and the Tamil Tiger separatist rebels in the North and East of Sri Lanka, after a lapse of 100 days, means more suffering and uncertainly for the people of this Indian Ocean island. Once again hopes for a lasting peace have been dashed and the eight-month old government of President Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga is faced with a greater crisis than it bargained for. Political analysts say the Tigers seem poised for a final confrontation with government troops to carve out a separate state for the 2.5 million minority Tamil community. “The LTTE has planned to hit at the heart of the government in Colombo,” an analyst said. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are one of the best-trained and motivated terrorist groups in the world. The Tigers as they are popularly known unilaterally called off the latest cession of hostilities on April 19, 1995, claiming that the Sri Lankan government was not meeting several of its key demands and was negotiating in bad faith. The LTTE attacked two navy ships in the Eastern port of Trincomalee and this signaled its return to the warfront. The Tigers have called for the dismantling of a strategic army camp, which impedes access to their stronghold in the Jaffna peninsula. This was followed by the shooting down of two Air Force AVRO planes with U.S Stinger surface to air missiles, killing close to 100 personnel. This was the first time that the LTTE have used anti-aircraft weapons in the 12-year conflict, which has claimed over 35,000 lives. The LTTE purchased these weapons from the arms black market in Afghanistan. During the 14-week cession of hostilities, which began in January 1995, government delegates held four rounds of talks with the Tigers in the northern Jaffna peninsula, which is connected to mainland Sri Lanka by a thinning strip of land. The Peoples Alliance (PA) government took office in August 1994, defeating the United National Party (UNP), which ruled Sri Lanka for the pervious 17 years and during whose misrule; the Tigers went from a rag tag outfit to a dominant terrorist group by ruthlessly eliminating its rivals. Most of the LTTE membership hails from the lower caste and class of Sri Lanka Tamil society and have sought to win power and respect through the barrel of the gun. In fact all political conflicts in Sri Lanka have been class struggles. More than 400 persons, mainly government troops have died since this fresh round of fighting began on 18 April 1995. The Tigers have managed to gain territory that was controlled by the military with their fierce attacks that took the troops and government military strategists by surprise. It has been alleged in local newspapers that top navy personnel stationed at the camp in Trincomalee, where the Tigers attacked the two crafts, were at a musical show at the time of the incident. This had been despite warnings from the Indian intelligence agency, RAW that the LTTE was planning a major surprise offensive on government troops in the Eastern province in April or May 1995. The government, which had banked on finding a political solution to the problem, has been pushed into a corner. “The military is dragging its feet… The Tigers seem to have gained the upper hand,” an analyst said. Many feel that the only way to defeat the Tigers is to get Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour India to once again intervene militarily and to jointly work with the Sri Lankan state to do so. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who visited India last month for a meeting of regional leaders (SAARC) is reported to have requested the Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to help combat the Tiger menace. In an interview with an Indian Magazine Kumaratunga described the Tiger leader Velupillai Prabakaran as a “merciless megalomaniac” who would kill her if he did not get was he wanted – a separate state. Incidentally she survived a Tiger suicide bombing in December 1999 and as a result lost one eye. The Tigers suicide bombed former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991 and Prabakaran and several of his associates are wanted in Indian in this connection to stand trial. However, Sri Lanka has still not been able to locate him. He is a fugitive. Gandhi sent 80,000 Indian troops to Sri Lanka in July 1987 under the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord to help disarm the LTTE, however, the LTTE once again reneged on its promise and started attacking the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) resulting in the death of about 1,000 Indian troops. The IPKF withdrew from Sri Lank two years later under pressure form the then Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Permadasa, who was himself assassinated by a Tiger suicide bomber on 1st May 1993. It is alleged that he supplied weapons to the LTTE to attack the Indian troops. Analysts say that having burnt its fingers India is wary about militarily intervening in Sri Lanka once again as it is suffering from the Vietnam Syndrome now. One way the Indians could help is by strictly enforcing a naval blockade of the Palk Straits – sea passage between the closest points of northern Sri Lanka and south India. The Tigers get most of their military hardware through this route. In the 1970s India helped to launch the Tamil Tiger rebels and the rest of the Tamil armed resistance in Sri Lanka. Since independence from the United Kingdom in 1948, the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils of Sri Lanka have been in an uneasy marriage owing to discrimination, lack of communication and mutual disrespect. Everyone has been looking at matters from the point of view of their ethnic community and not in terms of national development. In 1978 India, which is the regional power, took advantage of these simmering tensions, as the Sri Lanka government was to lease the harbour at Trincomalee to the United States. This would have been an intrusion into the Indian sphere of influence. This one foreign policy mistake has cost Sri Lanka more than any other in its history. Over 50 million Tamils who live across the Palk Straits in South India have ties with the Tamils of Sri Lanka who consist of three distinct groups, which are the Tamils of the North, East and those who live in the central highlands of Sri Lanka and were brought by the British to work in the tea plantations. The Tigers have now lost most of the sympathy that it enjoyed in India after Gandhi’s killing. The international community has condemned the LTTE for breaking off the truce and has urged it to return to the negotiating table. The United States branded the LTTE a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997 and has accused it of gross human rights violations, extortion, narcotics trafficking, abduction and recruitment of child soldiers and the assassination of military and political leaders. The LTTE has unsuccessfully lobbied to get itself delisted in the U.S. It was also hoping that President Bush would lose his re-election bid as his war on terrorism has put the LTTE on the spotlight since it has carried out the most number of suicide bombings in the world. This includes a total of 242 suicide or homicide bombings as the U. S. government describes them between 1987 and 2004. While the no war no peace situation continues in Sri Lanka a lot in terms of human and material terms have been lost in Sri Lanka over the past 25 years. Can the other communities learn something about peaceful coexistence from the original inhabitants of the country, the Veddha? Can this Buddhist majority country stop betraying the philosophy of the Buddha? Bibliography Gunaratne, R. (1997) International and Regional Security Implications of the Sri Lankan Tamil Insurgency. Published by the Alumni Association of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, Sri Lanka, and the International Foundation of Sri Lanka, Colombo Gunaratne, R. (1998) Sri Lanka's Ethnic Crisis and National Security, South Asian Network on Conflict Research, Colombo Ram, M. (1989). Sri Lanka The Fractured Island, Penguin, India Ratnatunga, S. (1988) The Politics of Terrorism: The Sri Lankan Experience, Belconnen, Australia Thambiah, S. (1992) Buddhism Betrayed? : Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka, University of Chicago Press, Chicago br> Wickremasinghe, R. (1992) Tissahamy Vows to Preserve Identity of His People The Sunday Times, Wijeya Publication Pvt Ltd, Colombo http://vedda.org/tissahamy-interview.htm ------------ About the author: Mr. Ravindra Wickremasinghe is the Foreign News Editor of The Business Standard newspaper of Sri Lanka. Email: ravindrabdw@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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