'Successive Governments in Sri Lanka have also been traumatised by the politics of the ethnic conflict and a string of high-level assassinations has occurred at the hands of the LTTE. The spread by the LTTE of its separatist ideology and the Tigers’ military expertise has proved a daunting challenge for the region and worldwide'.by Gen. Ashok K Mehta
(November 05, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Despite Twenty-two years after India’s military intervention in Sri Lanka, both countries were recently caught in a row over the ongoing war in the north of the island. This time though, it had ostensibly less to do with India’s strategic concerns and imminent defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam than with the safety and security of ordinary Tamils trapped in the war and prompted by the Government’s coalition partners. All 39 MPs from Tamil Nadu had threatened to resign unless the Government was able to stop the war by October 29.
India issued a demarche, urging the Sri Lankan Government to abandon the military path for a peacefully negotiated political settlement, adding, pointedly, that it will do all in its power to achieve this goal. Conspicuously there was no demand for a ceasefire or ending hostilities. Not since 1987 when India intervened militarily to help redress Tamil grievances and tame the Tigers has such a diplomatic confrontation occurred. Hardnosed politicians from both sides of the Palk Strait that separates India and Sri Lanka believe that the Government of Tamil Nadu was play-acting for electoral gains in the coming elections and that New Delhi had to echo their sentiments to save the Government. The altercation ended as quickly as it had started.
While the Sri Lankan Government has agreed to address India’s legitimate humanitarian concerns arising from the war, it stressed that the military offensive would continue to eradicate the LTTE terrorists, noting that India had not asked for ending the offensive. With Kilinochchi, the political capital of the LTTE, within his sights, President Mahinda Rajapaksa will not forego a key battlefield victory. It is highly unlikely that the pursuit of a military solution will be forsaken anytime soon especially when the smell of victory is so strong and the LTTE so weak.
Bereft of any leverage with Colombo, New Delhi’s threat to do all in its power to end the war rings hollow. In fact, Sri Lanka’s Media Minister Lakshman Yapa has said there is close cooperation and understanding with India in crushing the Tigers. Mr Rajapaksa has promised to hand over to India LTTE leader Prabhakaran to stand trial for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
India’s military intervention in 1987 was driven by its security concerns, securing an equitable power-sharing deal for Tamils, and rescuing a beleaguered LTTE from the Sri Lankan military. Although some concerns remain, India’s intervention and despatch of the IPKF had proved so unsavoury that it has taken its eye off Sri Lanka. When, in 2000, the LTTE had cornered Sri Lankan forces in the north, so dire was the situation that Colombo sought an Indian rescue mission in the event the military garrison in Jaffna had to be evacuated. Buddhist monks appeared outside the Indian High Commission in Colombo, waving placards calling the IPKF back. Fortunately Jaffna was saved by the LTTE’s failure to press its offensive.
After the LTTE suicide squads destroyed Sri Lanka’s commercial and military fleet of aircraft at Katunayake Airport in 2001, local media carried stories ruing the decision to send the IPKF back. With Government forces now decisively winning the war, the same Buddhist monks are asking India to keep out.
Only when the Tamil Nadu Government raises its voice about ‘ethnic genocide’ in Sri Lanka, New Delhi activates its now predictable Sri Lanka Standard Operating Procedure of sending Ministers and bureaucrats scurrying to Chennai and Colombo. Tamil politics have extracted a heavy price in the 1990s. Rajiv Gandhi lost his life following the fouled intervention in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Nadu Government was dismissed for breakdown of law and order in the State. In 1997, the Union Government fell after the Jain Commission investigating Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination established the DMK Government’s complicity in the case.
Successive Governments in Sri Lanka have also been traumatised by the politics of the ethnic conflict and a string of high-level assassinations has occurred at the hands of the LTTE. The spread by the LTTE of its separatist ideology and the Tigers’ military expertise has proved a daunting challenge for the region and worldwide.
The Rajapaksa Government has made some deft moves: Changing the optics of the ethnic conflict to fighting terrorism, underscoring the distinction between the legitimate rights of the Tamils and the terrorist agenda of the LTTE, undertaking an all-out military campaign to liberate the Tamils from the clutches of terrorists, and deferring devolution of powers for Tamils till after the defeat of the Tigers. The last has augmented doubts about Sri Lankan earnestness to devolve power. Mr Rajapaksa says there is no ethnic conflict in his country and Tamils are ‘brethren’.
Never in the history of Sri Lankan military operations has its security forces been more focussed, integrated and successful as now due largely to air supremacy, innovative tactics, leadership and lack of political interference. Never before has the LTTE been more emasculated — politically, militarily and internationally that even the Tamil diaspora is losing its confidence in it. Yet, as last week’s daring air strikes over Mannar and Colombo have demonstrated, the Tigers may be down but not out. Smoking out Prabhakaran from Mullaithivu will be no easy task. For that matter, Kilinochchi, which was to fall almost six months ago according to Sri Lankan sources, is still holding out.
Neither the political histrionics of Tamil Nadu nor the sophistry of Indian diplomacy have been able to halt the military offensive or make Mr Rajapaksa change course. He is determined to follow the military route and says that the political question will be addressed only after terrorism is eradicated as otherwise it will not be possible to implement devolution through the 13th Amendment.
So, till the war is won in the north — which could go on for a couple of years — Tamils will have to live in a Sri Lanka, which, in the words of the Army Chief, Gen Sarath Fonseka, belongs to Sinhalese but ‘minorities are treated as our own people’.
Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict will never be solved without India’s active involvement. The latest row was mere diplomatic foreplay. New Delhi has to re-energise its contacts with moderate Tamils and reopen lines with the LTTE and its political affiliate, the Tamil National Alliance. India should press Mr Rajapaksa to immediately implement the 13th Amendment in the east without waiting to destroy the LTTE and order a temporary humanitarian ceasefire so that international humanitarian agencies can return to the conflict zone. The US, India’s newfound strategic partner, is ready to chip in to work this plan.- Sri Lanka Guardian
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