Sri Lanka Introduction
Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Sri Lanka, 1988
Sri Lanka was not immune to the spirit of the global and
monumental change that swept the world in the late 1980s,
promising to usher in a new international order in the 1990s.
Indeed, at this writing events on the troubled island nation
somehow seemed more under control than they had been in the
immediate past. Yet Sri Lanka still had to cope with many of the
same daunting and unresolved security problems that it faced in
1983, when a vicious separatist war broke out in the north--a
situation later aggravated by an altogether different but equally
debilitating insurrection in the south.
Sri Lanka's descent into violence was especially disturbing
because for many years the nation was considered a model of
democracy in the Third World. A nation with one of the world's
lowest per capita incomes, Sri Lanka nevertheless had a nascent
but thriving free-market economy that supported one of the most
extensive and respected education systems among developing
countries. Sadly, in 1990 the recollection of a peaceful and
prosperous Sri Lanka seemed a distant memory.
Prospects for an enduring peace, however remote, lingered as
the new decade began. On February 4, 1990, as Sri Lanka
celebrated its forty-second Independence Day, the president,
Ranasinghe Premadasa, who had assumed power a little over one
year before, once again appealed directly to the island nation's
more than 16 million people for an end to the long-standing
communally based friction between the majority Sinhalese and the
largest ethnic minority group, the Sri Lankan Tamils. He also
pleaded for a cessation of the internecine struggle among
competing groups within the Tamil community and of the open
warfare by Sinhalese extremists against the government. The
collective strife on the island nation, according to
international human rights groups, had over the previous year
alone taken as many as 20,000 lives and over the span of a decade
killed thousands more. The economy was crippled, the democratic
values of the country threatened, and the national memory
scarred.
Soothsayers had characterized Premadasa's assumption of power
in early 1989 as auspicious. Sri Lanka needed a person of stature
and vision to guide the country in its healing process. Many
thought Premadasa could fill that role. For the first time since
independence, Sri Lanka had a leader who did not belong to the
island's high-born Sinhalese Buddhist caste, the Goyigama.
Premadasa came instead from more humble origins and was viewed by
many Sri Lankans as more accessible than his predecessor, Junius
Richard (J.R.) Jayewardene, under whom he had served as prime
minister for ten years. One of Premadasa's first actions on
assuming office in January 1989 was to lift the five-and-a-half-
year state of emergency declared by his predecessor. Six months
later, Premadasa was praised by both the Tamils and the Sinhalese
for his unyielding opposition to the presence of the Indian
Peacekeeping Force (IPKF), a military contingent sent into Sri
Lanka in 1987 after an agreement between former Indian prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi and Jayewardene. The IPKF, originally a
small force tasked with performing a police action to disarm
Tamil separatists in the north, became increasingly entangled in
the ethnic struggle and guerrilla insurrection and had grown at
one point to as many as 70,000 troops.
By mid-1989 Premadasa was demanding from a sullen India the
quick withdrawal of the remaining 45,000 Indian soldiers then on
the island. Considering the resentment most Sri Lankans--both
Sinhalese and Tamil--had by then developed toward India, the
entreaty was both popular and politically expedient. Yet, having
to rely on the Sri Lankan military's questionable ability to
control the island's mercurial political milieu was a calculated
gamble. Still, in June 1989, hopes soared as delicate
negotiations were initiated between the government and the most
powerful of the Tamil separatist groups, the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE). But by then Premadasa was faced with more
immediate challenges. A spate of assassinations in the south and
a nationwide transportation strike were orchestrated by Sinhalese
extremists who had been in the forefront of political agitation
against the presence of Indian troops on the island and also
against any concessions the government made to Tamil demands for
increased autonomy. Premadasa was forced to take urgent action,
and he reimposed a national state of emergency, giving his
security forces new and draconian powers of enforcement. As
bickering between the Sri Lankan and Indian governments over a
timetable for the Indian troop withdrawal continued, the Sri
Lankan government unleashed a brutal campaign against the
Sinhalese extremists. Reports of "death squads" composed of army
and police officers who in their zealous pursuit of the
subversives also claimed the lives of many innocent victims
attracted the attention and ire of Amnesty International and
other international human rights groups.
