Nervously waiting for war

Tamils have already dug graves for thousands of Tiger `martyrs' as nation edges closer to the brink

Fighting appears inevitable as even old women head to the jungle for training, Andrew Mills writes

Jul. 3, 2006. 01:00 AM

ANDREW MILLS

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka—The sandy field on the outskirts of town sits empty, already prepared to receive thousands of bodies of dead Tamil Tiger cadres, casualties-to-come in the all-out civil war many believe will break out here at any time.

"Things haven't worked for four years, so what's the point in keeping the fragile peace and the ceasefire agreement," says M. Thiyagarajah, 34, a caretaker who looks after the graves of 2,008 Tiger "martyrs" killed in more than two decades of fighting.

"We might as well go back to war."

That's the resigned reality here in the de facto capital of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, where everyone nervously waits for a war that promises to be bloodier and more complicated than anything Sri Lanka has seen before.

Kilinochchi lies in the heart of what the Tigers call Tamil Eelam, the swath of north and east Sri Lanka they fought to establish as an independent homeland for the Tamil minority. The rebels operate Eelam as a separate state, complete with tax collectors in white uniforms, a police force equipped with speed-detecting radars and even their own supreme court.

Decades of discrimination of Tamils by the Sinhalese majority broke out into war in 1983, sparked by anti-Tamil riots. The fighting lasted almost two decades and left 64,000 dead, but in 2002, a Norwegian-backed ceasefire ushered in a period of relative calm.

That calm ended late last year following the election of a more fervently Sinhalese nationalist government in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.

Fighting has also broken out in the east, where a former Tiger commander, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, who uses the nom de guerre Col. Karuna, is leading a band of renegade Tamils in deadly battle against their former comrades.

Karuna's faction, which diplomats believe receives support and supplies from the Sri Lankan government, jeopardizes the Tigers' claim to be the sole representatives of the Tamil people and many believe the Tigers are working to eliminate them.

The result of this renewed instability is that more than 700 deaths — half of them civilians — have been recorded in Sri Lanka so far this year.

Fighting and fear have forced some 50,000 refugees from their homes in the last three months, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"These civilians have lost so much in the last waves of wars," says Dr. Robert Taylor, a Vancouver surgeon who has spent the last year working for the Canadian Red Cross in Kilinochchi's hospital.

"It's going to be civilians again. It's civilians now. All the people I've treated for bomb blasts and with bullet wounds, they've all been civilians, except for one. Civilians take it in the ear," he says.

And as the country slides back toward war, civilians and cadres in the Tiger lands are preparing to defend the territory they see as their homeland.

Old women and students have been going into the jungle to take special weapons training courses so they can defend their villages.

Along the shoulders of the main north-south highway, cadres have dug slit trenches and burned away any undergrowth that could conceal roadside bombs. Neighbours help each other to build new bomb shelters.

"If the Tigers want me to fight, I'm prepared to fight," says Surendiran Jeyanthimala, 34, a mother of four who sells coconuts for a few rupees apiece in Kilinochchi's dusty marketplace. "We'll fight for our freedom and happiness."

Officially, the Tamil Tiger leaders say they reject war and claim any preparations to fight are simply part of their plan to be in a constant state of readiness.

But others say the ceasefire bought the Tigers time to ramp up for a massive fight some have even started calling the "Final War."

The name implies a now-or-never, no compromises fight to the end; the final push to capture the government-controlled Jaffna peninsula in the far north and pockets of territory in the east the Tigers don't yet occupy but lay claim to as the independent homeland of the Tamil people.

"A war to solve everything," explains Mirak Raheem, a peace and conflict researcher at Colombo's Centre for Policy Alternatives.

"(The Tigers) are putting on a lot of public pressure. This is really the people's war. Everyone's to pitch in because it's the final war," he says. "It's do or die now."

What neither side has yet dared to do is attempt to shift the ceasefire lines from where they've been sitting since 2002. That act, experts and diplomats say, will mark the escalation to full-out war.

"Both sides don't really want to go into a full-scale war, which is major action plus the shifting of boundaries, because they are not sure what the outcome will be," says Jehan Perera, director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka. "So what they have been doing for now is undeclared war in which they try to hurt the other side."

Though both sides continue to say they honour the 2002 ceasefire, the fresh blood on everyone's hands says otherwise.

The Tigers are likely behind a string of suicide bombings that have struck at government and military targets. One such attack last week killed the third highest-ranking general in the Sri Lankan army. But civilians are in their crosshairs too. Two weeks ago, a roadside bomb bearing all the hallmarks of a Tiger attack, blew up a bus, killing 64 civilians and injuring 70.

Government security forces, seeking revenge and spreading fear, have been blamed for being behind what smacks of a co-ordinated effort to kidnap and murder hundreds of Tamils — some of them clearly civilians. Two weeks ago, government jets dropped bombs on what they said were rebel positions in the Tiger-controlled zone.

What's more, on land and at sea, skirmishes between rebels and soldiers unfold nearly everyday and the lethal intensity seems to escalate with each episode of fighting.

"Something has held both parties back from actually taking the step. Really, on one hand it looks like neither side wants to be seen as the one who declares war, but at the same time you wonder in both the responses and the kinds of acts they've engaged in whether it's a short-term measure," Raheem says.

"At some point something's going to snap," he says.

When it does, the civilians of Kilinochchi will be ready to loyally line up behind the Tigers and fight the Final War.

"Because of them, we are alive now," Jeyanthimala says, sitting on the ground surrounded by neat piles of coconuts.

"They are our sisters and brothers and children. They are fighting for us."

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Andrew Mills is a Canadian freelance journalist

Taken from The TorontoStar