http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=104203
Cause for concern Nimmi Gowrinathan and Tom Plate discuss the escalating conflict in Sri Lanka and possible ways to avert greater disaster Monday, February 2, 2009 By Nimmi Gowrinathan and Tom Plate New York --- Theoretically speaking, there are a number of conceivable ways to look at the unfolding horror in Sri Lanka, once known as Ceylon. None of them offer a pretty picture; all of them have obvious historical antecedents. And that may be the problem. In some important sense, this relatively small island nation off of southern India may be unique. One parallel that comes to mind is that of Darfur, of course. This is the picture least favorable to the government in Colombo and most urgently sympathetic to the minority Tamils in the north. The fierce internal fighting of the last several months has left the government, representing the majority Sinhalese ethnicity, in increasing control of territory, but at a rampant cost to the targets of their rampage for unity: the Tamils. More and more, the many displaced women and children -- and isolated packs of men -- look a lot like the long-suffering minorities in Sudan. The extreme term for what has been happening to them would be genocide. But this is a word that cannot be used lightly. A second analogy comes to mind as well, however. This is the picture that is most favorable to the majority Sinhalese and least sympathetic to the Tamil rebels -- the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The latter is clearly a terrorist organization, by any definition. The government claims that until the Tigers are tamed there will be no peace and unity in Sri Lanka. Posturing like a South Asian Abraham Lincoln, the Colombo government portrays the bloody struggle as nothing more than a civil war against a breakaway element standing in the way of justifiable national unity. Neither of these historical analogies is satisfactory, however. The Colombo government has been anything but Lincoln. The American Abe, of course, sought to free U.S. minority blacks from the bonds of slavery. In its regards for the Tamils, the LTTE, not wholly unlike Hamas in the Gaza, routinely employ terrorist tactics that make it a very difficult outfit to love. And not unlike Israel, the government's hard-line military campaign may have actually inspired hundreds of willing recruits to march off in the other direction. Internationally, the ongoing mess has drawn fire from world rights and aid groups who rightly call attention to the growing humanitarian horror. Declaiming a plague on both sides -- government and rebels -- they call for a third way: to prioritize the urgent human, medical and psychological needs of the quarter of a million homeless Tamils in the north and northeast. While the government maintains it has a "zero-civilian" harm policy, in recent weeks, aid workers in the region risk their own lives to report hundreds of civilian casualties, many of whom are young children. Their tragic plight has drawn the sympathy of the Tamil Diaspora throughout the world, especially in the nearby area of southern India known as Tamil Nadu. There, perhaps 60 million Tamils are watching the massacre of their fellow human beings -- and in many cases, direct relatives -- with mounting anger. Their growing agitation has attracted the attention of the Indian government in New Delhi. In the coming national Indian election -- perhaps as soon as April -- the governing Congress Party will need to garner every vote possible if it is to stay in power. Economic woes as well as the Mumbai massacre have played into the hands of the opposition all-Hindu party to make the government look inept. While it must remain mindful of its own promise to eradicate terrorism, a further massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka may only enhance the Congress government's reputation for slowness to react to crisis. Because of historic animosities between the giant nation and the tiny island nation, and an ill-fated Indian operation in Sri Lanka in 1987-1990, any new Indian intervention would be best sheathed in international casing. And the humanitarian perspective would seem to be the most popular cause around which to rally international efforts. Though they have been frustrated in earlier attempts, a United Nations or Scandinavian-led coalition of the caring and the concerned may be able to prioritize humanitarian relief -- food, shelter, health care -- and establish actual "safe zones" while a ceasefire is implemented under international supervision. One thing is certain: Sri Lanka stands now on the precipice of a humanitarian tragedy of monumental proportions, with an international intervention trigger not far from being set off across the sea in India. As the conversation preemptively turns to post-conflict reconstruction, the lives of a quarter million displaced Tamils hang in the balance. The time to intervene in this almost unique situation -- neither Darfur nor the U.S. civil war exactly --is now, not later. Nimmi Gowrinathan, Director of South Asia Programs at Operation USA, is a doctoral candidate in political science at UCLA. Tom Plate is a syndicated Asia columnist and author. The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute. Date Posted: 2/3/2009