In late March 1990, India withdrew its last troops from Sri
Lanka, thereby ending its much maligned three-year period of
foreign entanglement, which had inflamed rather than defused the
island's communal and political passions. The pullout created a
power vacuum in the island's Tamil-dominated Northeastern
Province that was expected to be filled by the resurgent Tamil
Tigers. The Tamil Tigers, represented by their own political
party, The People's Front of the Liberation Tigers--cautiously
recognized by the government--were expected to combine political
as well as military pressure against the rival Tamil groups
favored by the Indians. Without waiting for the completion of the
Indian departure, the Tamil Tigers already were reasserting their
control, waging a vigorous and thus far successful military
offensive against the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation
Front, which headed the provincial government, and several
secondary Tamil politico-military groups and their allied
militia--the India-armed and trained Tamil National Army.
Politically, their prestige enhanced by a reputation honed by
their prolonged and skillful combat against the Indians, and what
they called their Tamil "quislings," the feared Tamil Tigers were
in a good position to win the elections for the Northeastern
Provincial Council to be held later in 1990.
In their dialog with the government, the Tamil Tigers no
longer emphasized full secession and seemed instead to be more
intent, in the absence of their Indian adversaries, on
consolidating their military and political power over rival Tamil
groups. The government, aware that the Tamil Tigers had not
formally renounced the concept of a separate Tamil state,
however, realized that the hiatus in fighting could end in
renewed fighting and in what could ultimately be the
"Lebanization" of the country.
What went so tragically wrong for the beautiful island
sometimes referred to as Shangri-la? The answer is elusive and
can only partly be explained by the duress experienced by a
multifaceted traditional culture undergoing rapid change in an
environment restrained by limited resources. A close reckoning
also would have to be made of the island's troubled past--both
ancient and recent.
Sri Lanka claims the world's second-oldest continuous written
history--a history that chronicles the intermittent hostility
between two peoples--the Indo-Aryan Sinhalese or "People of the
Lion," who arrived from northern India around 500 B.C. to
establish magnificent Buddhist kingdoms on the north-central
plains, and the Tamils of Dravidian stock, who arrived a few
centuries later from southern India. The Tamil symbol became the
tiger, and during one brief juncture in the island's history
during the tenth century, Sri Lanka was ruled as a province by
the Tamil Chola dynasty in southern India. The ancient linkage of
northern Sri Lanka with the Tamil kingdoms of southern India has
not been forgotten by today's Sinhalese, who cite as a modern
embodiment of the historical threat of Tamil migration, the
proximity of India's southern Tamil Nadu state and its 55 million
Tamils--a source of psychological and military support for Tamil
separatists on the island.
In the sixteenth century, the island was colonized by the
Portuguese, later to be followed by the Dutch, and finally, and
most significantly, the British in the late eighteenth century.
The British succeeded in uniting the island, which they called
Ceylon. They established and then broadened a colonial education
system centered in British liberalism and democratic values,
which would eventually groom the generation of native leaders who
had successfully lobbied for independence. The British favored
the Tamils somewhat over the Sinhalese, enabling them to take
better advantage of what educational and civil service
opportunities were available. By the time independence was
attained in 1948, a body of able Sri Lankans, pooled from both
the Sinhalese and Tamil elites, was ready to take control from
the British in a peaceful and well-orchestrated transfer of
power.
In its early post-independence years, Sri Lanka was fortunate
to be led by Don Stephen Senanayake. He was a Sinhalese who was
leader of the United National Party (UNP), an umbrella party of
disparate political groups formed during the pre-independence
years and one of the two political parties that has since
dominated Sri Lankan politics. Senanayake was a man scrupulously
evenhanded in his approach to ethnic representation, but his
vision of communal harmony survived only for a short time after
his death in 1952. He was succeeded briefly by two UNP
successors, one of whom was his son Dudley. In 1956 control of
the government went to the opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP) led by Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (S.W.R.D.) Bandaranaike,
who became the island's fourth prime minister after winning an
emotionally charged election.
