One international event that has brought about unified international outrage is the military offensive of the Sri Lankan government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Over the last two years, the Sri Lankan government has managed to corner the Tigers, a group that claims to be fighting for the islands Tamil minority and is labeled as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, into a narrow strip of land in the northern part of the country. The concluding offensive, which has the potential to end a military conflict that began in 1983, has put civilians in danger from both sides and there have been numerous calls around the world for the Sri Lankan government to enact a ceasefire with the Tigers so as to allow humanitarian assistance to best be brought to the civilians trapped in the conflict zone.
As the military offensive continues and as the Sri Lankan government appears closer to victory over the LTTE, extempers will be faced with questions concerning the ethics of the military offensive and how the Sri Lankan government can best integrate the Tamil minority into a unitary government structure so as to avoid future hostilities and a re-emergence of the LTTE.
Therefore, this brief will educate extempers about the history of the conflict, the international response to recent events in the conflict zone, and the implications the end of the conflict will have for the Sri Lankan government of Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Background of the Conflict
The current military conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE has been going on since 1983. In between that time, there have been several ceasefires enacted by several international actors in an attempt to create a peace that would be hospitable between the two sides.
The conflict originates from ethnic tensions that have plagued Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, since it acquired independence from the British government in 1948. The majority of the island’s population are Sinhalese, many of them Buddhist. The largest minority on the island are Tamil, many of which are either Hindu or Christian. During British rule, the Tamils enjoyed political representation that was on an equal level with their Sinhalese counterparts, angering the Sinhalese who believed that they should receive representation based on their share of the national population. The Tamils also enjoyed better economic conditions under British rule, provoking further anger and jealousy from the Sinhalese.
Following the end of British rule in 1948, the island tried to have a unified democracy. Almost immediately there were controversial decisions enacted by Sinhalese dominated government that angered Tamil representatives. First, the government enacted a law that made Sinhala the national language, creating the perception that the newly independent country would not respect minority culture or rights. Also, the government began an affirmative action program in the nation’s universities, which allowed poor Sinhalese students to displace Tamil students, who had previously made up a large share of these universities. An additional insult came when the government banned the importation of Tamil cultural materials from India and then began a colonization scheme that started placing Sinhalese in formerly Tamil dominated areas in the north and eastern part of the country.
In response to these government actions, younger Tamil’s started to create organizations that opposed government policies, many of which quickly turned violent. The most prominent was the LTTE, who emerged onto the scene in 1975 with the murder of government officials and Tamils who cooperated with the government. By 1983, the LTTE had become a force to be reckoned with and terrorized Sinhalese residents who lived in Tamil dominated areas, to the point that it caused these residents to uproot themselves and relocate. This ethnic cleansing forced the Sri Lankan government to become involved in trying to eradicate the LTTE, who soon claimed the mantle of fighting for a independent homeland in the north and east of the country, a homeland they referred to as Eelam.
From 1983 through 2002, government troops and the LTTE fought each other in numerous engagements, with a period of interference by the Indian government from 1987-1990 (which will be discussed later). In 2001, and shortly after September 11th, the LTTE said that it was willing to cease its fighting with the government and negotiate. Assisted by Norway and other Nordic countries, both nations agreed to a permanent ceasefire agreement (CFA), which was supervised by the mediators who had helped to broker it. However, it soon became apparent that this agreement was in danger of folding. Sinhalese hardliners in the Sri Lankan government opposed the deal from the outset and after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, there were disputes among the two sides as to who would allocate disaster relief. Furthermore, the LTTE started to see an internal split, which made its future actions questionable as it was not clear who was in charge.
Shortly after Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected president by a narrow margin in 2005, the Sri Lankan government broke from the CFA, arguing that the LTTE had been violating it consistently and they were now going to eliminate the LTTE once and for all. The government successfully drove the LTTE out of its eastern bases in July 2006 after getting some key LTTE defections. It then turned its attention northward, where it has now cornered the LTTE, whose leadership is said to have fled the country.
The current dilemma facing the Rajapaksa government is how to bring about a military solution to the conflict with reduced civilian casualties. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 civilians exist in the conflict zone, with international rights groups arguing that these people are being shelled by the Sri Lankan military and the Sri Lankan military arguing that these civilians are being killed if they flee by the LTTE or that they are being pressed into military service against their will. In this hazy picture and with the limited geographic size of the battlefield, it is no surprise that military analysts are saying that the final offensive the Sri Lankan military will have to engage in with the LTTE could be a massive slaughter of civilians and military forces alike.
