Sri Lanka’s Long Struggle Comes To A Bloody End

By Philip Shaw M.Sc.

With Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque Ph.D

I remember very clearly the first time I landed in Bangladesh.  I was thinking about many things that day but I remember clearly a man across from me in the bus.  He said something about the last time he was in Colombo. I remember thinking I’m sure on the other side of the world; this man is talking about Sri Lanka.

I have never been to Sri Lanka. However, my colleague Dr. Haque has been there many times as a consultant for several South Asian agencies.  Of course with Sri Lanka being in the news recently and with Enamul traveling to Sri Lanka next month in July we thought it would be good to talk about the 30 year conflict in that nation.

In many ways it is hard to believe that the 30-year war in Sri Lanka is over. From my vantage point in southwest Ontario it was a very long ways away.  However in Canada we have a very large Tamil population so the war in Sri Lanka got a lot more press through the years than you might imagine.  For instance in the last days of the war when the Sri Lankan government was pressing the Tamil Tigers against the sea, Tamil Canadians were out on the streets of almost every major Canadian city.  In fact in Toronto it was a daily event at one point they blocked the city’s main traffic artery to the outside.  So the Civil War in Sri Lanka was a bit more real to me than you might imagine.

Enamul will be traveling to Sri Lanka at the end of this month so next month in the July edition of East-West you’ll be getting part two of this story.  Enamul hopes that he will be able to talk to many people about the current goings-on in Sri Lanka.

For those of you not familiar with the conflict in Sri Lanka you have to go back to the 1970s to understand it.  At that time rebels started fighting for a separate state called Eelam, which was supposed to be for Tamils in Sri Lanka’s northeast.  The argument had to do with discrimination against Tamils from successive majority Sinhalese governments.

The Tamils were initially very successful in their fight against the Sri Lanka government.  At one point they controlled one third of the country and set up their own judicial and taxation system.  At one point India even sent in peacekeepers trying to keep together a fragile cease-fire. They eventually left the country after a disastrous intervention.  It also hit home when a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber was held responsible for the assassination of then Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi.

The end came after the Sri Lanka government boosted its defense spending starting in 2005.  Heavy weapons were brought in and the Sri Lanka government eventually beat back the Tamil Tigers to their beachhead in the Northeast.  Of course there was death everywhere with nearly 70,000 people gone and tens of thousands of people displaced.  The last few weeks of fighting exacted a terrible toll on the civilian population.  The Sri Lanka government joyfully proclaimed victory, but at the end of the day it cost thousands of human lives.

What happens now is anybody’s guess.  The Tamil leader Velupillai Prabhakaran supposedly is dead, with his picture displayed on worldwide television networks.  The Tamil Diaspora is active around the world in calling Western governments to the plight of the Tamil people.  Many aid agencies and the United Nations itself have called for an independent inquiry into claims of human rights abuses by the military over the course of the last few months.  Needless to say the Sri Lankan government caught up in the headiness of their military victory are ignoring that.  With military victory and physical possession of traditional Tamil territory, I guess you could say that’s 9/10 of the law.

Many times over the last 20 years the West has being accused of ignoring conflicts in parts of the world where they have no strategic interest.  The most famous example is Rwanda but you can certainly put the Congo in there too.  Sri Lanka is another example with India being on its doorstep as the major superpower of the region it is a bit more understandable why the West ignored Sri Lanka.   If 70,000-90,000 people had died in a place like Bosnia we know that would have turned heads in Western capitals.  And of course we all know what happens in Israel and Palestine.

At the end of the day, the conflict between Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam was extremely tragic.  Nobody wins when things get messy in civil war situations and this certainly was messy. Something tells me, knock on wood; it’s still not over.  However, I hope I’m wrong.  The conflict in Sri Lanka was world-class for viciousness and ferocity.  For the people left there, it’s the least good the fighting has stopped.

Thirty years of Tamil Conflict and Lessons.

By A K Enamul Haque PhD.

With the Tamil Tigers cornered in the northern Sri Lanka for about a month since April 2009, most of us were waiting for the victory of the Sri Lankan army against the LTTE.

I have visited Sri Lanka several times in the past five years.  I was always impressed with the ordinary people Sri Lankans who seemed to be busy with their daily life while the government troops were fighting LTTE in the jungles of Jaffna.  Like Canada, there is a community of Sri Lankans living in Dhaka.  These people decided to relocate to Dhaka to pursue their business and trade.  Once I also had a Sri Lankan student at my university.  That’s when I learned that a significant number of Sri Lankans are living in Dhaka.

Most of these people migrated temporarily to Bangladesh ever since the LTTE intensified their attacks.  The result is that Sri Lanka not only lost its own productive people, but it has also helped Bangladesh to compete internationally.  This is simply because migrating populations are often more productive and can endure more stress than a stationary population.  This is perhaps an important lesson for many nations – look who gains and who loses out of a conflict.

Internal conflict always weakens the ability of nations to fight external threats.  Thirty years of conflict in Sri Lanka has weakened the ability of Sri Lanka to continue its pace of economic growth.  At the same time, although it is true that Sri Lanka has won the “war” it has also learned that nations must accommodate its minority citizens.  They are now prepared to accommodate the demands of the LTTE in a different way.  Indeed, in his victory speech the President of Sri Lanka categorically said that it is not a defeat for the Tamils.

To my mind, we should look at the cost-benefit of such conflicts.  After so many deaths, so much sufferings, did the nation win anything?  Hopefully, others will learn from this and will play their cards such that they would see no need to fight wars.  To me, accommodation of the Quebec separatist political parties within the Canadian political system is a perfect example of a mature nation.