A Pyrrhic Victory

The LTTE might be on the cusp of defeat, but no viable solution to the ethnic conflict is in the offing.

Not very long ago, commentators on the Sri Lankan conflict were hinting that the latest set of sieges by the Sri Lankan Army were doomed to be interminable as it was assumed that there was no way that the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) could be defeated militarily in the harsh terrain of the Vanni in north-east Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan army might have belied those expectations by managing to take Kilinocchi, the administrative headquarters of the LTTE, but the costs at which the Sri Lankan government has achieved this target beg the question whether the victory is indeed what the government claims it to be.

The LTTE, now cornered in a few square kilometres of the Mullaitivu forests, has vowed to continue the fight. Even as the Sri Lankan army entered Kilinocchi, it found the town deserted, pointing to the fear and distrust of the Sri Lankan government that the much traumatised and victimised people of the Vanni harbour. The government has of course promised to proffer a political solution to the conflict once the LTTE is completely vanquished. The displaced Tamils in the Vanni have been used as cannon fodder, subjected as they were to forced recruitment and conscription by the LTTE. And yet, they have betrayed no trust towards the “invaders” from the south. Such is the predicament of the Tamils caught in the humanitarian catastrophe that is the civil war in the north of Sri Lanka.

Why have the Tamil people of the Vanni opted to take refuge in areas under the thrall of an intransigent terrorist organisation facing defeat? Why has the Sri Lankan government not been able to win the trust of the displaced people despite the iron-fisted administration by the LTTE in the northern regions of Sri Lanka? The answer lies not just in the years of ethnic conflict and “majoritarian” impulses that have characterised the Sri Lankan polity but in the refusal of Sri Lankan governments in the present and the recent past (irrespective of the party in power) to sincerely address the federal question in the country. For all the lip service paid to devolution and recognition of minority rights, the facts on the ground – inhuman treatment of the minority population in Sinhala majority areas, a ruthless military campaign which cared little for the lives caught up in the conflict in the north-east, and continuing refusal of the Sri Lankan polity to think beyond a framework of the nation which privileges the majority population over the minority – suggest that the grievances that were at the root of the decades long civil war persist and fester.

During the present phase (the last two years) of the civil war, the Sri Lankan government has taken recourse to stifling dissent over the course of murderous actions that it has embarked upon. Journalists have been prevented from reporting from the war zone in the north, and a cult of violence and murder has pervaded the country, attacking anyone seen as a dissenting voice. The brutal killing of respected journalist and editor of the newspaper Sunday Leader, Lasanth Wickramatunga, a known critic of the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency and of the war trajectory followed by the government in the north, is just one inglorious example. Wickramatunga, in a poignant “posthumous” editorial, published in the Sunday Leader after his death, left no doubts about who was the real reason for the cult of violence that would eventually take away his life – the Rajapaksa regime. Wickramatunga's death follows a series of incidents targeting dissident media voices, such as the attacks on the premises of the television channel Sirasa TV early this year, or the multiple threats, detentions and abductions of dissident journalists (both Tamil and Sinhala writers). It is no wonder that Sri Lanka was recently rated at the bottom in press freedom in any democratic country in the world by the organisation, Reporters Without Borders.

Indubitably, the Sri Lankan government's endeavour to use “war to establish peace” – arguing that vanquishing and obliterating the LTTE is the first step to re-establishing a peaceful democracy – has ensured that violence as a means has now been ingrained as an end in itself in a country that has just celebrated its sixtieth year since independence. There remains no excuse for the Sri Lankan government now to refrain from offering a genuine federal solution to the ethnic conflict that has ravaged the country, now that the intransigent LTTE is seen to be on the verge of defeat. But the means adopted for the objective, a reliance on unremitting violence – inflicted even on civilians caught in the crossfire of the conflict or those who question this strategy – suggests that a return to a liberal regime of rights for the much harassed minorities or indeed a rule that respects civil liberties and democratic dissent remains impossible under the existing regime.

That the other major political parties, the opportunist United National Party, which has boycotted an all-party representative committee constituted to suggest a package of devolution, the ultra-nationalist Janata Vimukti Peramuna, and a blatantly supremacist Jathika Hela Urumaya have no viable alternative to offer, suggests how degenerate the Sri Lankan polity is today.

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

Full Blown Conflict -III

Article written for The Post, Lahore

The previous sections dealt with the events as they have happened in Sri Lanka in the recent past. One would be clear that the situation in Sri Lanka is very much a civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) based in Kilinocchi in north east Sri Lanka and the central government in Colombo. The motivation for the conflict is the claim made by the LTTE that the Tamil population deserve an independent nation carved out of the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government is quite clear that no carving out is possible and the united nationhood of the Sri Lankan island is not going to be compromised.

The question that would be asked first is why at all has this problem erupted between the ethnic communities in the country, even as these communities have been living together for centuries in the island? Clearly the disaffection of the Tamils with the national system has grown out of alienation and maltreatment ever since the formation of an independent Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) from imperialist clutches. One has to understand the dynamics of ethnic troubles more thoroughly by studying both the colonial as well as the post-colonial period to answer the question of reasons for disaffection.

