The Weekly N&C for November 3rd, 2008

Will Sri Lanka finally “win”?

One of the longest running and most vicious insurgencies in the modern world is the Tamil Separatist Insurgency in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), and it has proven to be nearly intractable whether pulled and pushed at by political, economic, interventionist, or purely military attempts at a conclusion. Given the cultural history of the place, and the linkage between factionalism and religious affiliation, it has even occurred that this conflict be described as one where an ardent religious minority fights back against a rival and uncompromising majority. But that is simply not so, at least not in any rational way of explanation. The government, and the law of the land, is preferential to Buddhism, however the current administration by the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) party-alliance that includes most of the left-center (including the Marxist janatā vimukti peramuṇa (“People's Liberation Front"; JVP) minor party; former insurgents themselves) is composed of representatives of a variety of religious beliefs (or non-belief). The schism that has divided the nation for half its post-colonial existence is one of competing nationalisms, with one side being played for the fool.

That side, the Tamil minority that is widespread in the North and East of Sri Lanka, makes up roughly 15% of the total population and is in the far largest part Hindu. They are the tail end, ethnographically speaking, of the large and influential Tamil (sometimes called Dravidian) population that holds a wide homeland in India’s South. The modern Indian State of Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras State) is a fine testimony to the strength and industry of the people there, as it is considered the most industrialized and urbanized region of India. But across the narrow passage of Palk Bay, the Tamil population of Sri Lanka has lived in a mostly rural dispersion from the Jaffna Peninsula down the eastern coast of the great island. *Here* is a map reference, and *here* are more maps that include the location in reference to India’s Tamil Nadu, and in several cases mention a region of Sri Lanka as “Tamil Eelam”…

This Tamil Eelam is a rival nationalist construct to the State of Sri Lanka, originating in the political concept of there being one Tamil “nation”. Since 1972, various factions of the Tamil community of Sri Lanka have ascribed to this concept, and each has tried to leverage it into autonomy or separatism. But by 1987, each had in turn been consumed by the most voracious of the movements, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The LTTE has gained a place in the world, to say the least, by the way it chooses to conduct itself. It has been banned as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the U.S. since 1997, banned in the EU since May of 2006, and is under ban in 31 countries as of this date. It takes a pretty soiled reputation to end up with that pedigree and sure enough, the LTTE is about as bad a bunch as there is out there.

The LTTE is the personal cat’s paw of Prabhakar Velupillai, who has gotten himself an absolutely fearsome reputation and an INTERPOL warrant for his arrest in any nation. His list of criminal accusations includes murder, terrorism, terrorist conspiracy, and organized crime. That last bears further commentary, below. India has judged him guilty in abstentia of conspiracy to the murder of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and there is an open warrant for his arrest in connection to the Central Bank Bombing in India as well. Almost needless to say, the Government of Sri Lanka just wants him brought down, dead or alive.

Under his leadership, which is functionally a cult-structure of absolute obedience to the leader, the LTTE have become the master practitioners of all the elements of modern insurgency: terrorism in the targeted populace; absolute authoritarianism in any subject areas; fanatical loyalty of the armed wing of his organization; forcible induction of subject peoples into the militant force, especially children; and the premier practitioners of suicide bombing and suicidal loyalty in the terrorist world. The modern jihadists learned technique from the LTTE, albeit by example. The LTTE is also proficient at using all environments in such ways. The Sea Tiger suicide boat units are a particular threat to shipping in the region, and the LTTE is known to engage in all manner of false-flag endeavors to steal and conceal arms shipments. They have even managed to conduct air raids using light aircraft, to the consternation and confusion of the Sri Lankan military.

Efforts to bring some peace, or at least stability, to Sri Lanka have stumbled far more than they have advanced. The Indian Government attempted to intervene at the invitation of the then-desperate Sri Lankan Government, from 1987 to 1990, but that ill-fated intervention only brought wider grief in both countries as the fighting simply spread to involve the Indian Peacekeeping Forces as combatants. The Norwegian Government, in its internationally-encouraged role as a non-involved negotiator, initiated a round of negotiations that seemed to bear some hope of a political solution. The talks produced a February, 2002, cease-fire and a Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) composed of Nordic countries’ officers, but no real progress toward dismantling the LTTE even though the effort persisted for years.