The 1956 election marked the first instance of serious
communal disharmony since independence and presaged the troubled
years to come. Symbolically, the election coincided with the
2,500th anniversary of the death of the Buddha and also that of
the arrival of Vijaya--the legendary founder of the Sinhalese
people--on the island. Emotions became dangerously overwrought
because Bandaranaike ran primarily on a "Sinhala Only" platform,
which decreed that the language of the Sinhalese would be the
only official language, with both English and Tamil branded as
cultural imports. Bandaranaike also proclaimed that he would
restore Buddhism to its historically elevated place in Sri Lankan
society. The argument can be made that the 1956 election and its
attendant emotionalism marked the beginning of the great division
between what have become two completely separate and mutually
hostile political systems in Sri Lanka, one Sinhalese and
Buddhist, the other Tamil and Hindu. Post-election emotions
escalated, and it was not long before tragedy followed. In 1958
an anti-Tamil rumor was all that was needed to trigger nationwide
riots in which hundreds of people, most of whom were Tamils,
died. The riots marked the first major episode of communal
violence after independence and left a deep psychological rift
between the two major ethnic groups.
In the years after the death of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in
1959, the SLFP has been headed by his widow Sirimavo, who led her
left of center party to victory in the election of 1960 and again
in 1970. Popularly regarded as a woman with a mandate to carry on
her husband's legacy, she was esteemed by many Sinhalese who
heeded her political guidance even when she was out of power.
While in office, she vigorously enforced legislation such as the
Official Language Act, which openly placed Sinhalese interests
over Tamil, further dividing the body politic. During
Bandaranaike's last tenure in power, from 1970 to 1977, the
deteriorating security situation on the island intensified. In
1971 her new government sanctioned university admissions
regulations that were openly prejudicial to Tamils. In the
following year, she promulgated a new constitution that declared
Sri Lanka a republic, but that was notorious for its lack of
protection for minorities.
In 1972 a serious new threat to the stability of the island
appeared. Established in the late 1960s, the People's Liberation
Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna--JVP), a violent movement
alternatively described as Maoist and Trokskyite but one
indisputably chauvinist in its championship of Sinhalese values,
launched its first major offensive in 1972. The JVP attempted a
blitzkrieg operation to take over the country within twenty-four
hours; it was suppressed only after considerable fighting during
a protracted state of emergency declared by the government. In
the late 1980s, an invigorated JVP would arise and gather
strength from the anti-Indian sentiment that followed the Indo-
Sri Lankan Accord and the arrival of Indian troops in 1987.
In 1977 the UNP, led by J.R. Jayewardene, easily defeated
Bandaranaike, whose Common Programme with its loosely
administered socialist politics had proven so injurious to the
economy. Declaring that his government would inaugurate an era of
dharmishta, or righteous society, Jayewardene crafted a
new constitution the following year, changing the previous
Westminster-style parliamentary government to a new presidential
system modeled after that of France. The 1978 Constitution,
unlike its predecessor, made substantial concessions to Tamil
sensitivities. The most blatant excesses of the Bandaranaike
government were stopped, especially the discriminatory university
admissions criteria aimed at Tamils and the refusal to give Tamil
national language status. Yet these measures appeared to be a
classical case of too little too late. The political
disillusionment of Tamil youth, which had grown during the
Bandaranaike years, continued unabated, and the separatist call
for a Tamil Eelam, or "Precious Land," became increasingly
accompanied by attacks on government targets.
Jayewardene, widely admired as one of the most learned
leaders in South Asia, nevertheless was criticized for his
inability--or reluctance--to recognize the disturbances in Sri
Lanka as something more profound than merely a law and order
problem. In 1979 with communal unrest growing steadily worse, his
government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, at first a
temporary, but later a permanent, piece of legislation that gave
unbridled powers of search and arrest to the police and military.
Government abuses soon followed, attracting the harsh scrutiny
and condemnation of international human rights organizations. In
time, Jayewardene was forced to broaden his assessment of the
deteriorating security situation, and he initiated a series of
negotiations on increased autonomy with the major Tamil political
organization on the island, the Tamil United Liberation Front
(TULF). While the TULF and the government pressed for a
conference of all appropriate bodies--a peace forum to represent
all the religious and ethnic groups in the country--the Tamil
Tigers escalated their terrorist attacks, provoking a Sinhalese
backlash against Tamils and precluding any successful
accommodation resulting from the talks. Thereafter, the talks
took place intermittently and at best with only partial
representation between representatives of the heterogeneous Tamil
community and the government.
