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CHALLENGES 2007-2008: Sri Lanka&#39s Tinderbox Set to Go

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Dec 26 2007 (IPS) - Three years after the Indian Ocean tsunami left over 32, 000 Sri Lankans dead and 500,000 survivors homeless, this island country stands on the brink of another disaster – this time manmade and in the shape of an all-out war between Tamil separatist rebels and the country’s armed forces.

Since December 2005 skirmishes and battles have been escalating between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ignoring a ceasefire brokered by Norway five years ago. With international efforts to get the belligerents across a table repeatedly failing, over 4,500 people, mostly civilians, have died and hundreds of thousands forced to flee their homes in what, many already be war.

During the Christmas week alone, over 50 combatants were killed as fighting flared up in the north. Both the defence ministry and the Tigers report heavy fighting along the northern front lines.

"There is heavy artillery fire and both sides appear to be getting ready for something big," Y. Ariyarathnam told IPS over telephone from northern Jaffna peninsula where Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority is concentrated.

Reports by the Nordic staffed ceasefire monitoring mission sound increasingly gloomy. "The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) is alarmed about the situation that closely resembles a level of violence associated with the period prior to the signing of the ceasefire agreement in 2002," the monitors said a few weeks ago.

The army has been carrying out a series of probing attacks along the northern frontlines that separate government areas from the Tiger-held ‘Vanni’, a large swath of territory in the north. Skirmishes and attacks have increased since the Nov. 27 annual speech by Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran in which he confirmed the slide towards a military solution to the decades of ethnic conflict on the island.

On its part the government has vowed to press ahead with military operations in the belief that the Tigers have their backs to the wall, following its loss of control over the east of the island.

But the Tigers have retaliated with provocative air raids involving light aircraft and with suicide bombings on the national capital. President Mahinda Rajapakse has warned that a ban on the Tigers could be re-imposed soon. "One or two more attacks, we have no option," he told reporters at a Christmas party held at his residence. ‘’There is a limit to our patience."

The Tigers have matched the rhetoric despite a military defeat in the east and the loss of several members of senior cadre in army raids. Tiger political head S.P. Tamilselvan, believed to be number two in the LTTE hierarchy, was killed in an air attack on Nov. 25.

"Successive Sri Lankan governments have boasted that they would finish off the Tigers, but we are still here. So let them come, we are ready," Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Illanthariyan told IPS.

Both sides have amassed men and resources along the frontline and military analysts feel that the fighting could be bloody and drawn out.

"LTTE will fight with their back to the wall. They always bounce back in Vanni which is a difficult terrain. They will hold out there unless the army launches a huge offensive," retired Indian army colonel and intelligence expert R. Hariharan told IPS.

Observers in Colombo fear that a tinderbox-like situation is developing. "A major military victory or a bomb blast targeting civilians will tip the scales towards full blown war," Rukshan Fernando of the Colombo-based Law and Society Trust (LST) told IPS.

What may be holding back Rajapakse is an avalanche of international criticism over rights violations. LST said earlier that statistics in the first eight months of this year suggested that at least five murders and abductions took place in the country per day, most of it in northern Jaffna.

The respected Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has said that the only solution was the induction of international human rights monitors in the country. "Sri Lanka has the highest frequency of cases of disappearances in the world reported to the U.N. Under these circumstances the Sri Lankan government’s refusal to allow any international HR monitoring in to the government and LTTE amounts to sanctioning of the prevalent levels of violence in the country," an AHRC statement said.

‘’There is a siege in the north, areas are cut off and under military control," legislator Mano Ganesan, who heads the Civil Monitoring Committee made up of opposition law makers and prominent rights activists, told IPS. Ganesan is among those who have been pleading for international intervention in a conflict rapidly going out of control.

LST’s Fernando, who toured Jaffna earlier this month, told IPS that it felt as if the peninsula existed in a time warp. "There are lots of restrictions over there. When civilians want to leave they can only do so by air and have to wait for weeks for clearance."

Of international concern is the fact that the last two years have seen increasing attacks on aid workers. The Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies counts over 34 killed since early 2006. The worst single case was the massacre of 17 local aid workers with the French charity Action Contre le Faim in eastern Muttur in August 2006.

Two weeks ago a Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteer became the latest aid worker to be murdered in Jaffna. Soon after that attack, the European Union urged the government to ‘’ do everything possible to protect humanitarian workers, investigate fully these killings and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.’’