“It’s just the beginning”

"It is just the beginning of even more casualties now the truce is over. This time the target was a public transport coach packed with factory workers and school children."

(January 20, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelaam (LTTE) have spoken again in the language they know best, bombing a civilian target earlier this week and killing 27 people. They sent a chilling message to the authorities and the civilian population that they now have the capability of striking wherever and whenever they wish to do so.

It is just the beginning of even more casualties now the truce is over. This time the target was a public transport coach packed with factory workers and school children, close to the small town of Buttala in the Moneragala district.

The victims did not stand a chance as the claymore bomb packed with deadly iron ball bearings ripped through the crowded bus. The attackers stayed behind in ambush to finish the job with machine gun fire on the dazed survivors who were emerging from the wreckage. Another 60 others were also injured, many with life-threatening injuries in the attack that took place on the same day a six-year-old ceasefire agreement officially ended after the government announced it was pulling out of the Norwegian brokered truce, citing repeated provocative acts by the Tamil Tigers.

They have now vowed to crush the LTTE through military means. For the past quarter of a century the LTTE have waged a bloody and protracted war in a bid to carve out an independent homeland.

They had confined their fighting mainly in the north and east with an occasional attack in the capital, but had stopped short of targeting the deep south, home to the majority Sinhalese who make up 75 per cent of the 19 million population. The attack at Buttala has now changed that thinking and will force an already embarrassed government to change its strategies in the war against the separatists after they have taken the fight to President Mahinda Rajapakse’s own backyard.

However, the government has not been without success. Last November the chief of the rebel’s political arm S Thamilchelvam was killed in an air sortie in their northern jungle stronghold. Thamilchelvam, a former barber turned rebel, was seen as the number two in the Tiger ranks, and headed the Peace Secretariat in Killinochchi in the north an area controlled by the separatists.

Then in early January an army deep infiltration team killed another senior LTTE man, known as “Colonel Charles”. He was the head of the Tiger Military Intelligence wing. The rebels were quick to respond launching numerous attacks. The latest turn of events has now thrown the conflict wide open with both sides refusing to back down, despite repeated calls from the international community and other agencies for peaceful dialogue to end the crisis.

The government, which has earned a notorious reputation for widespread corruption and human rights abuses since it came into power two years ago, needs to finish the war for its own political survival and has called upon the people to make “sacrifices” towards this end.

What the government means by “sacrifices” is the rising cost of living that has been forced on civilians with prices of essential commodities such as gas, fuel and food items skyrocketing and the average wage earner finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet. The government claims that this is unavoidable since the war machine has to be funded.

The economy has taken a severe downwards trend with foreign investors jittery to put Sri Lanka on their itinerary. The once lucrative tourist industry has also received a body blow with foreign governments cautioning their citizens against travel to the island nation. The civil war will force people to tighten their belts even further and they are now bracing for more blood letting and chaos as the government and the rebels prepare to take on each other in a do or die battle.

And for President Mahinda Rajapakse and his administration, they will not only have to fight the war, but also win it convincingly in the shortest period of time, or risk being shoved into the political doldrums, because sooner or later the people are going to say ‘enough is enough’.

The conflict, described as Asia’s longest and bloodiest civil war, has already claimed an estimated 80,000 lives, mostly civilians, and driven hundreds of thousands into safety at refugee camps. With the truce over, there seems little hope for peace in the months ahead.