Sri Lanka: Warriors Or Peacemakers?

Are Sri Lanka’s main belligerents at war or at peace?
The question has become more important after Sri Lanka’s ruling party and the opposition agreed to work together towards a political settlement to the island’s bloody ethnic fighting which has claimed more than 60,000 lives.
Welcome as the development is, it only covers one of the country’s two major protagonists.
The Tamil Tigers’ suicide bombings on navy targets earlier this month, which killed nearly 100 sailors, made it difficult to believe that they were preparing to meet with government representatives in Geneva later in the month.
The ferocity of the Sri Lankan air force’s bombing campaign in the east raised similar doubts about the definition of peacemaking the Colombo government has adopted.
The peace process launched four years ago, after 28 years of civil war that claimed over 60,000 people, seemed promising. The 2002 ceasefire – the pivot of the peace process – lies in tatters. More than 1,000 people have died since violence surged in April. Some 220,000 have been displaced, mostly Tamils and Muslims in the north and east of the country, where the Tamil Tigers are fighting for an independent homeland.
It is easy to blame President Mahinda Rajapakse for the dissipation of conciliation. After all, he won power last year after taking a hard line against the conciliatory former premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man with whom he sealed that unity accord this week.
Rajapakse, to be sure, exploited Sinhalese fears that Wickremesinghe concessions to the rebels risked splitting the country. Yet Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran seemed fed up with the peace process long before Rajapakse arrived on the scene.
The Tamil Tigers launched violent attacks while Wickremesinghe was in office. By preventing pro-Wickremesinghe Tamils from casting their ballots in last year’s election, Prabhakaran virtually ensured Rajapakse’s triumph.
Despite the latest peace moves, Colombo is said to be planning to double defense spending to $1.3 billion next year. The rebels, for their part, have been warning in every way they can that conciliation cannot mean capitulation.
The best hope for peace is that neither side wants to be the first to announce a return to a full-scale war.