From The Economist print edition
The government is on the cusp of completing a famous victory against Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels. Now it needs to avert a massacre, and make peace
AFTER a terrible battle on April 3rd-5th, Sri Lanka’s surviving Tamil Tigers withdrew to a government-designated “no-fire zone”—a narrow beach, packed with refugees, on the country’s north-eastern coast. The army claimed to have killed 525 of the rebels, including two fierce women commanders, Vidusha and Durga. Killing (or capturing) their leaders, above all Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tigers’ supremo for three decades, is now the last big goal of a brutal, but brilliantly successful, two-year campaign. It may not be easy.
In the past three weeks over 20,000 civilians have escaped the battlefield. Another 7,500 sick and wounded, and their close relatives, have been evacuated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which reckons there may still be 150,000 on the beach. The Tigers will not let them leave. A few would-be fugitives have been shot dead. Many more may be loth to put themselves into government hands, because of ties to the rebels. And the army has not done much to allay their fears. It has tried to ensure safe passage to the escapees; yet, to return the Tigers’ fire, it has allegedly shelled the “no-fire zone”. Most of the evacuees, taken off the beach aboard small fishing-boats, have been wounded by shellfire. The UN’s human-rights chief, Navi Pillay, has suggested both sides may be guilty of war crimes. The UN, as well as India, America and other countries, has for weeks urged the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to hold fire until the civilians are removed.
In fear and loathing of Mr Prabhakaran, a practised escapologist and manipulator of international opinion, the government has largely ignored them. Amid a surge of ethnic nationalism among the Sinhalese majority, which it has stirred, such calls are taken as proof of Western countries’ inveterate bullying and support for the terrorist Tigers. Trapped on a battlefield, with water from just a few brackish wells and little food for weeks, the refugees have received scant sympathy in the Sinhalese press. But nor does the government, in the war’s twilight weeks, wish to commit a massacre.
Having reached the no-fire zone, the army claims to have stopped firing, and to be plotting a massive “rescue operation”. This is not entirely comforting. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the defence secretary and one of three presidential brothers in the government, recently told foreign diplomats how much he admired Russia’s efforts in 2004 in the North Ossetian town of Beslan—where more than 300 hostages held in a school were killed in the rescue effort. Only Russia’s ambassador, whose country has, with China, blocked serious discussion of the war in the UN Security Council, nodded his approval. But the army hopes to avoid such action. It thinks the refugees will soon try to break out, and that the Tigers, reduced, it says, to 200 hardened fighters plus some raw recruits, will be unable to stop them. It is hard to know how realistic this is. But even if the Tigers could hold out much longer—which seems unlikely—they may not do so. The Tamil diaspora, which pays their costs, and has been staging protests in London and elsewhere against the army, is said to be growing uneasy with their tactics.
Other hazy signs suggest the government is starting to worry about its bad press. At Vavuniya, it has corralled 60,000 Tamils, inhabitants of the Tigers’ former fief, into makeshift camps, ringed by razor-wire. It is building more camps for the rest. The Tigers will hope to continue their struggle underground, among these people, so it is understandable the government will monitor them. Yet its initial plan, to release no intern under the age of 65 for a year or more, showed a stunning disregard for its Tamil citizens.
The government has since said it plans to begin releasing the interns by the end of this month. In the past two weeks, it has also given the ICRC limited access to its screening of those escaping the war-zone. But it continues to use international condemnation of its war methods—allegedly including grave human-rights abuses—to rally domestic support. Indeed, its wariness of meddling foreigners is genuine, which is why it has denied the ICRC visas it needs to replace exhausted foreign staff.
Among Sinhalese and some Muslims, Sri Lanka’s third main group, the war is popular, despite its heavy toll. (In December the government admitted to having lost 3,800 troops from June 2006 to the end of 2008. The army claims to have killed 20,100 Tigers in that period.) This has ensured victory for Mr Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance, in several provincial elections—and gives it a good chance of winning a poll in Western Province, the country’s richest, on April 25th. But to tackle two pressing post-war problems, the dire state of the national economy and the bitter ethnic division underpinning the Tigers’ struggle, Mr Rajapaksa must broaden his appeal.
On the first count, he will have to heed his foreign critics. To avert a solvency crisis, the government last month admitted that it has asked the IMF for a loan of $1.9 billion. To soften the embarrassment of returning to the fund, which the government drove away in 2007, Mr Rajapaksa claims the money will come with no strings attached. But if the government does not accept a weaker rupee, which it has defended ruinously, and cut its budget deficit, the money may not come at all. However, it is the second count that is Mr Rajapaksa’s greatest challenge: reaching a political settlement with Sri Lanka’s marginalised, intimidated and livid Tamils. If he masters it, he will be remembered for bringing peace to Sri Lanka; otherwise, for war.
