Sri-Lanka: The Ongoing War

The Tamil Tigers of Eelam have a history of their own, to understand the ongoing war one must start from the very beginning.

The story of Sri Lanka is the oft-told and oft-emphasized history, present and future of many of those nations in the world where there is a strong and well-organized separatist movement. This separatist movement has a history of its own, and is in a state of constant conflict with the contemporary government which is determined to quell it once and for all.

But of course, one must start from the very beginning to make sense of the current volatile situation in Sri Lanka. In this particular country, the separatist movement has been ongoing since 1983 and at the forefront is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, more commonly known as the LTTE or Tamil Tigers. This is mainly a minority group based on ethnicity. Alleging that they are persecuted and discriminated against by the majority ethnic group, the Sinhalese, the Tamil Tigers want a separate, independent state of their own, named Tamil Eelam, in the form of the East and North of Sri Lanka.

As it has been with most nations of the world, yet again, the government of Sri Lanka is not willing to break the state into two to cater to the demands of the Tamil Tigers. And hence, since 1983, the successive governments of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers have been at loggerheads with one another. Whoever has come into the government has tried its best to crush the movement of the Tamil Tigers using all of the military might that the country possesses. On the other hand, the Tamil Tigers have been resisting quite effectively.

The result of this ongoing internal battle, of course, is that there have been heavy casualties on both the sides. The exact figures of the casualties remain unknown as the media is barred from the conflict areas. Whichever figures are quoted to the media come from either one of the two warring sides. And as can be expected in conflicts such as these, psychological warfare is raging too – each side overestimates the casualties of the opponents and underplays its own figures. Hence, it is impossible to objectively determine who the stronger side is. However, a total of 68,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives since the beginning of this conflict.

Another consequence of this war has been that LTTE is now considered as a terrorist organization by quite a few countries, and the Sri Lankan government as well as most of the international press refers to them as militants. As can be expected, this conflict has also harmed the country’s economy in a significant way.

It is not that there have been no attempts to mediate between the two parties and bring about some sort of solution through dialogue. There have been quite a few attempts and the most significant of them led to the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the two opponents in 2002. However, skirmishes continued even after the signing of the agreement. And as recently as January 2008, the Sri Lankan government formally announced that it was withdrawing itself from the ceasefire agreement as the Tamil Tigers continue to violate the terms and conditions of this ceasefire. Tamil Tigers responded to this by saying that they were willing to abide by the terms of the ceasefire and were quite shocked that the government has withdrawn from the agreement in such a manner.

Since this formal withdrawal, violence has escalated in Sri Lanka. In April 2008, 185 Sri Lankan soldiers were reported to have been killed as they attempted to capture the stronghold of the Tamil Tigers. Fighting between the two continued in different parts of the country, with 25 Tamils losing their lives.

As fighting continues in Sri Lanka, one must ask who the real sufferer is – the answer of course, is that the civilians are suffering. Civilians are routinely killed when there are bomb attacks. Moreover, with the Sri Lankan army engaged in this internal battle, one can imagine that the defense spending must be over-riding the spending on things like health and education. It is about time that there was some international mediation once again to try and restore peace in the region, and to attempt to solve this conflict through dialogue and negotiations.