Sri Lanka: Winning the War, But What About the Peace?

A dozen years ago, while in India, I became intrigued by the civil war raging in Sri Lanka. Encouraged by my Sri Lankan meditation teacher and an Australian Buddhist monk who had resided for years in Sri Lanka, I planned a research trip to the small tropical island nation. With a book full of good contacts and a head full of warnings about being careful what I ask, how I ask it, and who I ask it of, I eagerly prepared for my trip. But just two weeks before my departure, Tamil rebels detonated a series of bombs in the Sri Lankan capital, and I was advised to cancel my trip. I wavered, but the monk’s argument won me over. Who wanted to be worried about being killed every time they got on a bus or went to the market or left their hotel room? Reluctantly, I canceled the trip, but over the years continued to follow developments there.

This week, the Sri Lankan military has finally defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after over 30 years of armed conflict, killing the LTTE’s leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and wiping out most of the LTTE leadership. In the early 1980s the LTTE emerged as the strongest and most ruthless of the Tamil separatist groups, upset with the discrimination and violence directed against the island’s Tamil-speaking Hindu minority by the Sinhala-speaking Buddhist majority. Sri Lanka’s Buddhist clergy rabidly supported the war despite its high cost, heavy civilian casualties, and questionable effectiveness. The LTTE (and other armed and unarmed Tamil groups), fighting for a Tamil homeland in the north and east of Sri Lanka, was supported from abroad and from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu despite being labeled a terrorist organization by the US and other nations. For decades the conflict dragged on without an end in sight, and was presumed to be unwinnable by either side. Up to 100,000 people died. But in the last few years, Sri Lanka’s government launched an all-out assault on the LTTE, and the LTTE was split by infighting. The Sri Lankan military’s final push in the last few weeks precipitated a humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of terrified Tamil civilians were caught in the crossfire between the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE, and 7,000 were killed. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa won his war.

Now that the Sri Lankan military has emerged victorious, it remains to be seen how well the government secures the peace. The struggle for a Tamil homeland has perhaps been dealt a final blow and Sri Lankans are undoubtedly weary of war. But if, in the wake of the war, the Sri Lankan government treats Tamils as conquered subjects and fails to address the conflict’s root causes, resistance may again grow. This week’s national holiday celebrating the government’s victory over the LTTE must have seemed like insensitive gloating to many of the country’s Tamils, and it makes one wonder if the Sri Lankan government truly grasps what needs to happen next.

The challenge facing the Sri Lankan government is complex and substantial – to heal the wounds inflicted over the past three decades of war, to substantively address Tamil grievances against the Sri Lankan government, and to build a new inclusive Sri Lankan state and society. Can a government that has been on a war footing for so long accomplish these delicate tasks? Can a government that has for so long demonized, distrusted, and assaulted nearly three million of its own people move towards a just and peaceful future? I fear that it will not. Without doing this, the island’s Tamils will continue to flee Sri Lanka and those left will become increasingly marginalized. This may or may not result in renewed violence on the part of Tamils against the Sri Lankan state. Either way, the future for the country’s Tamil population looks bleak unless the Sri Lankan government is pushed to rebuild their war-torn country in a manner that includes those who once rejected its legitimacy.