The Conflict in Sri Lanka: Ground Realities - Ilankai Tamil Sangam

Short Fuse in Sri Lanka
Appendix A
Westerners are kept aware of post colonialist conflicts in Kashmir,
Israel-Palestine, Rwanda, and Sudan, but the decades-long
conflict on the island nation of Sri Lanka between a Sinhalese
Buddhist majority and the Tamil minority often seems a tragedy the
West would rather ignore. Recent events there suggest, however,
that Sri Lanka desperately needs help from international peace
brokers if it is to avoid lapsing back into a bloody internecine war
that has been suspended since a 2002 ceasefire.
The outcome of last month’s presidential election has stoked
fears that the war between the Sinhalese-dominated government
and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will resume in coming
months. The new president, Mahinda Rajapakse, won a narrow
victory in alliance with two hard-line Sinhala nationalist parties
thanks to an election boycott by most Tamils in the north of the
island.
In Rajapakse’s initial address to Parliament Nov. 26, he warned
ominously that he will reject self-determination for the Tamils,
that he is committed to a ‘’unitary state” controlled by the Sinhala-
Buddhist majority, that he wants to dissolve the current joint
Tiger-government administration of post-tsunami relief, and that
he plans to terminate a peace process that has been mediated by
Norway.
Two days later, the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran,
delivering his annual Heroes’ Day speech, restated the Tigers’
familiar aim of self-government in a Tamil homeland, noted a
‘’vast” policy difference between the new president and the Tigers
and warned that Tamils are losing patience. ‘’The new government
should come forward soon with a reasonable political framework
that will satisfy the political aspirations of the Tamil people,” he
said. If no such offer is forthcoming, Prabhakaran said, the Tigers
will in the next year ‘‘intensify our struggle for self-determination.”
This either-or threat, seen alongside Rajapakse’s own hard-line
stance, presages an imminent renewal of civil war.
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