Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict: have bombs shattered hopes for peace?
Marshall R. Singer
Asian Survey
Vol.36 No.11
Nov 1996
pp.1146-1155
             
COPYRIGHT 1996 by The Regents of the University of
California. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner
            Have Bombs Shattered Hopes for Peace?
            In January 1995 peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and 
            the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were underway and a 
            cessation of hostilities by both sides had been achieved. What was 
            striking was that first in Israel, then in Northern Ireland, and 
            finally in Sri Lanka it had suddenly become possible to negotiate 
            peace with the enemy - a concept that had been unimaginable in all 
            three regions a year or so before. But by February 1996 bombs had 
            been detonated by extremists in all three countries, in part to 
            ensure that moderate politicians would not be able to make the 
            concessions necessary to achieve peace. The peace process in all 
            three countries seemed to have begun to unravel; in Sri Lanka the 
            bombings have had a devastating effect but it may still be possible 
            to rescue the peace process there.(1) 
            The conflict raging in Sri Lanka is a long-simmering struggle 
            between the island nation's two major ethnic groups: the majority, 
            mostly Buddhist Sinhalese, and the minority, mostly Hindu Tamils. 
            Dating the start of the struggle depends upon one's perspective. 
            Some would argue it began in the 10th century with successive 
            invasions by waves of South Indian Tamils, who drove the Sinhalese 
            south into the Kandian hills in the center of the island and to the 
            southern and western coasts. The so-called Sri Lanka Tamils have 
            been in the northern and eastern regions ever since. In the late 
            19th and early 20th centuries, the British brought more Tamils from 
            South India to Ceylon to work first on the coffee, and later the tea 
            estates, but these so-called "Estate Tamils" live almost exclusively 
            in the Kandian hills, and until now have not been involved in the 
            Tamil fight for independence. 
               Politics 
            Sri Lanka is a rare South Asian nation in that it was not born of an 
            independence struggle. Once the British made the decision to leave 
            India and Pakistan in 1947, they decided to leave Ceylon (in 1948) 
            as well. Although some small leftist parties functioned on the 
            island even before independence, the main party that united almost 
            all Sinhalese and many Tamils was the United National Party (UNP). 
            The Tamil community did have one small political party called the 
            Tamil Congress, which had asked the British for a 50/50 split of 
            power between Sinhalese and Tamils, but most Tamils in the earliest 
            days supported the UNP. Today, many Sinhalese date the beginning of 
            the modern conflict between the two ethnic groups with what they see 
            as the arrogant demand of the Tamil Congress, with Tamils 
            constituting less than 20% of the total population, to share power 
            equally with the other 80%. 
            Once independence was granted, one of the first things the 
            Sinhalese-dominated government did was to disenfranchise the Estate 
            Tamils - who made up almost half of the Tamil population on the 
            island at the time and who had lived there for generations - on the 
            grounds that they were "Indians" and not really Ceylonese. Many 
            Tamils date the beginning of the current ethnic conflict to that 
            event. Obviously, India did not want to take back over a million 
            poor Tamil estate workers, who would certainly be unemployed. 
            However, through negotiations lasting many years, large numbers of 
            the Estate Tamils did return to India while others managed to gain 
            Sri Lankan citizenship. The disenfranchisement of the Estate Tamils 
            in 1948-49 was certainly unnerving for the Ceylon Tamil population. 
            Almost immediately the Federal Party came into existence among 
            Tamils, demanding a federal system for Ceylon. 