International Response
The international community has been highly critical of the Sri Lankan government’s actions in recent weeks, although they understand that the LTTE is a threat and have also criticized it for forcing civilians into military service and not allowing them to leave the conflict zone. The United Nations has called for the Sri Lankan government to pursue a ceasefire with the LTTE, a call that it has ignored, and the Indian government has also started to pressure the Sri Lankan government to quickly react a military solution to the conflict or pursue negotiations.
India is a country extempers should always keep in mind when questions about Sri Lanka arise. In the 1980s, the Indian government was highly involved in the Sri Lankan civil war, assisting the LTTE in its early years of struggle with arms and ammunition. The Indian government successfully brokered a peace deal between the two sides in 1987 and was brought in as a peacekeeping force to make sure that both sides were living up the agreement. The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), however, soon faced problems with the LTTE, who refused to disarm, one of the key components of the peace deal. Despite the Indian governments ambition to emerge as a regional power through its facilitation of the peace deal, the government quickly realized that the Tamil movement in Sri Lanka might also cause its Tamil areas to start an independence movement of their own. To contain the monster they helped to create, the LTTE and the IPKF started to fight a series of engagements, creating such a human rights disaster that the Sri Lankan government eventually called on the Indian peacekeepers to leave. When the Indians refused, the Sri Lankan government actually started to back the LTTE, seeing the Indian peacekeepers as a larger nuisance and as a threat to the country’s sovereignty. Indian prime minister Rajiv Ghandi stubbornness not only cost him his job, when his government fell in India’s 1990 parliamentary elections (an election result that eventually led to the peacekeepers being withdrawn), but it also cost him his life at the hands of a LTTE suicide bomber in 1991. These events have led the current Indian government to rule out sending a new peacekeeping force into the country, although such a move might bring about a reasonable short-term solution to the problems there.
Canada and Britain have also seen protests by their Tamil populations in an attempt to force those governments to pressure the Sri Lankan government into stopping its military offensive. However, both countries have not had their policies changed by these protests, although they have expressed concern by reports from Human Rights Watch that the Sri Lankan government has deliberately been shelling makeshift hospitals in the combat zone.
A fierce criticism against the Sri Lankan government by Western countries is that they have enacted a media ban in the conflict zone. Experts argue that keeping the media out distorts the picture of what is truly going on there and does more damage to the Sri Lankan government than the LTTE because it makes the LTTE’s position seem more sympathetic and the government to appear like a bully. However, the Sri Lankan has justified the media ban on national security grounds.
Implications Post-Fighting
There is little doubt that when the final military offensive comes it will be bloody and will lead to the elimination of the LTTE as a conventional fighting force. However, as veteran extempers are aware, our victory over Iraq’s conventional fighting forces did not end our problems in Iraq, in fact it was the beginning of our problem’s in that country. While experts argue that the LTTE may be done as a fighting force, it will still have the propensity to strike back at the Sri Lankan government with suicide bombings and hit and run tactics. These could be used against the Sinhalese population or the central government or Tamils who cooperate with Rajapaksa. An extemper should keep in mind that the LTTE has committed more suicide bombings than Hamas or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad combined, so they are definitely a threat and are definitely committed to their cause.
In order to prevent the newly controlled areas to become new areas of conflict, the Sri Lankan government needs to pay attention to how it handles the refugees in the conflict zone. Much like Pakistan, who is seeing a refugee flood after its actions against Taliban forces in the Swat Valley, the Sri Lankan government needs to make sure that these people are treated well and that they do not develop hard feelings against the government. Unfortunately, aid groups warn that international aid to the Sri Lankan government to set up refugee camps for nearly 190,000 Tamils in the conflict zone is being used to set up detention centers where refugees are not being allowed to leave, not being fed properly, and are not having their healthcare needs met. This problem is growing more acute as more and more war weary refugees, many suffering from battle wounds or malnutrition, are making their way into these camps.
Furthermore, there are lingering suspicions in Tamil communities that the government will try a new colonization scheme once they win control of the entire country. The Sri Lankan government denies this, saying that the Sinhalese people do not desire Tamil lands. The government also points out that it successfully resettled many of the refugees displaced by fighting in the eastern half of the country. Resettling refugees displaced by the current fighting needs to occur quickly so that no hard feelings arise. Rajapaksa’s government argues that it wants to resettle 80% of those who are displaced within the next year, and you can be sure that if the government fails on this front much of the good sentiment that might be had in Tamil communities for eliminating the LTTE may end and the government will be back to square one.
Thus, while the military conflict is ending, the battle for hearts and minds has just begun and if the Sri Lankan government fails in this second battle, it just might be the ultimate loser of this war.