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TSUNAMI IMPACT: Politics of Aid Affects Tamils

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Jan 14 2005 (IPS) - Political cleavage around the question of aid is threatening to erode the peace dividend that emerged between the rebel Tamil Tigers and the government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga in the immediate wake of the tsunami tragedy.

”When the tragedy happened there was no politics, people were helping people,” Naren Narendran, head of the Tamil Relief Organisation’s Tsunami Disaster Management Unit, told IPS.

”Then the government came in with its trucks, procedures, processes, approvals and meetings. The humanitarian effort then turned into a big command and control endeavour,” he said frustratingly.

The Tamil Relief Organisation (TRO) that works in the rebel Tamil Tiger-held areas in the north-east of Sri Lanka has every reason to feel frustrated with Colombo.

The government wants to control all of the aid flows coming into the country. Kumaratunga established three task forces last week to coordinate all aid efforts.

And her government requires all international donations to be channelled through central government agencies, rather than independent outfits like the TRO – which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars and relief supplies from overseas Tamils.

Sri Lanka is seeing an unprecedented flow of funds in an outpouring of compassion for the million made homeless and over 30,000 dead when colossal killer waves on Dec. 26 lashed the island, spawned by a 9.0 undersea quake in Indonesia’s northern Sumatra.

While the government has maintained that sufficient relief supplies were being directed to the north-east, the criticism has been that aid is coming in without any proper ground level assessment.

According to the TRO, large quantities of sugar were transported to relief camps in the area when there was no demand.

TRO officials said that close to 2000 tonnes of sugar had reached camps there soon after the tsunami.

The relief organisation estimates that there are 616,255 refugees in six districts in the north-east. Of the 380 emergency relief centres in the region, 252 are managed by the TRO.

The TRO’s Narendran said his relief organisation expected the government to carry out a proper needs assessment in the north-east, but was disappointed at the outcome.

”It is like one size fits all, there is no regard for what is really happening at camp level,” he said adding that the dynamics of the north-east was far different from the south given that the northern parts of Sri Lanka have been the battle ground for over 30 years between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government forces.

The LTTE has been fighting for a Tamil homeland since 1972. The conflict with the majority Sinhalese claimed over some 60,000 lives before the two sides signed a truce in February 2002.

There was hope for political reconciliation when soon after the tsunami, Kumaratunga was photographed shaking hands with Tamil Tiger rebel commanders. Government forces and Tiger cadres were also working together to help victims and survivors.

In her New Year’s Day speech, the prime minister expressed hope that the two sides would move closer in 2005.

Last Saturday, however, Kumaratunga’s government vetoed a LTTE invitation to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was on a regional tour of tsunami-hit countries, to visit devastated Tamil areas in the north-east, sparking off protests in the north.

The only high ranking official to visit Kilinochchi, the LTTE administrative center in the north, since the tsunami has been United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chief Carrol Belamy.

Meanwhile, Tamil Tiger rebel leaders have accused Colombo of redirecting aid earmarked for them to the Sinhalese population in the south.

”The government only provides 600 grammes of rice, 60 grammes of lentils and 40 grammes of sugar per person per week,” said S Elilan, the LTTE political head in the north- eastern coastal town of Trincomalee..

”We get most of the relief from the World Food Programme,” he added.

Elilan’s immediate head Sornam, the Tamil Tiger military commander for Trincomalee district claimed on Thursday, during a meeting with the head of the international Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, Trond Furuhovde, that the government was restricting foreign funds from reaching the north-east.

Sarvodaya a local grass-roots non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has 15,000 personnel working in the disaster stricken areas said that despite government announcements of sufficient aid, civilians in Tamil Tiger-held areas in the north-east still continued to suffer.

The United States has so far allocated 25 million U.S. dollars in relief aid to Sri Lanka, and Secretary of State Collin Powell in his recent visit to the island said that depending on emergency needs the funds would be increased.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that following the Sep. 11 attacks, the Bush administration placed the LTTE on its list of terrorist organisations – hence forbidding U.S. registered relief organisations from having any contact with them.

In the face of a humanitarian crisis in the north-east, there is often a blur line between groups like the TRO and the Tamil Tigers. While the western media portrays them as LTTE sympathisers, ground realities are different.

Without the support of the Tamil Tigers, they will never be able to reach the tsunami survivors in the rebel-held areas.

The TRO has so far distributed 160 truckloads of emergency relief to the north-east and had dispatched 12 medical teams as well.

The U.S. State Department said it was monitoring how the TRO was delivering its aid in the north-east and warned that its Washington office could lose its NGO status if relief supplies went to the Tamil Tigers.

But James Leach, the Republican Congressman from Iowa who led a U.S. Congressional team to Colombo this week had a different story to tell.

”All we can say is that aid will be distributed in a non-discriminatory basis,” he said, when referring to U.S. emergency relief for the north-east.

The delegation members said that most of the aid would be channelled through international relief organisations like the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Save the Children, which work in the LTTE areas.

But the TRO’s Narendran remained sceptical. ”We will see when that happens.”