            On the Sinhalese side, sentiments were hardening as well. In 1952 
            S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike broke with the ruling UNP and started his own 
            Sinhalese nationalist party called the Sri Lanka Freedom Party 
            (SLFP). He promised to restore Buddhism to its proper place in 
            society by making it the national religion, restore ayurvedic 
            (local) medicine to its proper place, and most important, to make 
            Sinhalese the only official language of the country. In 1956 
            Bandaranaike, with a coalition of parties he had formed, was swept 
            into office on that platform. One must note that from before 
            independence until 1956, the Ceylonese elite - whether in the civil 
            service, business, the professions, academia, or the press - were 
            overwhelmingly Western-educated, English-speaking "gentlemen," whose 
            ranks were heavily over-represented by Tamils and Christian 
            Sinhalese. The Ceylon Tamils were resented by the average Sinhalese 
            precisely because they were so well placed in society. And the 
            average Sinhalese feared them. The Sinhalese may have constituted 
            the overwhelming majority of the population, but when they looked 
            northeast across the Palk Strait, they saw 50 million Tamils in 
            India's southern state of Tamil Nadu whom they perceived as 
            potentially menacing. Bandaranaike promised to give Ceylon back to 
            the Sinhalese masses, and they responded by supporting him. 
            Rioting broke out in 1958, and several hundred Tamils were killed or 
            injured by Sinhalese nationalists. This was also the year that 
            Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk who felt that the 
            prime minister was not moving fast enough to implement his Sinhalese 
            Buddhist platform. Ultimately, Bandaranaike's widow, Sirimavo 
            Bandaranaike, took over the party and was elected the world's first 
            woman prime minister in 1960. When she came to power again in 1970, 
            the SLFP with a coalition of like-minded parties took control of 
            two-thirds of the seats in Parliament; they amended the Constitution 
            and changed the name of the country to the Democratic Socialist 
            Republic of Sri Lanka. After a scandal in which it was alleged that 
            Tamil secondary school teachers were giving higher grades to Tamil 
            children than to Sinhalese, Bandaranaike's coalition instituted an 
            "ethnic preference program" in the educational system that would 
            make it easier for Sinhalese (and more difficult for Tamils) to get 
            into universities. 
            Shortly after the 1970 election, however, Bandaranaike was faced 
            with an armed uprising of radical Sinhalese youth, many of whom had 
            gone through the university studying in Sinhalese as their medium of 
            instruction. When one creates 60,000 university graduates who speak 
            only Sinhalese, one had also better create 60,000 jobs for 
            university graduates who speak only Sinhalese. The government failed 
            to do that. These radical youth were known by the English initials 
            JVP, and they caught the government completely off guard. All 
            political parties in Sri Lanka condemned them, including the 
            Communists and Trotskyites who were in the governing coalition, and 
            with the help of several foreign governments, including India and 
            the United States, the JVP was brutally crushed. 
            Among Sri Lankan Tamil youth, similar rebellious sentiments were 
            stirring. Under the Bandaranaike language policy, they had been 
            allowed to study in the Tamil language in schools in Tamil areas - 
            which included Jaffna University - but jobs for "Tamil only" 
            educated youth were no more plentiful than for "Sinhalese only" 
            youth. With the education reforms of the 1970s, even fewer Tamil 
            youth were to be admitted to universities to study in Sinhalese. In 
            addition, young Tamils were increasingly frustrated with Tamil 
            politicians who had not been able to deliver federalism, which would 
            have granted them some degree of control over their own destiny, at 
            least in Tamil areas. One of the tragedies of Sri Lanka is that the 
            Sinhalese have never been able to accept the concept of federalism; 
            to them it meant creating a separate country on the island. 
            One of the essential elements that must be kept in mind in 
            understanding the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict is that, since 1958 at 
            least, every time Tamil politicians negotiated some sort of 
            power-sharing deal with a Sinhalese government, regardless of which 
            Sinhalese party was in power, the party out of power always claimed 
            that the party in power negotiated away too much. In almost every 
            case - sometimes within days - the party in power backed away from 
            the agreement. Hence, by now most Tamils question the ability of any 
            Sinhalese government to implement any agreement to which it might 
            agree in principle. 
            By the late 1970s, small bands of armed Tamil teenagers began to 
            demand total independence from Sri Lanka, and they had become 
            convinced that violence was the only way this was going to happen. 
