POST-WAR IS NOT POST-CONFLICT. (La fine della guerra non è la fine del conflitto)

President Mahinda Rajapakse [of Sri Lanka, ndr] claimed the victory was a success of his government’s national mission within the broader global ‘war against terrorism’ and claimed its strategy was a model other governments should follow in their fight against non-state armed groups.

As security circles and governments around the globe consider whether military action with the aim of a ‘victorious peace’, the decisive defeat of one party, might not be a better option than investing in costly and fragile peace initiatives, opponents argue that a victorious peace can only be achieved at unacceptable costs. They also seriously doubt that such a costly victory can lead to lasting, or indeed just, peace.

Sri Lanka is an exemplary case of a protracted ethno-political conflict according to Edward Azar, a prominent academic and former head of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management. Although the political representatives of the Singhalese majority grant the Tamil-speaking minority groups, the Sri Lankan Tamils, Muslims and Tamils of Indian origin, a status as “co-habiting” communities, they do not grant them the equal right to cooperate in the forming of a multi-ethnic state.

After independence in 1948, a practically unitary Singhalese state was founded, establishing Buddhism as a constitutionally privileged religion. Tamil minorities were disadvantaged in the public sphere, the educational system and the economy. They also felt threatened by major irrigation and settling projects in areas where they traditionally lived.

Challenges associated with demographics and access to power affected the Sri Lankan Tamils dramatically, particularly because of the privileged position they had held under British colonial rule. For the Singhalese, the post-colonial era represented an opportunity to finally claim their rights as the country’s majority. Singhalese and Tamil nationalism thus developed in parallel, and although initially tensions between the two parties were dealt with in parliament, lasting compromises became increasingly difficult to work out, allowing violent conflict to erupt.

In both majority and minority politics, patterns of behavior, structures and attitudes developed which continually fired the confrontation. On the Singhalese side, one of those patterns can be described as “ethnic outbidding;” a process in which the Singhalese party in opposition undermined the governing party’s attempts at ethnic reconciliation.

On the Tamil side similar patterns developed over the attractiveness of political options for their community. The core issue was whether Tamils should seek reforms within the existing political system, or strive for autonomy, federalism or even secession. In the 1970s and 80s radicalism increased, leading to the foundation of several militant Tamil organizations. The LTTE became the strongest force, mostly due to its decisiveness and the brutality with which it not only attacked the Sri Lankan military and state, but also parts of the Tamil movement that voiced differing opinions. Furthermore, they profited from secret support by the Indian government; a decision that Indian politicians would come to bitterly regret when in 1991 Premier Rajiv Gandhi was killed by an LTTE assassin.

Parallel to the policy of “ethnic outbidding,” the LTTE strategy in Tamil politics could be described as “violence outbidding.” Confronted with the overwhelming dominance of Singhalese parties, and after a series of fruitless attempts to compromise politically, a large section of the Tamil community saw no other choice than to opt for violent resistance. The LTTE went one step further and claimed to be the “sole representative of the Tamil people,” a claim for which the community later had to pay a high price.

“Ethnic outbidding” and “violence outbidding” are two sides of the same coin- both escalated the conflict. The representatives of both the majority and the minority in their fight for power acted according to a parallel rationale, giving rise to a conflict that could only lead to either mutual exhaustion or a victorious, costly peace.

Like previous failed attempts at peace, those from 2002 to 2005 ended in deep disappointment. In the 2005 presidential election, the candidate of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Mahinda Rajapakse revoked the ceasefire agreement of 2002. He demanded that the LTTE abandon their claims to territorial control in large parts of the northern and eastern provinces and renegotiate the vital parameters of earlier understandings. Although Ranil Wickramsinghe, the United National Party (UNP) candidate, had promised to continue the peace process, he lost partly because of an LTTE call to boycott the elections.

