Analysis

To the table, again?

Engagement at the talks table between the Colombo government and the Tamil Tigers was further bruised by two of the bloodiest incidents of the Sri Lankan conflict. Is a new ceasefire agreement possible, to replace the now-tattered one from 2002?

by | BENITA SUMITA

AFP

Habarana, 15 October

If past experiences are anything to go by, the increase in violence over the last several months in Sri Lanka will not have surprised many observers. All previous attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution to the island’s 23-year-old conflict have eventually erupted in spurts of assassinations and violence, followed by a weary return to the negotiating table. The current resolution efforts, brokered by Norwegian negotiators, have witnessed similar patterns of undeclared war and fragile peace. Today, we are in a period of the worst violence since the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed in 2002. The Norwegians nonetheless appear determined to see the peace process through – enough to ignore the increase in hostilities since July.

Regardless of what observers or combatants said at the time, by the end of July Sri Lanka was at war. On 22 July the LTTE shut the water sluice gates at Mavil Aru, triggering a humanitarian crisis in nearby villages and, as a September report by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) states, creating “a situation conducive to direct conflict between the two parties”. This led to an offensive by Sri Lankan forces, which continued even after the Tamil Tigers re-opened the sluice gates days later. Sri Lankan troops advanced into LTTE-controlled areas of Jaffna in the north and Sampur, close to the northeastern port of Trincomalee. According to President Mahinda Rajapakse, these strategic areas were captured “in the name of national interest and for the welfare of the people”. Several demands by the Tigers requesting the Sri Lankan forces to withdraw to the original ceasefire lines have subsequently been declined.

New forward defence lines are also being formed in the south of the island, where the much-needed ‘southern consensus’ seems to be finally emerging. Sri Lanka has for decades debated a common agenda between the main political parties of the south; but now that it has been formulated, bloodier battles seem in store. According to a 7 October interview conducted by The Hindu with G L Peiris, the chief peace negotiator for the United National Party (UNP)-led United National Front (UNF) government, the consensual accord that has been reached between the main southern-Sinhala political parties – the UNP and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party – goes beyond the peace talks with the LTTE. The agreed-upon Common National Agenda, Peiris notes, considers resolving the ethnic issue as the “paramount duty of the state”.

Asian Tribune

Karuna

This responsibility includes the duty to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, which also involves a military response to terrorism, Peiris added. Such an agenda closely toes the Sri Lankan military offensive line of the last several months, and also breaches the essence and spirit of the CFA. That agreement states in its preamble: “The [Sri Lankan government] and the LTTE recognise the importance of bringing an end to the hostilities … [which] is also seen by the parties as a means of establishing a positive atmosphere.”

Peiris further reiterated President Rajapakse’s stance on returning to the negotiating table after rendering the Tigers militarily weak. This two-pronged approach seems like a middle path in comparison to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s war-for-peace strategy and Ranil Wickremasinghe’s negotiations-only tactic. Unlike those two leaders, however, President Rajapakse has garnered the political support he needs to see his plan through.

With a seemingly weak LTTE, the government and the Tamil Tigers have agreed to head back to the negotiating table after an impasse that has lasted since the rebel group first walked out of negotiations (started in 2002) in April 2003. But the question is, have the rebels actually lost strength in the interim? Will the Colombo government be speaking from a height at the new talks, slated for 28-29 October in Switzerland? Or will the LTTE use the period of negotiations to recoup and rejuvenate their military might, as it has done during previous interims of negotiated calm?

In any case, further military face-offs can be anticipated in light of the present developments. Although the renewed call for talks by both parties is largely unconditional, there are minor hiccups. The government has retained its right to retaliate if the LTTE launches any attack – an option that it is maintaining with an iron fist. Retaliations that the army began towards the end of July have become bloodier. In one of the latest defensive strategies, the Sri Lankan forces claim to have taken the lives of 400 LTTE cadres in a five-hour-long battle in the Jaffna peninsula in the second week of October.

On the other hand, the LTTE claim that their attacks are in response to the government forces’ attempts to infiltrate their territory. In one such defensive response on 16 October, the LTTE carried out a suicide attack in Trincomalee District that proved to be the most fatal such attack in the history of the Sri Lanka conflict. The toll is said to be over a hundred, which included civilians and navy sailors waiting to head to their combat destinations, as well as another 150 wounded. The incident was similar to the LTTE’s very first suicide attack in 1987, which also involved detonating an explosive-laden truck. This increasingly restive situation can be explained by the fact the Tigers have never before headed to negotiations from a militarily weak position. Perhaps the rebel group is trying to gain ground ahead of the upcoming talks.

Obstacle course
There are other obstacles looming before the government and the LTTE, as well as the negotiators and international community. The emergence of a ‘southern consensus’ is a welcome turn of events, particularly in a situation where a fractured and dangerously competitive agenda on the part of Colombo’s political parties has been proving fatal to the peace process.