Important opportunities for a constructive dialog on Tamil
and Sinhalese concerns continued to be missed as negotiators,
driven by events seemingly beyond their control, hardened their
positions. Under steady pressure from Tamil extremists and in
their abhorrence of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the moderate
Tamil political organizations, notably the TULF, decided to
boycott the 1982 presidential election. When the government
proposed the following year to amend the Constitution to ban all
talk of separatism, all sixteen TULF members of parliament were
expelled for refusing to recite a loyalty oath. The government
lost its vital link to mediation.The fissures in Sri Lankan
society also grew wider with each new episode of communal
violence. Serious rioting again broke out in 1977 and 1981, but
the magnitude of unrest and violence that exploded in the July
1983 riots could not have been anticipated. The riots unleashed
an unprecedented wave of violence that engulfed the island and
divided Sri Lankan society. The aftermath of that social
conflagration was still felt in the early 1990s.
The 1983 riots were in response to the ambush and killing of
thirteen Sinhalese soldiers by the Tamil Tigers on the outskirts
of Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka's Tamil-dominated Northern
Province. A five-day rampage ensued, with lynchings and summary
executions occurring all over the island. As many as 1,000
people, mostly Tamils, were slaughtered. Carefully carried out
attacks by Sinhalese rioters in possession of voter lists and
addresses of Tamils suggested collusion by some members of Sri
Lanka's military and security forces.
Shortly after the riots Jayewardene hurriedly convened an All
Party Conference, which was envisioned as a series of ongoing
talks with the aim of bringing Tamils and Sinhalese together to
negotiate a political settlement of their communal confrontation.
The conference, which was first convened in January 1984,
resulted in a series of proposals. These proposals, however, were
rejected by several of the major Tamil opposition parties,
including the TULF. In July 1985, the government, now joined by
the active participation of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India,
reopened a dialog with the TULF and other smaller Tamil political
groups in a series of proposals and counter-proposals. Tamil
demands focused on the issues of the devolution of central
legislative, administrative, and judicial authority. Progress in
the talks soon proved illusory, however, because the moderate
TULF had little credibility among the militants, especially the
powerful Tamil Tigers, who were steadfast in their opposition to
any settlement with the government short of the establishment of
a Tamil Eelam.
Jayewardene notified India and the TULF in 1986 that he would
significantly devolve state powers, a concession he was
previously unwilling to make. Jayewardene's proposed plan offered
all nine provinces substantial autonomy, with many of the central
government powers pertaining to law and order, representation,
and land settlement transferred to provincial councils. The
proposed devolution of central powers at that time fell short of
meeting Tamil demands for a merger of the Northern and Eastern
provinces into a single Tamil-speaking unit. Predictably, the
Jayewardene Plan was attacked by Bandaranaike, who also refused
to participate in the 1986 All Party Conference through which
Jayewardene had hoped to achieve a national consensus.
By early summer 1987 Jayewardene, sensing that Tamil Tiger
guerrilla activities against the government were an
insurmountable impediment to his efforts at a negotiated peace
settlement, launched a military campaign to dislodge them from
their stronghold in the north. The Sri Lankan military succeeded
in wresting a good proportion of the Jaffna Peninsula from the
Tamil Tigers, who then withdrew to the city of Jaffna relying on
the consummate guerrilla tactic of using a sympathetic citizenry
to insulate them from pursuing troops. When the troops continued
to advance and threatened to enter the Tamil stronghold, India,
pressured by its Tamil politicians, warned that it would
militarily intervene to prevent them from doing so.
New Delhi accused Colombo of employing starvation tactics
against the people of Jaffna in its anti-Tiger military
operations and demanded to be allowed to send humanitarian
relief. Insulted, Sri Lanka refused the demand. In response,
India sent a small flotilla of fishing vessels, carrying supplies
of food and medicine. Sri Lanka's tiny but tenacious navy turned
it away, however, changing India's gesture into a public
relations fiasco. Perhaps because of wounded pride, India sent
cargo planes escorted by fighters into Sri Lanka's airspace
dropping a few symbolic supplies over Jaffna. Sri Lanka,
vociferously protesting that its territorial sovereignty had been
violated, labeled India a regional bully. While Tamil separatists
applauded India's move, most others in Sri Lanka were incensed.
