What next in Sri Lanka after LTTE defeat?

By S.D. Muni

(May 04, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has reached its conclusion. The security forces may still take a few days in the last stage of moping up the war zone. The area is heavily mined, a large number of civilians are still suspected to be trapped in it, and there are last-ditch attempts by the remaining Tigers to kill as many Sri Lankan soldiers as they can.

The question of LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s fate still remains unanswered. At one stage, Sri Lankan Army sources had conceded the possibility of Prabhakaran having already escaped through the sea route. This is not impossible despite the claims of the Sri Lankan Navy to keeping the area under strict surveillance. Eight of the innocent Tamils from the war zone reached the Tamil Nadu coast in a rubber boat without navigation equipment by dodging the Sri Lankan surveillance only a couple of days back. It is possible that even if Prabhakaran is still there in the so-called “No Fire Zone”, his son Charles Anthony might have escaped with a trusted band of associates to keep the struggle for Eelam alive. If the Sri Lankan Army succeeds in getting Prabhakaran dead or alive, the world will soon get to know. If Prabhakaran has indeed escaped alive, he may not find it too difficult to get a shelter, if not asylum, outside the Sri Lankan shores.

But if Prabhakaran or his son has escaped alive, the myth of the LTTE will remain alive and the organisation may be revived in due course of time. Support for the LTTE’s revival may come from two sources. One is the Tamil diaspora. Though the LTTE’s credibility among the Tamil diaspora has been eroded for the past few years, and increasing curbs were placed on the flow of funds to them, the core of the diaspora support for the LTTE remains intact. This was evident in the demonstrations in Europe, the US and Asian countries, including India, to protest against the genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils by the Rajapakse regime. These diaspora groups may be easily mobilised to rebuild the LTTE.

The second source of support to the LTTE revival project would depend upon the way Colombo responds to the Tamil question. There are clearly two aspects of the Tamil question in a post-LTTE Sri Lanka. One is of immediate attention, to take care and rehabilitate more than 2,50,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) resulting from the last phase of the conflict. There are also millions of other IDPs from the north-east scattered in Sri Lanka as a result of the conflict. President Rajapakse is seeking assistance of at least $1billion from the international community for this purpose. How much of this assistance will flow in and how it will be used will depend considerably on the sincerity and efficiency of the Rajapakse administration. Various NGOs and international donors will also be involved in this massive exercise of reconstruction and rehabilitation to make the process complicated and diversified. Any lapse, and there are bound to be many, in looking after the IDPs and ensuring their permanent resettlement will be politically exploited by the managers of the LTTE revival project.

The other aspect of the Tamil question is the lasting resolution of the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka. This will be a slow and tardy process. Before addressing this question, President Rajapakse may like to fortify his political position, in relation to his political opponents in Parliament and otherwise, by taking advantage of his “military victory”. His approach to the ethnic question may be outlined in the way he runs his campaign for political consolidation.

But there are clearly three alternatives. First is that he sincerely pushes for a devolution package that is acceptable to the majority of the Sri Lankan Tamils. This might be easily said than done in view of the opposition not only from the Sinhala chauvinist forces in the opposition parties like the JVP and the Hella Urumaya, but also within his own party. Even the coterie around him may not let him proceed smoothly in this direction. His brother Gothabaya Rajapakse and the Sri Lankan Army Chief have clearly laid the parameters of accommodation to the Tamils. They would not prefer their hard-won military victory to be frittered away by “political generosity” to the Tamils. In their perception, Sri Lanka is a country of the Sinhalese and for the Sinhalese. The Tamils could live here if they so want but peacefully. There are people around this coterie who have for long been planning a demographic restructuring of the Tamil-dominated north-eastern part of Sri Lanka.

The second option is that under the influence of the Sinhala chauvinist forces, President Rajapakse fails to carry out any meaningful devolution of powers to the Tamils and plays just with cosmetic concessions. This would be resisted by the international community. Not that the Rajapakse administration has cared much about the international community, but in the months and years to come, his dependence on the donors will increase and he may have to listen to them. Countries like China have stood by President Rajapakse in waging the war, and these countries will also extend financial support to his task of reconstruction and rehabilitation, but that support would not be adequate or even politically viable, particularly so if nations like India and the US are alienated and left out.

This will take Colombo to the third option: to accommodate Tamil demands only partially.Partial accommodation of their rights and aspirations will only build the frustrations of the Sri Lankan Tamils. President Rajapakse may seek the help of non-LTTE groups led by Duglas Devananda, Col. Karuna and Anand Sangari to push his partial package which may also keep his coterie in good humour. It is, however, doubtful if these Tamil group will become his allies to only a truncated and half-hearted resolution of the ethnic question. These groups have their strong internecine political rivalries and have found so far difficult to come to one platform.Anyone who is seen getting closer to Colombo will be opposed by the others. This is where Prabhakaran’s LTTE-revival project will draw strength from. The possibility of non-LTTE groups, which have hitherto been collaborating with Colombo because of the fear of LTTE, now taking up the Tamil question in their mutual competitive political mobilisation also cannot be ruled out.

The challenge of stability in Sri Lanka after defeating the LTTE is a formidable one. President Rajapakse can meet this challenge only by sincerely resolving the ethnic question in a just and fair manner, to the satisfaction of the Tamil community.

The writer is Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore.

-Sri Lanka Guardian