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War clouds in Sri Lanka : Prabhakaran’s threat to resume “freedom struggle” |
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The Sri Lankan Government says it is carefully studying last week’s speech by LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran who used his annual Heroes’ Day address to warn Colombo that the Tamil Tigers would “advance the freedom struggle” if the Government does not begin talks with them on setting up an Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) in the north-eastern part of the country for which the group submitted proposals last year.
Indicating its unwillingness to meet Prabhakaran’s main demand for unconditional peace talks failing which the LTTE would advance it “freedom struggle”, the government said: “A call couched in threatening language from the LTTE for a resumption of negotiations without conditions while setting condition itself by insisting unilaterally on a single agenda item is scarcely conducive to good faith, good health negotiations”. The Government statement on Dec. 1 struck to its position linking an interim authority to the final outcome within a united Sri Lanka. The statement said the Government had conveyed both publicly and through Norwegian facilitators its readiness to discuss the establishment of an Interim Authority while exploring a permanent settlement along the lines of the document signed and accepted by the Government and the LTTE in Oslo on Dec. 5, 2002.
Religious Affairs Minister Douglas Devananda has also urged the Tamil Tigers to work for a negotiated political settlement to the ethnic conflict.
In his Heroes’ Day address, Prabhakaran made the threat of a war as a pressure tactic to push the Sri Lankan Government to open discussions on their demand for self-rule. The reclusive rebel leader said on Nov. 27 he feared the LTTE would have no alternative but to forge ahead with a two-decade war that has killed more than 64,000 people, if the months-long deadlock on talks is not broken soon. In a strongly worded annual address, Prabhakaran said the guerilla group’s patience had reached its limits and accused the Government’s Marxist coalition ally, JVP, which is fiercely against rebel self-rule, of blocking chances of peace. Prabhakaran threatened to resume the civil war if the Government adopts delaying tactics on his demand for an Interim Self-Governing Authority.
The Government and the LTTE agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Norway in 2002. The truce is holding but the Tigers already have de facto rule over large areas of the Indian Ocean island’s north and east, which they consider their homeland of Tamil Eelam, and even have their own courts, taxation system and police force.
Commenting on Prabhakaran’s threat to resume the campaign for a separate Tamil Eelam, political observers note that from the beginnig the LTTE has treated the peace process as a means to gain control over the North-East, which it failed to do militarily. The February 2002 ceasefire helped the LTTE achieve this to an extent. But total administrative control, with powers such as the LTTE wants, emphasizing the seperateness of the North-East from Sri Lanka, would have completed the picture. President Kumaratunga, who saw through the LTTE’s gameplan, first insisted that talks on the ISGA must be linked to regotiations for a permanent settlemtn. When the LTTE rejected this condition, Kumratunga singalled her willingness to begin talks on the ISGA alone, adding the phrase “within a unified Sri Lanka”. Had Prabhakaran been serious about ending the impasse, he would have accepted this condition. After all, he came into the peace process fully aware that its final destination was a settlement that would not violate the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, the message conveyed to him by the Norwegian peace envoy, Erik Solheim, at their first meeting in November 2000. But it is amply clear the LTTE was only playing a charade all along, even when it signed a commitment at Oslo in December 2002 to “explore a federal solution”.
Does this mean the LTTE is about to begin another war? Prabhakran’s ultimatum to the Government certainly makes it sound that way but it is extremely unlikely considering that the ground situation in the North-East turned unfavourable to the LTTE after its former eastern military commander, Karuna, split the organisation. Weakened militarily by this, the LTTE no longer controls the East as it once did. Crucially, it can no longer depend on the region as a cadre recruitment ground for future military campaigns. Prabhakaran’s significant silence in his speech on the most serious division to have surfaced within the LTTE might have been intended to give the impression that the Karuna factor poses no problem to the organisation. It is quite obvious from the violent drama playing itself out in eastern Sri Lanka, with cadres on both sides of the divide killing each other every day that the opposite is true. As if to drive home this point, Karuna made his own “Heroes” Day speech on November 27 attacking his former leader.
Meanwhile, the LTTE is believed to have abducted Pakianath Rajaratnam, general secretary of the Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF), to find out the whereabouts of its breakaway Eastern Commander, Colonel Karuna. Karuna’s new party, the Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP), had aligned with the ENDLF to form the Eelam National Democratic Front (ENDF). According to
Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) sources, Karuna wanted the EPDP to use its influence to secure arms to fight the LTTE. The EPDP rejected the idea. Karuna then moved closer to the ENDLF, an ex-militant Sri Lankan Tamil group, operating from India and the UK but wanting to get a foothold in Sri Lanka.
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