Pattaya mail

Peiris

That consensus, however, is far from complete. G L Peiris might be content with the silence the Sinhala-chauvinist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has observed so far on the understanding that has been reached between the UNP and the SLFP, but it will not be long before that silence is broken. This hush can also be attributed to the fact that the Common National Agenda may not be entirely outside the JVP’s interest, since the government has reiterated its military stance against terrorism, which is in line with the party’s no-compromise strategy towards the LTTE. Meanwhile, neither protest nor consent has yet been heard from the Buddhist-dominated Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). Perhaps the southern consensus will witness a shake-up with the signing of an agreement between the UNP and SLFP on 15 October. The support of these hardliners is crucial for Norway, which is more often than not seen as favouring the LTTE. The international community must now push for further mutuality in advancing the cause for a common understanding in the south.

Obstacles may not only arise from the south. The Colombo government and the LTTE may be the primary protagonists in the island’s conflict, but the brunt of the violence and bloodshed is not contained between these armed sides. Civilians have lost homes, livelihoods and lives. Even foreign NGOs have been made scapegoats in this bloody war. In May, a foreign aid worker was killed and several civilians injured when grenades were lobbed into an area where several INGOs were providing tsunami relief in Muttur, in Trincomalee District; the NGOs have since withdrawn from the area. Then in August, 17 aid workers were killed, most of them Tamil, allegedly by government military forces. On 5 October, the Geneva-based International Committee of Jurists announced that the Colombo government had refused to allow it to send an observer to investigate the massacre. Indeed, definitive identification of the perpetrators in both of these incidents is yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, civilians in Muslim-dominated Muttur are extremely vulnerable. With several aid agencies looking to wash their hands of the situation, residents are attempting to flee Muttur town following threats by the LTTE. But since the mid-August takeover of Muttur by the Sri Lankan security forces, its inhabitants have been stopped from leaving. Those who had already left are now being forced to return, although the situation is still uncertain and unsafe.

It is in the face of such uncertainty that the Colombo government and the LTTE are heading for renewed talks. If hostilities are not brought to a standstill before the Geneva negotiations, it is likely that the deadlock will continue without a chance of being broken in the near future. A workable ceasefire is even more crucial, with the 2002 agreement having long been mercilessly breached by both sides. The government and the rebel group must seek to rebuild trust, and do away with opportunism and hidden agendas.

Carrot and stick
Bilateral talks are not enough, however, when there are several other stakeholders in Sri Lanka’s war and peace. In order to sustain the talks this time around, Norway as interlocutor needs to recognise the ‘spoiler’ dynamic. Most important among those spoilers is the Karuna faction – the allegedly government-supported group that split from the LTTE in 2004 – which has recently been recruiting ferociously. Groups such as Karuna’s and other paramilitary outfits need to be roped into the larger framework of the talks. Although the government denies any link with these various groups, a degree of covert pressure on the state could bring these spoiler elements into the fold of the peace process.

But the most pressing task for Norway is keeping checks on the government and the LTTE. So far, the ceasefire monitoring mission has not been able to bare its teeth – if indeed it has any – other than to monitor hostilities and present cautious reports on the violations by each party. Pressure points can be installed into the peace process if donor countries and agencies can be made responsive to such reports and humanitarian crises. The island’s development policy has thus far been carried out distinct from efforts at resolving the conflict.

Even the UNF government’s two-pronged ‘Regaining Sri Lanka’ strategy of 2002, which entailed creating ‘peace dividends’ through a large-scale, economic reforms-driven development agenda, was unable to bridge the gap between development and peace. Although the negotiations were running aground in the second quarter of 2003, the Sri Lankan economy was galloping ahead thanks to the repeated bailouts by arguably conflict-blind development assistance. According to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the island’s economy grew 7.9 percent in the first half of this year alone.

There is an urgent need for a carrot-and-stick approach in Sri Lanka’s peace process, a part that can be played by international actors with stakes in the country’s economy. Merely tightening the purse strings on reconstruction and rehabilitation in conflict-affected regions has proven insufficient as a conditionality check on the peace process. Peace conditionality weaved into aid, including development aid, may indeed prove fruitful. As the British conflict scholar Jonathan Goodhand observed in a 2001 conflict assessment of the island, all conventional aid programmes are channelled only through the Sri Lankan government, which was a crucial bone of contention between Colombo and the LTTE during the 2002 talks. Even joint Tsunami reconstruction efforts in 2004 in the east failed on this count.

Regardless, these would constitute second steps in the process, which could be put in place only after the government and the LTTE come to a degree of understanding. As and when the government and the LTTE go into negotiations, one needs to watch President Rajapakse’s strategy of talking to a militarily-weak LTTE. This will also be a trial of the Scandinavian negotiator’s patience and determination to take the peace process to its logical conclusion. Lastly, with increased international pressure on the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE to cease the bloodshed, there will be a testing of Japan, the US and other donor countries that have growing interests in the island nation. Concrete talks with more than mere face-value promises can be a strong foundation for further multi-layered talks at various levels of society, and a definitive path to peace.