            While most Tamils didn't approve of their violent ways, they did 
            approve of their message, and soon the largest mainstream Tamil 
            party changed its name and began calling for total independence - 
            Tamil Eelam (Tamil homeland) - for the North and East combined. A 
            group of these armed "boys" (as they were called by their Tamil 
            elders) ambushed and killed 13 Sinhalese soldiers in July 1983. The 
            bodies were brought back to Colombo for a public funeral and riots 
            broke out. The government did nothing to stop the fighting for five 
            days, either because it felt it couldn't control the military - as 
            many Sinhalese believe - or because it wanted to let Sinhalese vent 
            their anger on Tamils generally - as many Tamils believe. When it 
            was over, several thousand Tamils had been killed or injured and 
            over 100,000 had fled to India. For many Tamils, this was the major 
            turning point. It was a pogrom of such intensity that many formerly 
            moderate Tamils were suddenly convinced that only a totally separate 
            state could protect Tamils. The Sinhalese government turned to its 
            military in an attempt to stamp out "terrorism" (as it was 
            officially called), but these efforts were so Draconian that they 
            created many more militants than they killed. Every time the 
            government launched an offensive into Tamil areas, hundreds of 
            innocent civilians were killed, although this obviously was not the 
            government's intent, and hundreds more otherwise moderate Tamils 
            became militants. 
            The last of the remaining major Tamil militant groups, the 
            Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), are clearly ruthless. They 
            have brutally eliminated all of the other militant Tamil groups who 
            once fought at their side. They terrify Sinhalese villagers, 
            particularly in the Eastern Province, which they consider part of 
            their traditional homeland. They consider the Sinhalese who have 
            been settled there by the government as unlawful trespassers on 
            "their land." They have no compunction about going into villages at 
            night and slitting the throats of men, women, and children. They 
            have also killed many moderate Tamil leaders whom they label as 
            "traitors." The Indians believe that they have enough evidence to 
            convict the Tigers, in court, of having killed former Indian Prime 
            Minister Rajiv Gandhi and probably Sri Lankan President Premadasa as 
            well. The Tigers were undoubtedly also the ones responsible for the 
            bombing of the Central Bank Building in Colombo on January 31, 1996, 
            an attack that took approximately 100 lives and wounded 1,400. 
            Furthermore, most people other than LTTE supporters agree that the 
            LTTE has reneged on every agreement it ever signed when it saw it to 
            be in its interest to do so. 
            Nevertheless, most ordinary Tamils in the North appear to support 
            the Tigers, not necessarily because they like them but because they 
            like the Sri Lankan - or Indian - armies less. The Tigers are 
            ruthless and authoritarian but they are not corrupt; they do not 
            tolerate stealing, bribery, or rape, actions other armies are famous 
            for. In fact, they are perceived as single-minded in their defense 
            of Tamils. They are so disciplined that when captured, they swallow 
            the cyanide capsules they carry with them at all times rather than 
            risk revealing anything under torture. 
            Cessation and Renewal of Fighting 
            Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the current president, is the 
            only head of state whose father and mother were both heads of state 
            before her, and a woman whose father and husband were both killed 
            because of the ethnic conflict. She was elected to the office of 
            president in December 1994, in large part on a platform of 
            negotiating an end to the conflict. Within weeks of taking office, 
            she had sent a delegation North to talk directly with the Tigers 
            with no preconditions. A cessation of hostilities was worked out, 
            but the Tigers insisted on four conditions for continuing the truce: 
            
            1. Immediately lift the embargo that had been in effect for some 
            years on food, gas, and other supplies to the North; 
            2. Allow Tamil fishermen to fish the northern coastal waters; 
            3. Remove a military camp in a strategic position in the North; 
            4. Permit the LTTE cadre to carry guns for their own protection when 
            in government-controlled territory in the East. 
