Round The World

New Delhi, 15 April 2009

What Next With LTTE?

RAJAPAKSA BOWS TO WORLD PRESSURE

By Monish Tourangbam

(School of International Studies, JNU)

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa recently ordered a two-day pause to the military offensive in the war-torn north to mark the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, thus moving the ball to the LTTE’s court. The new initiative from the government has been largely appreciated by the international community, including the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who has called on the LTTE to take immediate steps to protect the trapped civilians by respecting the pause. Colombo’s directive has come after huge protests by the international Tamil community, therefore also putting the onus on the Lankan Tamils abroad to pressurize the LTTE to do their part and release the innocent and stranded civilians.

Earlier, waving flags, placards and chanting for a truce, some 100,000 demonstrators had marched to London’s main Trafalgar Square en route Hyde Park, led by a large banner reading “Britain act now! Immediate and permanent ceasefire in Sri Lanka”. Similar protests were held in Oslo, Copenhagen and Paris, demanding intervention to halt the conflict. These protests have been coupled with the Lankan Tamils going on hunger strike to demand the same. In Paris, the protestors shouted, “No genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka,” “Sri Lanka is a terrorist State,” and “President Sarkozy help us.”

Tamil representatives in these demonstrations have been calling for an immediate ceasefire and demanding food and medical relief to the conflict-torn area. Media transparency is too one of the prime concerns. Suren Surendiran, of the British Tamils Forum, which organized the London march, described the situation in Sri Lanka as “genocide,” and said that Britain, a former colonial power in Sri Lanka and one of the five UN Security Council permanent members, had a “moral obligation” to intervene.

The international ‘echoes’ of the Lankan conflict have just been amplified with the Rajapaksa  administration accusing the Norwegian government of not doing enough to protest the Lankan mission in Oslo. According to the Rajapaksa government, a group of hooligans, sympathizers of the LTTE, had raided its Oslo mission, causing extensive damage. The Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said that Norway, being a host country, had an obligation to protect the diplomatic missions. It is worth recalling that Norway is the facilitator of talks between the Lankan government and the LTTE and brokered the 2002 Cease Fire Agreement (CFA). Colombo had abrogated the CFA in January 2008 on the ground that the Tigers had violated the agreement over 4,000 times, thus making it futile to continue with the agreement.

Much of the attention has zoomed into a small tract of land where the final act of the 25-year old civil war is expected to play out. The estimates of the number of civilians stranded in the government-demarcated 17 sq-km No-Fire Zone (NFZ) varies from 50,000 to 100,000. The military says the remaining cadres and LTTE leaders, including its chief Vellupillai Prabakaran, have taken shelter in the NFZ and are operating from there.

The nations leading Lanka's peace process urged both the Tamil Tigers to free the civilians under its hold and the military to stop shelling the NFZ, where the separatists are making their last stand. The statement from the US, EU, Japan and Norway came as the Lankan military said it had begun what it called “the largest humanitarian intervention by a conventional military force in modern time” to rescue civilians trapped in the NFZ. The group, dubbed as the Tokyo Co-chairs, discussed a conference call “how to best end the futile fighting without further bloodshed,” according to a U.S. State Department statement. The Lankan government has vowed no ceasefire but pledged to stop fighting briefly to let people out as it has done in the past. President Rajapaksa’s decision to enforce a two-day pause comes as a fulfillment of this commitment. In a separate meeting with the US Assistant Secretary of South Kohona and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher stressed the US concern over the affected civilians.

Rajapaksa has also spoken to the UN Secretary General and assured him that “Sri Lanka was aware of and observes all international obligations to protect civilians.” He urged the UN and all interested parties to bring increased pressure on the LTTE to give the people trapped in the NFZ the freedom to leave the affected area. He accused the LTTE of using the civilians as human shields. Sir John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, writing to the Guardian of UK said, “Civilians trapped by the fighting must be allowed a free choice of whether to leave or to stay, as we have made clear to the LTTE. If the LTTE truly has the best interests of the Tamil people at heart, they should contribute to ending this unnecessary civilian suffering.”

As it is election season in India, the implications of the Lankan conflict are playing out in its many facets. If India’s intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned about an LTTE attack during elections on top political leaders, including Congress supremo and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the MDMK leader Vaiko, has been adding fuel to the fire with his virulent comments. He has warned of large-scale secessionist violence if Lankan forces killed Prabakaran and if India did not push for an end to Sri Lankan’s anti-LTTE campaign.

Referring to the Argentine born-revolutionary Che Guevara who fought alongside Fidel Castro for the Cubans, he said that the sea between India and Sri Lanka could not permanently prevent the youths from Tamil Nadu from fighting for the Tamils in Sri Lanka, with whom they share an “umbilical cord”. Vaiko also accused the Union government of providing arms and ammunition to the Lankan army in its fight against “Tamils” in Sri Lanka. In response, the government has reiterated its commitment to the cause of ethnic harmony in Sri Lanka and its continuous stand for an immediate ceasefire to the conflict. Meanwhile, some analysts also fear that the LTTE, facing annihilation in Sri Lanka, could unleash violence within India to coerce its political leadership and create conditions where it could find a safe haven in Tamil Nadu.

In the final analysis, there hangs a big question mark on the leaders of the flagging LTTE itself --- Is it fighting for the Tamil people, as it says, or else it wants the Tamil civilians to serve as a protective shield for the last remnants of their “vanguard”? As it often happens in many other secessionist campaigns, the people for whom the movement started, has ended up being the victim of the cause. With the government intent on wiping out the LTTE and the latter determined to hold on to the last tract of land under its control, the civilians seems to be “caught between Scylla and Charybdis” (In Homer’s Odyssey, the situation in which Odysseus must navigate a narrow strait, with the monster Scylla on one side and the whirlpool monster Charybdis on the other). –INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)