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Tamil
Tigers out of the Woods
By
Shastri
Ramachandaran
Senior Assistant Editor with
The
Times of India
TFF
associate
November 11, 2002
The breakthrough in the second round of talks between
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri
Lankan government signifies progress well ahead of
expectations. At the end of the second round, three
important agreements on political, military and economic
matters have been signed. These agreements to address
political issues, improve security and restore normality
shall be followed up by setting up joint committees for
the purpose. The crucial agreements were topped with the
LTTE announcing its intention to enter democratic
politics, signifying the rebel outfitís desire to
turn a new leaf for wider political acceptance in Sri
Lanka and abroad. This is expected to spur international
financial and developmental assistance for relief,
rehabilitation and reconstruction as the negotiations
brokered by Norway and hosted by Thailand is the first
effort involving western facilitators and supported by
India, Japan, the EU and the US.
Given the failure of four earlier attempts to end the
Tamil-Sinhala conflict that has raged for nearly 19 years
and claimed nearly 64,000 lives, the progress of the
negotiations underway is indeed remarkable. It is also
suggestive of a greater desire for peace. Had either side
been looking for excuses to stall the process now
underway, there was no dearth of issues to pick on. At
the start of the talks in Thailand, Colombo was rocked by
violent clashes between the Sinhalese and the Muslim
minority. The next day, a Sri Lankan court sentenced LTTE
chief Velupillai Prabakaran to 200 years in jail for
allegedly masterminding the bombing of the Central Bank
in Colombo. And during the talks a consignment of weapons
was seized off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. Yet
neither side seemed to be inclined to use any of these
developments to mar the negotiations, though the LTTE did
lodge a strong protest against the court sentence during
the course of the talks. It is clear that both sides are
well motivated to keep the negotiations going steadily
without being sidetracked. That may explain why the
ceasefire that came about as part of the preparatory
drill for the negotiations has held for over ten months
despite accusations of violations by both sides. In
effect, though the war between the Sri Lankan army and
the Tamil guerillas has not been called off formally, the
guns have fallen silent. The Nordic countries have
created a Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission to track the
claims and counter-claims of truce violations, and by all
accounts there has been no outbreak that should cause
concern. The mood is so upbeat that the separatist rebels
and the Sri Lankan government are now coming together to
press the international community to generate the
financial resources required for recovering from the
ravages of war and rebuilding the economy.
The high point of this is likely to be a meeting
between LTTE chief negotiator Anton Balasingam and Sri
Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on November
25, in Oslo, on the sidelines of a decisive meeting of
foreign donors. While Colombo has been under pressure to
sue for peace, the LTTE which is designated a
ìterrorist organizationî in India, the US
and the UK has been pushed to the negotiating table by a
number of factors. First and foremost, after 9/11,
knowing that their flow of weapons and funds for weapons
would get choked they came out with a strong plea for
peace. They described themselves as ëfreedom
fightersí who were unjustly branded as
ìterroristsî for resisting the military
campaign against the Tamil minority. Secondly, there was
a sharp drop in the flow of funds and arms following the
global war against terrorism. Thirdly, the people in Sri
Lanka had become genuinely weary of the war and were no
longer interested in questions such as who ñ the
guerillas or the military ñ had committed more
atrocities but desperately yearning for peace and a
return to normal life. Fourthly, the LTTE was
increasingly alienated in India and their political
supporters under siege, if not actually arrested, for
supporting a ëterrorist organisationí. All
these add up to a situation where the climate is no
longer conducive for the LTTE to go back to an armed
struggle, as they have done on earlier occasions when
they used the pretext of talks to regroup forces and
launch fresh offensives, and thereby scuttled talks. Many
of their lifelines for going back to the gun have been
constricted if not completely cut off.
©
TFF & the author 2002
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