One thing is however clear – ethnic hatred between the communities is not a legacy of the ancient past as it is made out to be. The incompatibility of nationalism in countries with high concentrations of multiple ethnicity is a myth that has been a legacy of colonial understanding. That these myths have been used to buttress the idea of ethnic nationalism as the basis of nationhood today is a tragedy of post-colonial history. In fact, some of the biases and distinctions on ethnic basis were itself made by colonialists in Sri Lanka in the form of ethnic censuses that bracketed Tamils, Muslims and ethnic Sinhalese into boxes for bureaucratic purposes. Such a boxing in of myriad people within categories was a case in point in India too, where censuses were done on the basis of caste and religion.

It suited the colonial agenda to create these categories ostensibly to help the policy of ‘divide and rule’, as well as the fact that it reflected the imperialists’ understanding of their colonies and their people, that it was impossible for the colonised to rule themselves because of the myriad differentiations among them. Such thinking was prevalent even among the academicians. Prominent anthropologists for example maintain that primordial identity (caste, creed, religion or language) is a primary problem in the non-coalescing of a nation-state in countries such as India and obviously such logic applied to Sri Lanka as well. The fact that India has survived as a federal nation with its multiplicities of identities puts paid to such theories. The question remains why Sri Lanka has failed to emulate the Indian model effectively.

The ruling class in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon), just after the decline of the British empire, was represented by forces such as the United National Party, a right wing party leading the interests of the Lankan elite (landed gentry and business classes) that were satisfied with a dominion status under the British empire instead of complete independence. As these forces were pro-market and right wing, vast levels of disenchantment among labour (mostly plantation workers and agricultural labourers) was tried to be warded off by using means to pander to ethnic sentiments, particularly by fuelling the language divide. Widespread anger among the populace on the fact that plantations were still owned by British corporations and that there existed no national bourgeoisie representing the interests of the newly independent nation, was channelled into mobilisations on ethnic lines, due to skillful manipulation of this divide by the ruling elite. Since independence, essentially, the ruling classes pandered to Sinhala nationalism off and on, to exploit the disenchantment with the fact that the Tamils enjoyed a high share of urban government employment and had a high degree of literacy and education as compared to the much high numbers of unemployed among the ethnic Sinhalese.

The emergence of a centre-left, national bourgeois party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) in the power centre did not change things drastically, as this party nurtured Sinhala nationalism even further. Under the leadership of SWRD Bandaranaike, a Sinhala Only Act was passed that laid the first seeds for the growth of a militant Tamil consolidation. This Act meant that many Tamils in the civil service, for example, were forced to quit their jobs owing to the Sinhala-only policy and ethnic lingual prejudice created a strident rift between the communities. As such therefore, the ruling parties, despite their commitment to varying economic ideologies, worked on ethnic fault lines to buttress their strengths. It is not as if there was no opposition to this opportunism. There existed a strong Leftist party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), a Trotskyite party that envisaged equal rights for both the Tamils and the Sinhalese in a socialist Lankan republic. The party was successful in forcing the ruling elite to declare Sri Lanka as an independent republic and was able to get the foreign owned plantations nationalised. It was also involved in several trade union movements and struggles. However, the party, having compromised itself in deals with the ruling parties (particularly the SLFP) owing to the inevitable pulls of parliamentarism, gradually weakened, a process that was accentuated by the international split in the Left movement. The disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamil plantation workers was a major blow to the support base of the LSSP too.

In essence the weakening of the Left in Sri Lanka, the only major force to support a political system that accorded equal rights to the minorities, left the political arena to openly ethnic parties. The Janatha Vimuktha Peramuna, an adventurist Leftist party that tried many insurrections to get to power, also based itself on a strong Sinhala nationalism. The continuing Sinhala-only policy and the repeated incidences of extreme violence against Tamil groups saw the rapid militarisation of Tamil outfits and the birth of radical forces such as the LTTE. The deep-seated anger against such lopsided policies by the Lankan government resulted in the marginalisation of even moderate groups such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). The LTTE took to deadly attacks on the Sri Lankan military forces in an attempt to fuel support for the formation of a separate Tamil Eelam and these sporadic actions took the shape of a full-scale civil war since 1983. Organised pogroms in Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan government and guerrilla attacks by the LTTE marked the start of a prolonged conflict. Many Tamil militants also enjoyed support from covert agencies of the Indian government, as also from the political parties in Tamil Nadu, the south Indian state. The LTTE, through its policy of eliminating internal opposition among the various Tamil militant groups, emerged as the largest militant organisation, particularly in the Tamil dominated city in North Sri Lanka, Jaffna.

Indian intervention to broker peace between the warring sections in Sri Lanka only exacerbated the ethnic differences. While the nationalist elements in Sri Lanka were angered by the intrusion of Indian forces on Lankan soil, the Sri Lankan Tamils found the Indian interventionist action against the LTTE galling. The entire operation was thus a fiasco despite some initial gains and culminated eventually in the LTTE’s assassination of Indian leader Rajiv Gandhi, who had sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka. The notorious assassination (just a few years after IPKF withdrawal) started the international isolation process of the LTTE.

Essentially, the story of conflict in Sri Lanka is a complex one, which involves the failure of the elite as well as the subaltern in evolving a consensual republic that based itself on respect to ethnic differences. The success of India to overcome such differences in comparison to the Lankans owe to the largely progressive character of the Indian national movement and the assertion of sovereignty fairly early after independence. Can such a consensus evolve in the future in Lanka, is the question to be answered in the next section.

(to be continued)