Relations between the two countries plummeted.
Good relations with India had been of great importance to Sri
Lanka since independence, but the ethnic crisis between the
Sinhalese and the Tamils, which culminated in the mid-1980s,
poisoned relations between the two states. India had been
particularly strident in its accusations of alleged atrocities by
the Sri Lankan security forces against the Sri Lankan Tamils and
once went so far as to declare that the Sri Lankan government's
"genocide" was responsible for the flight of thousands of
refugees to India. Sri Lanka accused India of encouraging Tamil
separatism and providing Tamil guerrillas sanctuary and training
facilities in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu since the
early 1980s. Jayewardene specifically leveled his public outrage
at Tamil Nadu, calling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
guerrillas a private army of the late M.G. Ramachandran, then the
Tamil Nadu chief minister. Ranasinghe Premadasa, as Jayewardene's
prime minister, did not distinguish Tamil Nadu's role from that
of India, calling that country's alleged support of Sri Lanka's
Tamil separatism the "terrorist equation."
Overcoming much bitterness, both Gandhi and Jayewardene
eventually agreed that a confrontational approach would never
address the complicated security and bilateral issues linking the
two nations. On July 29, 1987, within two months of the airdrop
incident, an agreement, henceforth referred to as the Indo-Sri
Lankan Accord, was signed between the Indian and Sri Lankan
leaders with the purpose of establishing peace and normalcy in
Sri Lanka. The accord was timely and politically advantageous to
both leaders. Jayewardene in Colombo was increasingly perceived
as isolated from the events in the north, and his instrument of
influence there, the Sri Lankan military, was depicted by the
international media as an ill-trained and poorly disciplined
force. He agreed to a plan of devolution that would give Sri
Lankan Tamils more autonomy over a newly created Northeastern
Province but would at the same time safeguard Sri Lanka's unitary
status. Gandhi's government, reeling from an arms scandal, was
able to trumpet a foreign relations victory as regional
peacekeeper. Gandhi's strategy was to exercise India's military
clout to weaken the separatist insurgency in Sri Lanka by
collecting weapons from the same Tamil militant groups that it
was accused of having previously trained and equipped.
Furthermore, it was agreed that India would expel all Sri Lankan
Tamil citizens resident in India who were found to be engaging in
terrorist activities or advocating separatism in Sri Lanka. To
enforce this new state of cooperation between the two nations,
the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard would assist the Sri
Lankan Navy in intercepting arms from Tamil militants based in
India.
The Indo-Sri Lankan Accord had another, lesser known aspect,
the importance of which Indian officials acknowledged afterwards,
which bears on India's geopolitical perception of itself as a
regional superpower. India, wary of competing influence in the
Indian Ocean region, insisted that the accord be accompanied by
documents which assured New Delhi veto power over what foreign
nation could use the harbor facilities at Trincomalee in the
northeast. Sri Lanka also was asked to cancel an earlier
agreement with the United States that gave the Voice of America
rights to expand its transmission installations on the island.
New Delhi was able to obtain the agreement of the TULF, as
well as some of the lesser Tamil political groups, and for a
brief time the acquiescence of the powerful LTTE, for a cease-
fire. Within forty-eight hours of the signing of the agreement in
Colombo, the cease-fire went into effect and the first troops of
the IPKF arrived in northern Sri Lanka. Yet implementation of the
accord proved problematic. Rioting Sinhalese mobs, inspired by
anti-accord rhetoric voiced by Bandaranaike, disrupted the
capital. At the farewell ceremony for Gandhi, following the
signing of the accord, in a circumstance that proved more
embarrassing than dangerous, a Sri Lankan honor guard clubbed the
Indian leader with his rifle butt. Against this backdrop, it is
not surprising that the accord held for less than three months.
