Politics of the Civil War and
The People’s Aspiration for Peace

By Ajith Rupesinghe

It is now one year and four months since the outbreak of the third stage of the civil war between the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE.

Although the government promised a quick and decisive military victory over the LTTE, events have proven otherwise. The war has turned out to be as destructive as ever before, with the likelihood of being dragged into yet another stage of protracted conflict. The Mullaitivu debacle has provided indisputable proof of this fact which the Dehiwela bomb blast cannot cover up, whomsoever may be responsible for this monstrous act.

The indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian populated areas in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu provokes concern that the "Sath-Jaya" military campaign is designed more to terrorise the population into submission and to pamper the wounded egos of deflated generals and restore the battered image of a besieged government than to serve a rational military objective.

The mounting number of human casualties, the incredible suffering of the people, the military debacles do not seem to provoke any reassessment of the government’s strategy of imposing a political settlement through military means. All the lessons of the past seem to have been lost in the din of a shameless jingoism spurred on by arrogant generals who appear to have usurped supreme executive powers on military affairs.

At first, the government messed up the opportunities that had opened up with the election of the PA government and the President on the firm and dear pledge of bringing about a negotiated political settlement. The military establishment, with the connivance of India, worked effectively to sabotage the peace process. The lack of seriousness and professionalism on the part of the executive offered fertile soil for these forces to manipulate the situation. These were the main factors that led to the breakdown of the last round of peace negotiations.

Then came the occupation of Jaffna - possibly the most inane military decision of all time. The late General Kobbekadduwa had resisted this type of adventurism, but the new generals were hell-bent on proving their manhood on the battlefield. The occupation of Jaffna has driven a widening barrier between the Tamil community and the State and fueled the aspiration and justification for a separate state of Tamil Eelam as nothing else had done before. The aspiration for a separate state has arisen as a result of the pitiful inability of the Sri Lankan State to address the issue of national self-determination of the Tamil people in the North-East which the adventurism of the new generals has compounded so recklessly.

Foothold
The Devolution Package, like all such before it, has become part of the museum of antiquities. The August proposals were quickly abandoned to cater to the chauvinists. Even the diluted version has been rejected by the UNP. The devolution package was presented publicly as an instrument for isolating the LTTE and as such remains an instrument of war. The package turned out to be a cheap propaganda exercise to pamper the hypocritical sensitivities of the international community and to deceive the people.

The international community has played a criminal role in covering up for the PA government. It has condoned the censorship and the imposition of a nationwide emergency. It has condoned the human rights violations, the indiscriminate bombings, the degrading harassment of civilians. Some of these countries continue to supply the most modern weapons of high-tech mass destruction to the PA government, including torture equipment.

The US has sent its crack elite military advisers to train the Sri Lankan security forces in the art of high-tech warfare. The US has declared the LTTE to be a terrorist organisation which should be dealt with militarily. The US State Department has even accused the LTTE of rape-which is a gross and malicious lie. In any case, it is the height of the most cynical hypocrisy for the US government to denounce terrorism with its unparalleled record of the most brutal aggressions across the globe and its open support for the most terroristic regimes in the world.

India has played a deadly game of chess in trying to manipulate the Tamil national liberation struggle to get a strategic foothold in Sri Lanka and the North-East. Its objective is to entrench a servile Tamil leadership in the North-East as a means of gaining a strategic foothold on Trincomalee and the region and to co-opt the national democratic aspirations of the oppressed Tamil people of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Through funding and fueling the war against the LTTE, it is also creating a dependent vassal state which it can then manipulate for its regional ambitions.

The people of Sri Lanka have become the hapless victims and pawns in the deadly game of these international players. The people in the North-East have been, once again, made to suffer untold suffering and destruction. As a consequence, the antagonism between them and the State has intensified as never before.

Exposed
The economy is on the verge of collapse. Cost of living is escalating day by day. Unemployment and inflation are rising to unprecedented heights. Millions of poor farmers and fishermen are being driven out of the so-called private sector driven/open market economy with nothing to fall back on.

Democratic norms have been buried under the dictatorship of an arbitrary censorship and a nationwide emergency, along with extraordinary powers being given to unconstitutionally established paramilitary forces such as the Civilian Defense Forces.

Elected Provincial Councils are being undermined, May Day processions are attacked by police anti-riot squads. Local elections are postponed indefinitely. Trade unions are being marginalised as never before to pave the way for super exploitation of the workers by foreign predators. The Executive Presidency has been further entrenched and has become more capricious.

And the war continues to bleed the country economically and morally while offering fertile ground for regional and international powers to sink their teeth into the economic, political and cultural lifelines of our society as never before. Sri Lanka has become a puppet neo-colonial state where even its national security interests are being dictated to by foreign and regional powers.

The UNP bides its time until the PA government proves itself to be worse criminals than the previous regime. This is the choice offered to the people after fifty years of this five-star democracy. The JVP wants to prove that they alone can militarily destroy the LTTE, while the MEP has slid into the pit of political bankruptcy by calling for a ban on the LTTE.

These narrow political trends that lust for war are all playing into the hands of the international powers and the Sri Lankan State. They place themselves in irreconcilable opposition to the progressive, democratic and patriotic aspirations of the people of Sri Lanka.

The parliamentary ‘Left’ parties in the PA coalition government have completely exposed their abject betrayal of the people by their active connivance with the State in waging this war and in serving the interests of the World Bank. This path of betrayal is the outcome of their parliamentary opportunism which characterised their politics from their very inception.

The Southern-based Tamil political parties and groups have all resisted the efforts of the government to ban the LTTE on the grounds that the LTTE is too powerful an organisation to be dealt with in this facile manner. It is to their belated credit that they have begun to sum up their notorious experience of capitulation to India and the Sri Lankan state.

The vast majority of people who suffer extreme poverty and the worst consequences of this war, do not want this war. Only the politicians, the privileged elite, the racketeers, the chauvinists, the militarists and fascists want this war. Nor do the people want any of the daily aggressions, degradations, ravages and violations of this soured open-market economic policies and this fraud of a five-star democracy.

The people want a united, independent, democratic and prosperous country to live in freedom and dignity in which they can decide upon and determine their own future. They are truly fed up with the prevailing political system and with all established political parties since all they have gained from this set-up is more and more poverty, misery and degradation while a small minority of feudalists, big comprador mudalalis, corrupt ministers, MPs and bureaucrats have profited from the game. The people demand a fundamental restructuring and democratisation of the State and Society.

Dictates
The LTTE had suffered a tactical setback with the loss of Jaffna. Yet, they have managed to retain and even magnify their fighting capacity. They have expanded their area of military operations into the Valigamam area itself, Mullaitivu, the East, the North West and Colombo.

Although the Tamil people have acute contradictions with the LTTE for its undemocratic and terroristic methods, they have abiding respect for the LTTE as the only force that has stood firm against the aggressions of the IPKF and the Sri Lankan State. The LTTE has repeatedly called for a resumption of negotiations with mediation on the basis of restoring the staus quo that prevailed before the resumption of hostilities.

Are we to grasp this opportunity and establish a negotiation modality that would introduce the requisite professionalism to ensure a just and lasting peace? OR shall we continue to capitulate to the dictates of foreign powers and to the generals and be passive spectators to the rape and pillage and the steady destruction of our existence as a modem civilised nation?

All progressive, democratic and patriotic forces should study this question deeply and unite to give sustained expression to the will and aspirations of the people for achieving a negotiated political settlement as a way of building a united, independent, democratic and prosperous Sri Lanka.