            The government rejected the last two demands out of hand, and 
            finally agreed to the second demand but only partially, and only 
            after months of negotiations. While the government accepted the 
            first demand - to lift the embargo immediately - it had difficulty 
            implementing it. Some goods got through but nothing like the amount 
            that was needed, that the Tigers expected, or that southern Tamils 
            tried to send North. Trucks were stopped and searched, as indeed was 
            necessary to prevent arms smuggling, but frequently they could not 
            get through because of bureaucratic red tape and probably military 
            distrust and hostility. 
            The LTTE saw all of this as just one more example of the 
            government's inability to deliver on agreements and on Sinhalese 
            refusal to meet legitimate demands. The Tigers first set a deadline 
            of March 1995 for their demands to be met and later extended it, but 
            on April 19, 1995, despite having signed an agreement that either 
            side would give 72 hours notice before abrogating the pact, the 
            Tigers gave four hours notice and then blew up two ships in an east 
            coast harbor. This was followed almost immediately with a major LTTE 
            offensive launched against the Sri Lankan military, not a direct 
            frontal assault but hit-and-run attacks. In rapid succession, almost 
            a quarter of the Sri Lankan navy was sunk, several planes were 
            downed (by what may have been ground-to-air missiles), and scores of 
            military personnel were killed. These actions made Kumaratunga's 
            relations with the military particularly difficult, as during the 
            truce talks she had canceled approximately $72 million worth of 
            contracts for military hardware. She argued at the time that the 
            government was talking peace, not war, and therefore military 
            hardware was not necessary. 
            The president, who had banked so much on the agreement, and the 
            people around her felt that they had been duped by the LTTE, which 
            they now believed had agreed to the truce merely to regroup and 
            rearm. The army had warned Kumaratunga that the Tigers might do just 
            that, as had the government of India, other Tamil militant groups 
            upon whom the LTTE at some point had turned, and Sinhalese critics 
            of the agreement. The government responded, first, with an 
            ill-advised offensive called Operation Leap Forward. It deployed 
            10,000 armed men in the largest single military operation undertaken 
            in the war up to that time, but it was a disaster. The army was able 
            to conquer approximately 78 sq. km of territory but could hold only 
            7 or 8 kms. Moreover, more than 200 Tamil civilians were killed in 
            the process and 180,000 became refugees. Many Sri Lankan soldiers 
            were killed, and a great deal of equipment was lost as troops were 
            pushed back from newly captured land. 
            In August 1995, Kumaratunga unilaterally announced a peace package 
            that went much further than anything that had been offered to the 
            Tamils in the past. Not only was she offering federalism (although 
            without using that word; "devolution" is preferred), but a 
            federalism that would give the regions an extraordinary amount of 
            autonomy. Virtually all of the powers that in previous proposals 
            would have been held concurrently by the center and the regions were 
            to be handed over to the regions, more or less exclusively. With 
            some modifications to the boundaries of the Eastern Province to be 
            worked out in the future, this proposal recognized the right of the 
            Tamils to a single region (the Tamils call it "homeland," over 
            Sinhalese objections) in a merged Northeastern Region. Under this 
            package, the regions would be given the right to negotiate directly 
            for foreign loans and investments and the Northeast would even have 
            the right to maintain its own Tamil army. 
            The reason the peace package went as far as it did seems to have 
            been that the government, unable to get anywhere in its negotiations 
            with the LTTE, hoped to appeal directly to the war-weary Tamil 
            people. The government hoped that by offering the Tamils significant 
            portions of what they had been asking for, it could win the support 
            of the common people of the North and East, and that the latter 
            would, in turn, put pressure on the Tigers to accept the 
            arrangement. Whether that peace package will get the hoped for 
            northern Tamil support remains to be seen. 
            A prior question seems to be whether President Kumaratunga can get 
            the Sinhalese support she needs to amend the Constitution by a 
            two-thirds majority in Parliament and to win a national referendum. 