By early September, violence was breaking out in Eastern
Province where Sinhalese and Muslims were protesting the
provisional merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces effected
for the purpose of electing a single provincial council. The
Sinhalese and Muslims felt that because the Northern Province was
overwhelmingly Tamil, a merger of the two provinces would result
in their minority status. Bandaranaike's SLFP skillfully
capitalized on this atmosphere of panic, allying itself with
influential Buddhist monks, who together mounted a well
publicized campaign against the government's "betrayal" of the
non-Tamil population of the Eastern Province.
In October 1987, the accord was repudiated outright by the
LTTE following a bizarre episode in which seventeen Tamil Tigers
were arrested for trying to smuggle in a cache of weapons from
India. While in transit to Colombo, fifteen of the seventeen
Tamil Tigers committed suicide by swallowing cyanide capsules.
The LTTE, claiming that the prisoners had been forced to take
such a desperate action while in custody, immediately made a
number of retaliatory attacks on Sinhalese settlements in the
east. The IPKF, ill suited to counter-guerrilla warfare, was
accused by many Sinhalese of allowing the attacks to take place.
Jayewardene angrily declared that if the Indians could not
protect the citizenry, he would order the IPKF to withdraw from
the province and put his own soldiers on the job. India denounced
the Tamil Tigers for attempting to wreck the accord and declared
its determination to maintain law and order. The IPKF then began
what was the first of its many operations against the Tamil
Tigers. The Jaffna operation was costly, taking the lives of over
200 Indian soldiers and bringing home to India the realization
that it had underestimated the strength and persistence of the
Tamil Tigers. Taking advantage of the distractions in the north,
Sinhalese extremists of the JVP gained strength in the south,
successfully carrying out several arms raids on military camps.
The most spectacular attack the JVP attempted occurred in August
1987 during a government parliamentary group meeting, when a hand
grenade exploded near the table where President Jayewardene and
Prime Minister Premadasa were sitting.
In 1988 Jayewardene continued working toward the
controversial merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, where
the Tamil separatists had long been active. The merger, initially
a temporary measure, was a central part of the 1987 Indo-Sri
Lankan Accord under which India sought to ensure that an elected
provincial council in the Tamil majority areas enjoyed
substantial power to administer Tamil affairs. Although the LTTE
boycotted the provincial election and tried to disrupt it, as did
the JVP, there was a surprisingly high voter turnout. Still, few
Sinhalese voted, and without LTTE participation, the credibility
of the provincial council was limited. Furthermore, many viewed
the resulting provincial government, dominated by the Tigers's
main rival group, the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation
Front, as a creation of India.
As 1988 drew to a close, Jayewardene announced he would
retire and not run in the presidential election scheduled for
December. Premadasa, the UNP's candidate, ran against two others,
the SLFP's Bandaranaike and a relative political unknown. As the
presidential election approached, JVP subversives concentrated on
crippling essential services such as buses and trains, fuel
supplies, and banking. The UNP's presidential candidate,
Premadasa, stated that this was a battle between the ballot and
the bullet and that the bullet must not win. The election proved
to be the bloodiest in Sri Lanka's history, but the ballot did in
fact prevail, with voters defying threats from Tamil as well as
Sinhalese extremists. Despite predictions that the voter turnout
would not exceed 30 percent in contrast to the 80 percent turnout
in the past presidential election, well over 50 percent of the
nations's 9.4 million eligible voters showed up at the polls.
Premadasa won by a large margin over his closest rival, Sirimavo
Bandaranaike.
One of Premadasa's first problems when he took over on
January 2, 1989, was what to do about the JVP, which was believed
responsible for numerous assassinations the year before. In his
victory speech, Premadasa appealed to the JVP to enter into talks
with him. The Sinhalese extremists initially were willing to
distinguish between him and the outgoing president, Jayewardene,
whom they had earlier tried to assassinate. The JVP, which
unleashed a steady barrage of anti-Indian propaganda against
"Indian expansionism, invading Indian armies," was impressed by
Premadasa's anti-Indian rhetoric and even went so far as to
praise him as a patriotic leader. Encouraged, Premadasa used the
occasion of Sri Lanka's Independence Day celebrations to make an
impassioned appeal for an end to the killings on the island and
proceeded a little more than a week later to hold the nation's
first parliamentary elections in eleven years. The nation had
endured another challenge to its democratic institutions despite
the killing of substantial numbers of candidates of various
parties and their supporters by the LTTE and JVP.
