WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

They did it.

In 2006 the brothers Rajapaksa --- newly elected President Mahinda, Defense Secretary Gotabaya, and special adviser Basil --- set out to fulfill their campaign pledge and defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on the battlefield. Three years later, they succeeded, crushing one of the world’s longest standing and most brutal insurgencies and establishing central government military control over the entire island.

From the anti-Tamil riots in response to an LTTE terrorist attack in 1983 to the final struggle, it was never pretty. The total death toll from the nearly 26-year civil war was 80-100,000, most of them civilians. In the final military push, an estimated 7,000 civilians died, and 265,000 Tamils are in internment camps just outside the conflict zone. The government denied access to humanitarian organizations while the LTTE held civilians as hostages, refusing to release them to seek relative safety behind government lines.

Even after the victory, the government is still refusing to allow aid workers or journalists to enter the area where civilians were trapped in the final days of the battle. Even the UN Secretary General’s personal envoy had to be content with a flyover to assess the situation. The continued denial of access suggests that mop-up operations are continuing. Independent observers note that the Sri Lankan military is literally taking no prisoners, raising the fear that anyone associated with the LTTE is being murdered or left to die on the battlefield.

The government faces an immense challenge to lead a process of reconciliation, healing, and recovery. The temptation to rub the defeat in the face of the island’s remaining 1.5 million Tamils will be tremendous. The resentment among the majority Sinhalese against the LTTE and the broader Tamil community for waging the separatist struggle based on terror is deep. Internal pressure to declare the long war over and usher in a period of ethnic harmony will be minimal, confined mainly to marginalized civil society organizations.

President Rajapaksa and his top advisors have reveled in their defiance of the international community since the end of the ceasefire in 2006. A government that once prided itself on its respect for international humanitarian law now regularly accuses the UN and humanitarian organizations of being LTTE sympathizers, dismissing their claims for humanitarian access as unwarranted outside interference. As for the entreaties of the United States, England, and the European Union for a ceasefire and greater protection of civilians amidst the conflict, the government more or less told them to go stuff themselves.

The immediate imperative is to respond to the humanitarian needs of the affected civilian population in northern Sri Lanka. Hundreds of thousands of people are either in poorly constructed internment camps, or abandoned in fields and along roadsides without food, water, medical care, and shelter. The Sri Lankan government must allow international humanitarian organizations to access these people, with priority given initially to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The hope would be that neutral, effective remedial action by the ICRC would build confidence among the more extreme elements of the government that humanitarian organizations have a role to play in limiting the suffering of war-affected Tamil civilians.

The next step should be dismantling the internment camps and allowing people to return to their homes. With the war over, the government has to stop treating innocent Tamil civilians like the enemy. The return process should be supported and accompanied by international organizations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF, both of which have previously led humanitarian activities in the Vanni. Many people will require assistance to rebuild their homes, basic rations to make up for the lack of agricultural production, and seeds and tools to begin planting with the onset of the rains.

For much of the conflict period, some basic assistance reached civilians in the LTTE-controlled areas, but long-term investment and development aid have been impossible. Jaffna, once the greatest Tamil city in the world, is in ruins, and the Vanni is a desolate stretch of underdevelopment. Regardless of the political solution that may emerge to meet Tamil aspirations for self-government within a unified Sri Lanka, the demand for funding of roads, schools, clinics, irrigation schemes, and other basic infrastructure will be massive.

Reconstruction will require support of international donors and financial institutions. This will give the international community a measure of leverage over the Sri Lankan government, if the political will exists to embark on a process of genuine national reconciliation and development of the Tamil majority areas. If such political will is limited, and there is every reason to believe that it will be, then the bitterness in the Tamil community will remain, and peace will prove elusive.