Amantha Perrera: TERROR IN US BRINGS PEACE IN SRI LANKA

Date: 08-14-2002

Amantha Perera, a Fall 2001 Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center, is an editor at The Sunday Leader, an English weekly in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has covered Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict and the politics behind it for the last five years and has reported extensively from rebel-held areas. He was named Sri Lanka's Best English Journalist in 2001 by the Editors' Guild of Sri Lanka. He contributed this piece to the East-West Wire.


COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- There is one man that strife-torn Sri Lanka has to thank for bringing about a temporary halt to 19 years of civil war that has consumed 64,500 lives.

It is not Sri Lanka's Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, nor Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the rebel group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). And it certainly is not U.S. President George W. Bush, though he does deserve some of the credit.

It is the most wanted man in the world at the moment: Osama Bin Laden.

International outrage against the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing pressure to counteract terrorism was the prime moving force that led to the ceasefire.

"I would say Sept. 11 accelerated the process," Wickremesinghe said recently in Washington, referring to the ongoing Norwegian-brokered peace negotiations between the government and the LTTE.

Barely two months after the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, the LTTE declared a cessation of hostilities, and last February the Wickremesinghe government reciprocated with the same favor. Since February, there has been only one combat casualty: an errant government soldier shot dead last week by rebels near the line of command in Muhamalai, Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka. The soldier, disobeying orders not to engage, had fired and injured two LTTE cadres.

The LTTE is an organization that thrives on support -- financial as well as political -- from Tamils living outside Sri Lanka and from foreign governments. The funds keep the war machine running while the political support adds weight to the cause. Even before Sept. 11, heavy lobbying by the Sri Lankan government led to bans on the LTTE in the United States and a host of other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, where a large number of expatriate Tamils live. Despite claims by LTTE leaders that the bans have been more or less ineffective, Western diplomatic sources in Colombo argue that the bans were hurting the LTTE and would have hurt more if the group did not make its U-turn last year.

The reconciliation efforts were made easier by the election of the pro-negotiation Wickremesinghe government at last December's general election.

"I am optimistic that the process will continue," observed the Roman Catholic Bishop of Jaffna, the Rev. Thomas Samudranayagam.

That optimism flows from the involvement of an international broker and from world pressure on terrorists. Four previous attempts at negotiations failed with devastating results. Just over a month before the Sept. 11 attacks, LTTE cadres attacked Sri Lanka's only international airport, causing $1 billion in damage and leading the national economy into negative growth for the first time in 30 years.

Even at the height of war, though, the LTTE was mindful of international reactions. The attack on the airport took place at a time when there were no international airlines on the tarmac and the least number of foreigners, none of whom were hurt.

"The international situation is a big difference this time," said Lasantha Wickremetunge, a political commentator.

The importance of the international focus on terrorism can be gauged by an event that took place as Wickremesinghe was concluding his U.S. visit. At the same time Minister Milinda Moragoda -- his point man in peace negotiations -- met with a top LTTE official in London. Moragoda and LTTE's chief theoretician, Anton Balasingham, discussed starting dates for talks. It was the first meeting between the government and the LTTE since the ceasefire.

The fact that it took place on the heels of the Wickremesinghe-Bush meeting shows the sort of influence the United States plays in the negotiations.

Amantha Perrera can be reached at amantha_23@yahoo.com

This is an East-West Wire, copyright East-West Center