HUMANIST SRILANKAN SOLUTION TO THE CRISIS!!

Misguided beliefs in a quick end to war

JEHAN PERERA

Most people in Sri Lanka and internationally seem to take it for granted that the war is soon coming to an end. This is on account of the Sri Lankan military's steady progress into the last remaining LTTE-held areas. Even the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, Sir John Holmes, who recently visited the country advised the government "to take the historic opportunity to swiftly, after the end of fighting, tackle the underlying political issues..." However, the last stretch on the battlefield is turning out to be slower and more difficult to traverse than anticipated.
Civilians and landmines dot the area. The government has said that it is restraining its artillery and air power to reduce the collateral damage to the civilians trapped within the LTTE-held area. Ground fighting without the full utilisation of artillery and aerial power is likely to lead to increased Sri Lankan military casualties. But LTTE casualties will also be high. As the Sri Lankan military has many more personnel to throw into battle any reasonable conclusion would be that the LTTE cannot hold on indefinitely and its last positions will sooner or later be overrun.

The loss of all territory would be a major strategic blow to the LTTE. Without a fixed territorial base, the LTTE will lose all of its big military hardware, including artillery guns and tanks. The lack of a territorial base will also make it harder for the LTTE to maintain its command and control structures which will have to be decentralised. The possibility of coordinated responses to the Sri Lankan military offensives will be lower. The loss of territory under its control will also mean that the LTTE's leadership, which is now well past their physical prime, will have to be constantly on the run.

In these circumstances, it is in the interests of the LTTE to utilise whatever diplomatic and other channels they may have to forestall the government's efforts to capture their last remaining territory. Tragically, this is where the civilians trapped in LTTE-held areas, play an important role. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a group of equally distinguished signatories have issued a statement calling for UN intervention in Sri Lanka, citing the plight of the civilians. According to them, as many as 7000 civilians have become battlefield casualties within the space of a few weeks, with at least 2000 being killed.

UN Visit

The recent visit of the UN's John Holmes to Sri Lanka was an important one in the context of the ongoing fighting and pressures to protect the civilian population. This senior UN official was able to meet with government and opposition leaders and members of humanitarian and civil society groups and was also able to go to the government-controlled areas of the north to obtain a first hand impression of the situation of the displaced persons in the government's welfare centres. The problem with his visit was that he was unable to go into the LTTE-held areas or see the situation of the civilians trapped there.

A recent statement by the UN's media centre has referred to squalid and crowded conditions in that part of the country with civilians trapped there by the LTTE and by the fighting suffering from starvation. In addition, Sir John Holmes reported his findings to the UN's Security Council, which is the body which can order peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions in any part of the world. Those who have been campaigning for international intervention to stop the bloodshed in Sri Lanka have considered this briefing to be a significant breakthrough in getting Sri Lanka's humanitarian crisis onto the top of the agenda of the international community.

On the other hand, the text of the presentation made by Sir John Holmes to the UN's Security Council did not itself contain any such call for international intervention. The statement did raise the issues of civilian casualties in fighting, inadequate relief supplies, unsatisfactory conditions in welfare centres and the need to expedite the return of displaced people to their original homes. But the statement also made the point that the government had given assurances that all these matters would be attended to in due course. It also highlighted the fact that the LTTE was forcibly holding back the civilian population to meet with a cruel fate.

If the LTTE and its supporters have hoped that the international community would act more decisively to enforce a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes that would also give the LTTE a breather, they are likely to be disappointed. Members of the UN's Security Council to which he reported, such as Russia and China, have internal conflicts of their own, where they have dealt with rebellious citizens with even less concern for human rights than Sri Lanka. It is also likely that other members of the Security Council would prefer to have one less terrorist organisation in the world to support and inspire others. The fact that Sri Lanka is a sovereign state and the LTTE is an internationally banned organisation appears to have weighed heavily on the assessment of Sir John Holmes.

Humanist approach

With the international climate continuing to be favourable towards it, the government appears to be of the view that capturing the last remaining LTTE areas will pave the way for the final defeat of the LTTE by the killing or decapitating of its leadership. There is talk of a collective suicide by the LTTE when all else fails. There is also a hope of an LTTE collapse like occurred in 1989 with the JVP insurrection. But it is unlikely that there is going to be such a quick way to end the war. On the contrary it is reported that LTTE cadre have left the LTTE-held territory and infiltrated into government-controlled territory.

A repeat of the JVP phenomenon is not plausible in the case of the LTTE as the two insurrections are fundamentally different. The JVP was class based and its ideology of Marxism was not a popular one, being held by only a tiny fraction of the population. On the other hand, the LTTE is ethnic-based and its ideology of Tamil self-determination evokes a responsive chord with Tamils everywhere, including in Tamil Nadu and the diaspora. The issue of Tamil self-determination pre-dates the LTTE, which is why it has been able to maintain its fierce struggle against the government for over three decades.

Today, many in Tamil society blame the government for the killing of civilians in the north, even though the LTTE is keeping the people trapped. They believe that if the government truly considered the Tamil people to be equal citizens, they would halt the military offensive and talk peace to the LTTE. The tragic plight of thousands of civilians who have been seriously injured in the fighting over the last several weeks, and the tens and hundreds of thousands who are in various states of displacement have created an emotional volcano that rivals if not surpasses the rupture of the July 1983 anti Tamil pogrom.

Although Sri Lankan society is polarised on the issue of the war as never before, the answer to the war has to come from within it. The immediate outcome of the Holmes' visit suggests that the international community is not likely to impose a humanitarian or any other ceasefire or solution on Sri Lanka. Therefore ending the war will be a matter for Sri Lankans. The war will not end through war, through collective suicide or through international intervention. This is why a sober and humanist approach is necessary to be evolved from within Sri Lankan society at this very juncture if a solution is to be found sooner rather than later for a shared future in our shared island.
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