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In the abstract, the government's justification for making war was to bring security and democracy by eliminating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elaam, the separatist group that has been condemned internationally on account of its terrorist practices. But on the ground, the reality is different -- as I saw during a recent visit to the east.
Instead of security and democracy, I saw a continuing high level of insecurity, little democracy and no evidence at all of economic development. Belying the claims that normalcy and reconstruction are, or will soon be, the features of the liberated east, the present picture is one of utter misery.
In a place called Kilivetti, near Muttur, where fierce battles raged between the government forces and the LTTE and lines of control shifted with rapidity, I saw a scene that I had previously associated only with war-stricken areas of Africa. There was a vast grassless and treeless tract of land on which stood sheds with walls and roofs made of corrugated metal. I saw about 2,000 people, all of them citizens of Sri Lanka, many of them infants and toddlers, baking in the tropical sun at high noon under a cloudless sky.
Some of the mothers holding infants looked like children themselves, physically stunted by years of malnutrition and married off young to escape the forced child recruitment of the LTTE and the government-supported Karuna group, against whom there are at least 175 outstanding cases of this evil practice.
In a perverse way, the liberation of the east by the government forces has made life even worse for some sectors of the "liberated" people. The people in the welfare center in Kilivetti have been displaced from East Muttur, which has been declared a High Security Zone by the government, so they can never go back to their homes. These miserable people are being resettled in stages at a location called Eechalampattu, but I was told that no suitable infrastructure had been laid for them by the government. It was as if they were being dumped there and left to fend for themselves.
Not far from Kilivetti, in Habib Nagar, I saw over 300 people who were angry and frustrated after being in refugee camps for nearly four years. The reason they could not go back to their tsunami-destroyed homes was because they were within the 50-meter coastal buffer zone. It is ironic that a government that still cannot find land for tsunami refugees should deliberately be displacing thousands of people from their places of residence on the ground that these are high security zones.
Although the recent military operations in the east have successfully eliminated the LTTE's presence as an administrative and governing entity, they have not eliminated the fear of their capacity as a guerilla force. The capital of Eastern Province, Trincomalee town, is like a garrison city with military personnel at virtually every street corner. It is evident that the security forces fear one of two things -- or both. One is that the LTTE continues its presence in the east as a guerilla force. The other is that the east cannot be insulated from the north, where the LTTE is still entrenched.
In these circumstances, military logic would seek to ensure the security of the east by neutralizing the LTTE threat from the north. This would mean that the war cannot end with the liberation of the east, but must continue to the north. It is this logic that appears to be driving the government's military machine at this point. Virtually every day there are reports of skirmishes and military confrontations taking place in the north, which could build up into a major conflagration in the near future.
The north has always been the stronghold of the LTTE. The question of the cost of the war will surface in full measure with any government onslaught on the LTTE in the north. Once again there will be massive displacement of people, as occurred in the east, and very likely on a larger scale. The homes that people have built and protected over generations will be destroyed, as they were in the east.
One of the most moving experiences for me came when we stopped for a few minutes at a refugee camp on the side of the road to take photographs of the tents. Children who were playing nearby immediately stopped their games and came dashing to the scene. They were wide-eyed and smiling, eager to be included in the photographs. They were no different from children elsewhere in the country, in our own homes and towns. It was evident that their parents, who had lost their homes, had not taught their children to hold grudges against those who were not of their community and from other parts of the country.
The trust, the love and the fate of these fellow citizens in the liberated east is a clarion call against a repeat performance in the north. War in the north should only be a last resort. The country is not an abstract idea to be fought for, but a living organism comprising all of its citizens. Any government that deliberately pursues a military solution as its first option, leading to the eviction of hundreds of thousands of citizens from their homes, and to the loss of their ancestral properties, will jeopardize its moral right to govern the country.
Before taking the drastic step of stepping up the war in the north, the Sri Lankan government has a duty to present a reasonable political package that could be the basis for a just solution to the ethnic conflict, and is acceptable to moderate Tamil opinion. Only if such a political package is rejected by the LTTE should an offensive military campaign on the lines of the eastern campaign be contemplated for the north.
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(Dr. Jehan Perera is executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, an independent advocacy organization. He studied economics at Harvard College and holds a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. ©Copyright Jehan Perera.)
