SRI LANKA: Army faces serious defeat
In the wake of a string of dramatic military victories by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government has appealed for foreign military assistance.
Some 35,000 Sri Lankan troops have been trapped on the Jaffna peninsula since the critical Elephant Pass military base fell to the LTTE troops on April 24. As of May 5, the LTTE was reported by BBC radio to be within 20 kilometres of the northern provincial capital, Jaffna.
The government has called up its reserve armed forces and announced that it will divert funds from "non-essential development work" to the armed forces. Sri Lanka is also chasing major new arms deals with Britain, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, China and Israel. Relations are being hastily patched up with Israel, which once trained the Sri Lankan special forces.
Emergency national security laws have been invoked to complement draconian powers under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. According to the government-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, the new emergency powers enable the government to seize property and vehicles and stop the sale and distribution of newspapers in the interests of "national security".
The increasingly Sinhala-chauvinist Buddhist clergy in the south has called on the Indian government to send its armed forces to rescue the Sri Lankan army. So far, the Indian government has ruled out military intervention, though it is giving "urgent consideration" to unspecified requests from the Sri Lankan government.
The Sri Lankan army's likely defeat has been coming for some time. I was told by several political commentators during a visit to Sri Lanka in April that support for the war has dwindled in the majority Sinhalese population in the south. The economy has declined by as much as 45% due to the war, according to Sri Lanka's Central Bank.
The look on the faces of the young soldiers I saw crouched behind sand bags at all the major intersections in Colombo, the capital, betrayed an army that is losing its will to fight.
On March 15, in the centre of Colombo, eight members of an LTTE "suicide squad" held off a battalion of Sri Lankan troops for 13 hours. The firefight was furious and ended only after the LTTE squad committed suicide when they ran out of ammunition.
The question in everybody's mind, a resident of the neighbourhood (who has to remain anonymous because of draconian emergency laws) told me was: "If this was what eight Tigers can do, what would happen if 500 came to Colombo?". The young soldiers on the road were very likely pondering the same question.
The LTTE suicide squads are often women. Sri Lankan soldiers are so jumpy that they forced a woman to strip in a Colombo street recently because her clothes resembled those of a previous LTTE suicide bomber. She turned out to be explosive-free and Sinhalese.
A military defeat would threaten the embattled and fractious People's Alliance government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga. Kumaratunga came to government in 1994 promising to end the war through negotiation, but since 1995 the war has cost some 55,000 lives and the equivalent of one and a half years' gross domestic product. Several parties from the reformist left, including the Communist Party and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party are part of the government alliance. On April 28, Kumaratunga pledged to "relentlessly pursue" military operations.
In previous government crises, the reaction of the People's Liberation Front (JVP), a radical party with a strong base mainly among Sinhalese youth, has been decisive in the south. Thirteen years ago it launched its second unsuccessful insurrection but it had Sinhala-chauvinist theme. The JVP attacked any group in the south which supported Tamil self-determination as "traitors to the Sri Lankan nation".
However, in recent years the JVP has begun to defend Tamils in the south against repression by government and Sinhala chauvinists. In the last provincial and presidential elections, the JVP entered a united electoral front with the Nava Nama Samaja Party and other socialist groups.
On April 25, the JVP, NSSP and other progressive groups organised a 3000-strong rally in Colombo against the war and repression.
BY PETER BOYLE