Not even the Boxing Day Tsunami disaster could bring real cooperation between the negotiators and the LTTE, although it was attempted. This was to be no Aceh (Indonesia) moment of revelation, but that may well be as much because the East of Sri Lanka that was most horribly devastated was by that time at least partially under the control of a splinter-faction that had broken with the LTTE. That falling out had come under suspicious circumstances, by the way. The new faction, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), seems to have been created by government influence in the area after the cease-fire basically had divided LTTE holdings into separate northern and eastern regions with little military communication between them. Sadly, it appears that in practice the TMVP is just as horrible an organization as the LTTE with many of the same ways of war, just directed against the LTTE instead of against the government. If there is any hope for political negotiations, however, it is with the TMVP to bring them back into some sort of civilized place.

The rest of the diplomatic efforts have proven only to have given the LTTE time to restore its strength in the North. By 2006, repeated incidents so called into question the international role in the negotiations that called “imperiled”. So how did the LTTE of 2002, weakened and willing to talk, become the LTTE of 2006~2007 gearing up to resume full-scale insurgency?

They used the cease-fire. No great shock there, except possibly to the diplomats that were running the negotiations. They, including the “renowned” Akashi Yasushi (Y. Akashi), of Japan, political U.N. appointee with a track record of semi-success in Cambodia and utter failure in Bosnia, seemed to be willing to believe they could talk this matter to a close.

During the cease-fire, the LTTE turned up its criminal endeavors worldwide, from squeezing the local Tamil populace for money and recruits to engaging in financial trickery and extortion like this within the U.K. Tamil community, and even pulling off scams like this that simply stole money by the millions (of British Pounds, in that case). One of their trickier bits of thievery gained them over 30,000 81mm mortar bombs by claiming to be a legitimate end-user government, loading the arms on a ship, and then false-flagging the ship once it was at sea. The cargo and the ship functionally vanished without a trace until the bombs began to be used against the Sri Lankan Army.

Faced with this situation, the Government of Sri Lanka formally withdrew from the cease-fire agreement on January 16th, 2008. The SRMM was suspended, and the fight was officially back on.

Since then, the Sri Lankan Army has had a terrible slog of it, including a month-long battle before a central LTTE-controlled town, but progress is being made. Victories are being won, and the usual trickery of the LTTE is being caught in-progress for once. The Sri Lankan Army may in fact actually prevail militarily, for what that gains them. It certainly would prepare the ground for more fruitful political negotiations if the LTTE were out of the picture and the townsmen and villagers of the traditionally Tamil areas were free to negotiate.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard A. Boucher was in Toukyou (Tokyo) for meetings back in August of this year, and seemed to acknowledge that “newly liberated areas” of Sri Lanka was where the diplomatic focus should be oriented. If so, very good.

But if that was just part of a speech to justify bringing back the cease-fire, very bad.

The other way didn’t work. We have more diplomatic and liaison influence with the Sri Lankan authorities as to proper conduct in war, anyway.

Let’s try letting a rightful government win for once.

***
End Notes:

Many end notes are embedded as links. Wiki-p links were used in two places, for expedience only.

Human Rights Watch report on this conflict, 2007.

The following Wiki-p citations are for convenience. In particular, be careful of propaganda influences in citations directly related to this conflict.

General Information on Sri Lanka

General Information on Tamil Nadu, India

General Information on the UPFA party-alliance, Sri Lanka

General Information on the LTTE

General Information on the IPKF, 1987~1990

The SLMM (Intl. Monitors)

Personal Profile: Velupillai Prabhakaran, LTTE overlord

Personal Profile: Y. Akashi, Japanese Diplomat