The war that has been called 'Tamil Eelam War IV' began to develop in the first half of 2006 with Rajapakse’s failed attempt to convince the LTTE that the practical conditions of the peace process had changed. Instead, the LTTE supplied the government with a good pretext for a major offensive by disrupting a large irrigation project in the Eastern Province. The government, however, had already decided to continue the war until the LTTE was completely extinguished; an aim that experts in Sri Lanka and abroad had thought impossible.

The unexpected success of Rajapakse’s campaign is due to several factors, primarily divisions within the LTTE, massive increases in the military budget of the government and the increasing ruthlessness of their tactics, as well as considerable support from abroad in the shadow of the ‘war on terror.’

The victory of the Sri Lankan military, however, has come at a high price. Between 20,000 and 40,000 combatants and as many as 25,0000 civilians, mainly Tamils, lost their lives in this war, according to UN sources. The government disputes these numbers. In the last months of the war, moreover, a dramatic crisis saw the LTTE taking more than 300,000 Tamil civilians hostage as it was retreating, preventing them from fleeing while government troops bombarded the areas, including self-declared no-fire zones. Over a quarter of a million survivors were subsequently interned in camps, cut off for from international aid organizations. Some 11,000 presumed LTTE cadres were interned separately without monitoring by the International Red Cross and without access to families or legal support.

The government dismissed critical voices from abroad as typical of the double standard of western countries, which in their own fight against terrorism had resorted to drastic means as well. Demands for accountability in the face of grave human rights violations, moreover, were refused outright, sometimes with the argument that the reconciliation process within Sri Lanka would be disturbed by this. Admonitions to create a political solution now that the military solution had ended, e.g. to make the Tamils a generous offer of integration within a multi-ethnic Sri Lanka, were only accepted half-heartedly.

The government’s top priority was to extend its own claim to power based on the victory of the LTTE. In the January presidential election and the general election in April, the government succeeded in this aim. Rajapakse gained a clear majority of votes and his party and their allies came close to a two-thirds majority in parliament. The election results also seemed to have cemented the deep separation of the country: While 60 percent of the Singhalese voted for Rajapakse, 65 percent of the minorities voted for the opposition candidate, former army commander Sarath Fonseka who was subsequently arrested and detained.

After his election, Rajapakse declared that his government would continue the policy of reconciliation and development. To all questions regarding concrete plans for a political solution of the conflict, however, he simply referred to his election manifesto from January 2010, clearly rejecting a division of power on grounds of ethnicity.

The current Sri Lankan government seems convinced that the rules and actions by which they have won the war can also effectively shape the post-war society. One of the rules they act by is "Whoever is not for us, is against us." It is doubtful whether this concept will be sufficient in the long run to unify Sri Lankan society with its ethnic, religious, social and political diversity and to make the country an “Exemplary 21st Century Asian State”, as described in the president’s January manifesto.

According to most observers, the post-war situation is by no means a post-conflict situation. Quite the opposite, the wounds from the war have not healed, and the memory of it may be long lasting if there is no progress in the re-integration of the refugees and ex-combatants, or in dealing with the question of a political solution.

Tamils, after nearly three decades of civil war with a huge number of victims, still considers themselves as second-class citizens. Nevertheless, during the next few years, after all the hardship of the past, their priority will be to live a ‘normal’ life. It is most unlikely though that they will accept their secondary status in the long run, the clearest indication of which is the continued support of a (Pan)-Tamil nationalism by Tamil Nadu, the neighboring Indian state. Tamil Nadu itself is an example of how federal concessions can successfully be demanded from a central government. What form the new resistance will take and whether there will be a new militant movement is unclear, however. It depends on what personal and political alternatives young Tamil men and women will see. At present they carry the burden of the victorious peace and its victims as the main parameters of their lives.

The answer to the question of whether the victorious peace has resulted in either a successful victory against terrorism or just the prolongation of the conflict will therefore very much depend on the future of the Sri Lankan polity and its capacity to integrate the Tamil speaking communities as equal partners into the constitution and the political life of the country.
(ISN)