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.