In May 1989 LTTE guerrillas decided to negotiate with the new
government of Premadasa, holding the first direct peace talks
between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger separatist
fighters since July 1985. The unexpected decision underscored the
fundamental changes that had been taking place among Sri Lanka's
Tamil political groups. Political differences among the groups
had widened, with some former separatist groups now represented
in the Northeastern Provincial Council and in the national
Parliament. The LTTE, the remaining guerrilla army in the field,
had been isolated and weakened by prolonged combat with Indian
troops. Premadasa, stating that he wanted to settle the Tamil
problem among Sri Lankans, circumvented Indian participation in
the talks. On June 1, Premadasa abruptly called for the
withdrawal by the end of July of 45,000 Indian soldiers still in
Sri Lanka. Gandhi, for his part, was determined not to lose face
by having his forces hurried out of Sri Lanka too quickly in an
election year. Yet, India's participation in the struggle had
been costly in human, military, and diplomatic terms. The Indian
troops were viewed suspiciously by most Sri Lankans, and India's
police action had made its neighbors in South Asia uneasy. The
Indians, with more than 1,200 casualties, accepted that it was
time to go--but at their own pace.
There were critics who believed that Premadasa, who in June
1989 was forced to reimpose a state of national emergency after
having lifted it for the previous six months, was making
unrealistic demands on India to withdraw quickly; they also
believed that he was unwisely pandering to prevalent anti-Indian
emotions in order to recover from an early period of
unpopularity. Although the argument was made that the longer the
IPKF stayed in Sri Lanka, the stronger the support would be for
the JVP, it was questionable whether the Sri Lankan military,
which admittedly had grown dramatically since 1983, could have
successfully controlled the ferocity of both the Tamil Tigers and
the JVP without Indian help. Yet, as one Sri Lankan politician
admitted, the president was in the unenviable position of having
the "IPKF holding his legs and the JVP at his throat."
The Tamil Tigers, despite their truce with the government,
remained a ruthless and effective military force. It was not
known in 1990 how long their gesture of conciliation would last.
The JVP had lost its charismatic leader, Rohana Wijewera, in
November 1989, when he was captured and subsequently killed by
government security forces, and it had been brutally suppressed
by the government in late 1989 and early 1990. The group,
however, still was active and might ultimately pose the most
dangerous long-term threat to Sri Lanka's national security.
Premadasa placed much faith in his poverty alleviation plan--
his remedy for much of the unrest plaguing the island. But the
plan as originally unveiled alarmed both foreign lenders and many
Sri Lankan technocrats and would have greatly burdened the
already huge government budget. After a period of mounting
defense expenditures, systematic destruction of the economic
infrastructure by subversives, a worldwide decline in demand for
Sri Lanka's traditional raw products, and the partial eclipse of
its once robust tourist industry, Premadasa's plan, while well
intentioned, was perceived as economically unfeasible.
As Sri Lanka entered the 1990s, there were no clear answers
as to whether its democratic institutions could survive another
onslaught of anarchy, terror, and violence. As India withdrew its
last troops from the island amid charges that it had failed to
perform its primary task of disarming Tamil separatists, it, too,
accused Sri Lanka of not having fully implemented the 1987 Indo-
Sri Lankan Accord--charging that there had not been an adequate
devolution of central power. Yet Premadasa has declared that "Sri
Lanka's problems must be settled among Sri Lankans."
Certainly Sri Lanka's problems were increasingly complex and
difficult to comprehend. Perhaps the culture of the island with
its countervailing forces and fractured institutions can be
glimpsed in the somber evocation of struggle captured in lines
from "Elephant," a poem about Sri Lanka by D.H. Lawrence.
In elephants and the east are two devils, in all men maybe The
mystery of the dark mountain of blood, reeking in homage, in
lust, in rage,
And passive with everlasting patience....
May 1, 1990
Peter R. Blood
Data as of October 1988
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