Shielding his brow from the midday sun, Father Emilianuspallai surveys the
grounds of the Madhu church - Sri Lanka's holiest Roman Catholic shrine and
the army's latest prize in its 25-year conflict with the Tamil Tigers.
Since recapturing the 400-year-old shrine of Our Lady of Madhu in April, the
army has repaired the shell damage to the church roof. It has whitewashed
the outhouses that it says the rebels used as a regional headquarters and
cleared the booby traps they left behind.
Father Emilianuspallai has his church back. All he needs now is a congregation
and permanent end to a conflict that has killed 70,000 people and engulfed
this pilgrimage site on the front line.
Madhu's 30,000 residents have all fled. The only inhabitants now are soldiers
peering nervously from bunkers and jungle hideouts. The prospects for a
lasting peace look uncertain at best. “This holy site has become a place of
continuous war,” Father Emilianuspallai said.
Under Tiger control for most of the past decade, Madhu is a powerful symbol of
the territorial gains the army has made since launching a massive assault on
the rebels' northern jungle strongholds in January.
It also illustrates the enormous challenges facing the Government as it tries
to fulfil a vow to defeat the Tigers by the end of the year - and to
convince the Tamils in the north to embrace a political settlement.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary and brother of the President,
Mahinda Rajapaksa, insists that the army is on target to capture Kilinochchi
town, the Tigers' capital, in the next four months. “It's possible by the
end of this year,” he told The Times. “You can't just push them into the
jungles and wait. You have to search for them and completely eradicate them.
Only then can peace come.”
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been fighting since 1983 for a
homeland for Sri Lanka's mainly Hindu Tamil minority, to protect it from
discrimination by the ethnic Sinhalese majority, which is mostly Buddhist. A
ceasefire brokered by Norway in 2002 started to unravel in late 2005 and was
scrapped by President Rajapaksa in January. Critics now accuse him of
pursuing an unfeasible military solution - and condoning widespread human
rights abuses in the process.
While reported abuses continue, even sceptics concede that the army is making
startling advances in the north, having driven the Tigers out of the east
last year. A peace plan for the east also appears to be holding, after the
defection of a splinter faction of Tigers, the Karuna Group, which has
transformed itself into a political party.
“On the face of it, the Government has made great strides: they [the Tigers]
are really hemmed in this time,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, of the
Centre for Policy Alternatives. “I'm just not sure the military progress can
be translated into political progress.”
The army says it has shrunk the Tigers' territory from 6,500 to 5,000sqkm and
reduced their forces from 13,000 to 5,000 “cadres”. Last month it captured
one of the Tigers' main naval bases. Last week it entered Kilinochchi
district. Yesterday it announced that 115 rebels had been killed at the
weekend and government aircraft were bombing Tiger positions in the far
north.
With journalists barred from the conflict zone, it is impossible to tell if
the Tigers have suffered losses or retreated to avoid confronting the army.
But if the army is on the point of victory, the question is: at what price?
Madhu, for example, has been recaptured, but the locals - mostly Tamil farmers
- have all fled to India or rebel-held areas. Even if they do return, their
homes are destroyed, the local economy is non-existent and the army's
heavy-handed tactics have fuelled resentment in the Tamil community.
In a teashop in Chattikulam, the neighbouring district, a group of Tamils
talked in hushed tones about the daily searches they endure. “My wife is on
edge from the moment I leave home until the moment I return,” said Nadarajah
Rajan, 42, a tractor driver.
He said that a close friend who was a farm labourer disappeared six months ago
after security forces went to his house to question him. Human rights groups
accuse the Government of condoning hundreds of such “disappearances” as well
as recent attacks on journalists and other critics of the Government. “All
these things need to be stopped. The Government needs to take action against
the perpetrators,” Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary of State for
South and Central Asia, said on a visit to Colombo last week.
The European Union has gone further, threatening to withdraw the trade
benefits that allow Sri Lanka to export garments to the EU duty-free. That
could cost tens of thousands of jobs.
For the moment, the Government seems to enjoy widespread political support
from the Sinhalese majority, but with inflation near 30 per cent, if it
fails to defeat the Tigers by January and loses the EU trade benefits at the
end of the year, analysts say that the national mood could change quickly.
“People are giving them the benefit of the doubt for now,” said a Sri Lankan
business leader. “The worry is that what seems like a passing phase might
become a way of life.”
25 years of conflict
1972 Velupillai Prabhakaran forms the Tamil New Tigers, later known as
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 1985 After heavy fighting between the
Government and the LTTE, the rebel group takes control of Jaffna and most of
the Jaffna peninsula in the northern tip of Sri Lanka
1987 Indian peacekeeping force deployed in the region as civil war
intensifies
1990 Peace talks attempted. Indian troops leave
1991 Suicide bomber kills Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian Prime
Minister, while campaigning in Tamil Nadu
1993 President Ranasinghe Premadasa killed by LTTE bomb
2002 Government and Tamil Tiger rebels sign a Norwegian-mediated
ceasefire
2005 Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar killed by a
suspected Tamil assassin
2006 EU adds LTTE to list of banned terrorist organisations. Heavy
fighting between rebels and government forces brings number of deaths in the
civil war since 1980s to nearly 70,000
2008 Government formally abandons 2002 ceasefire agreement
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica; Times Archive