            The Buddhist clergy came out against the proposals almost as soon as 
            they were announced. New political groups have emerged on the 
            Sinhalese right, hoping to defeat the package in the referendum even 
            if it makes it through Parliament. There is considerable pressure on 
            the UNP, which is now the major opposition party, not to support the 
            package. As of this writing, the UNP had not rejected it outright 
            but Kumaratunga was forced to modify it considerably, giving less 
            autonomy to the regions than first suggested in an attempt to get 
            Sinhalese support. 
            In January 1996 the Kumaratunga government formally submitted a 
            modified version of the peace package to Parliament. In the first 
            version, no central government would have been able to remove a 
            regional government regardless of the circumstances. The modified 
            version spells out the authority of the center to remove any 
            regional government that tries to separate from the republic and 
            assume direct rule over the region. The Sinhalese applauded this 
            change but Tamils are leery of it. They fear Colombo would use that 
            provision to suppress any Tamil regional government of which the 
            center did not approve. The question, of course, is at what point 
            will so many modifications have to be made to satisfy Sinhalese 
            demands that the government will lose the support of moderate 
            Tamils? 
            At the same time as the government was offering a political 
            solution, it decided it needed to show both the Sinhalese right and 
            the Tigers that it could be tough and hand the LTTE a major military 
            humiliation. Accordingly, in late October 1995 the government 
            launched yet another offensive against the Tigers. This time the 
            military threw 40,000 troops into battle. Despite reservations among 
            some military authorities in Colombo about how successful this 
            campaign could be, government troops took Jaffna city in December. 
            As they advanced on the city, however, most of the population left. 
            The government claims that the Tigers forced people to leave at gun 
            point in order to create a human shield and to embarrass the 
            government politically with hundreds of thousands of refugees. There 
            may be truth in that assessment, but there is probably also truth to 
            the Tiger claim that many fled to escape large-scale bombing and 
            shelling of populated areas. 
            In March 1996 the government launched yet another military offensive 
            in the North, and this time succeeded in capturing the remainder of 
            the Jaffna Peninsula. The Tigers fled into the jungle to continue 
            the fight. No doubt the fall of Jaffna city and loss of the 
            peninsula were major defeats for the LTTE, but the Tigers still have 
            not been completely crushed, as they demonstrated in January 1996 
            when they blew up the Central Bank building in downtown Colombo in 
            retaliation for the fall of Jaffna city. Again in July 1996, they 
            overran an army base in the North, killed over 1,000 government 
            troops, and made off with millions of dollars worth of weapons and 
            munitions; the LTTE also set off bombs on commuter trains outside 
            Colombo, presumably in retaliation for the fall of the peninsula. 
            While both the Sinhalese and Tamil populations are war-weary, there 
            is some question as to whether the Sinhalese people are prepared to 
            go as far as the Sri Lanka government has indicated it is willing to 
            go in offering devolution of power to the Tamils. On the other hand, 
            I believe the vast majority of the Tamil population is willing to 
            settle for more compromise than is the LTTE. It is interesting that 
            both sides have hardened their bargaining positions, and are setting 
            conditions for a resumption of negotiations to which each knows full 
            well the other side will not agree. The government now says it will 
            not negotiate until the Tigers lay down their arms; the Tigers say 
            they will not negotiate until the government leaves Jaffna. Clearly, 
            neither side will agree to either set of conditions. 
            One event that would change the entire situation would be the death 
            of the LTTE leader, V. Prabhakaran. I very much doubt that the LTTE 
            would survive his death very long. There is no clear heir apparent, 
            and while one rarely hears of splits within the leadership, such a 
            cult of personality has been created around Prabhakaran that it is 
            unlikely anyone could assume his role. Thus, for the moment at 
            least, we have a stalemate. Not willing to accept a peaceful 
            solution short of de facto Eelam, the LTTE strategy seems to be to 
            bring the war to the Sinhalese and hope that eventually they will 
            tire of taking casualties and grant Eelam. The Tigers use Ethiopia 
            and Israel as their models. In the former, a new government finally 
            agreed to independence for Eritrea after years of fighting; in the 
            latter, the Israelis finally agreed to what they see as something 
            short of a separate country on the West Bank and Gaza but which the 
            Palestinians certainly see as an independent state. 
            Can There Be Peace in Sri Lanka? 
            Short of Prabhakaran's death, a military solution is not at all 
            likely. The government could launch yet another offensive, but the 
            IRA and Hamas have shown that even the British and Israeli armies 
            and police have been unable to prevent terrorist attacks. Certainly 
            the Tigers are equally committed, and no government can protect 
            against that. 
            Having achieved military victory in Jaffna, large numbers of 
            Sinhalese, as well as the army and the Buddhist clergy, are now 
            saying, "Why compromise? We have them on the run, there is no need 
            to compromise." Since the bombing of the Central Bank and the 
            commuter trains in 1996, increasing numbers of Sinhalese are asking: 
            "See what terrorists they are? How can we negotiate with them?" For 
            their part, the Tigers and their supporters say: "You took Jaffna, 
            but we have now shown you that you can't put a stop to our movement. 
            We will continue fighting until you grant us Eelam." 
            Is there anything that a Sinhalese government can do unilaterally to 
            bring peace? It would seem that the Sinhalese must actually 
            implement some sort of devolution of power guaranteeing that Tamil 
            fears of persecution and discrimination will be mitigated. Granting 
            major shifts of autonomy from the central government to the regions 
            would be a big step in that direction. There must also be 
            irreversible guarantees for minority rights written directly into 
            the Constitution. Of course, constitutions can be abrogated, but 
            that is a chance the Tamils would have to take and the LTTE up to 
            now has refused to take it. Also until now, the Sinhalese have not 
            changed the Constitution to include these guarantees. 
            Ordinary Tamils of the North and East are undoubtedly war-weary. 
            They have suffered the most since 1983, and are clearly tired of it. 
            If the peace package is actually implemented, the vast majority of 
            Tamils will probably go along with it despite attempts by the Tigers 
            to disrupt the process. The problem is that only the Sinhalese can 
            approve and begin the process of implementation. To get the 
            necessary two-thirds vote in Parliament and the support of the 
            Sinhalese people in a referendum will require a unified stand by 
            President Kumaratunga's government and the opposition UNP. Probably 
            the only way the Sinhalese could be brought to accept any political 
            solution would be for all the major Sinhalese parties to form a 
            Government of National Reconciliation, including all the party 
            leaders. At a minimum it would have to include the People's Alliance 
            (Kumaratunga's coalition) and the UNP. So far, neither party has 
            been willing to make such a move while in power. Many observers are 
            now convinced that the president's only hope for success is to go to 
            the people with a unified national government and ask for support. 
            If she offered such a deal to UNP leaders, they might accept. 
            The sad thing is that each time a bomb goes off and kills more 
            civilians, whether in Sri Lanka, Israel, or Ireland, more and more 
            people become convinced that "there will be no peace if bombs keep 
            killing people," and there is virtually no way to stop those bombs 
            from going off. The question is, does one allow the very small 
            minority with the bombs to have their way and scuttle peace 
            possibilities, or does one go ahead with as much peace as possible? 
            That is something the governments of Israel, Northern Ireland, and 
            Sri Lanka will have to decide in the months ahead. 
            Prime Minister Rabin of Israel had the determination to proceed with 
            the peace process despite Palestinian bombs, and he was killed by an 
            Israeli extremist because of it. If President Kumaratunga persists 
            in pushing the peace process in Sri Lanka, she may have to worry as 
            much about Sinhalese extremists as she does about Tiger attempts to 
            kill her. Even given that, it seems she has no choice but to pursue 
            peace. 
            1. This article is based on more than 600 interviews conducted in 
            Sri Lanka, India, the U.K., the U.S., and Mexico between July 1983 
            and March 1996. 
            Marshall R. Singer is Professor of International and Intercultural 
            Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.