In Sri Lanka, ‘Everyone Is Sick of War, and Nobody Wants to Give In’

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — In Asia’s bloodiest and longest-running war, the fighting doesn’t halt for the casting of ballots.

A spectacular suicide bomb attack here at a weekend campaign rally in advance of Tuesday’s presidential election failed to kill the country’s leader but underlined a larger point: After 16 years and 61,000 deaths, the country’s savage ethnic war hasn’t even begun to exhaust itself.

“They all want their pound of flesh,” said Kingsley Swampillai, a Roman Catholic bishop in the eastern city of Batticaloa. “Everyone is sick of war, and nobody wants to give in.”

The extended conflict between minority Tamils and the Sinhalese-dominated government mocks the best intentions of the politicians here who promise to heal a country already torn in two. In the north of this island off India’s southern tip, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are overrunning government forces. In the east, LTTE cadres have seized huge swaths of jungle and set up a virtual state.

In Colombo, the capital, Saturday’s suicide attack shattered the calm of a city normally insulated from the tragedies of war. The rich and the middle class in this languid seaside town lead mostly normal lives, while village boys hungry for jobs do most of the fighting. The censored media report only good news, and an economy built on tourism and textiles hums along at a happy pace. Most of the politicians who preached moderation are dead, leaving behind a fractured society more than willing to keep the war alive.

“We live in a very schizophrenic society,” said Sunila Abeysekera, a human rights advocate in Colombo. “We have all the elements of civilization--BMWs, KFC--but we have a history of violence, killing and torture.”

On Sunday, soldiers swept the capital in search of accomplices and more suicide bombers. President Chandrika Kumaratunga was said to be recovering, although she was reported to have been blinded in her right eye. Officials said Tuesday’s presidential election will go forward as planned, even as news of fresh military defeats trickled in from the front.

“I shall be up and about soon,” the president said in a recorded message.

Assassination Effort Seen as Work of Rebels

The assassination attempt occurred late Saturday when a woman leaped over a barricade and tried to embrace the president. When Kumaratunga’s bodyguards dragged the woman off, she detonated a bomb that was wrapped around her body. The explosion killed 22 people and wounded 110. At almost the same time, a grenade attack at an opposition rally north of the capital killed 11 people and injured 40.

Although no one claimed responsibility for the attacks, the assassination attempt seemed clearly the work of the LTTE, known here as the Tigers. Suspected LTTE suicide bombers killed Sri Lanka’s president in 1993 and a presidential candidate a year later, and in 1991 Tigers blew up Indian Prime Minster Rajiv Gandhi. On Sunday, some Sri Lankans remarked that Kumaratunga might be the first target of an LTTE suicide bomber to have survived.

Indeed, the failed assassination attempt might have the unintended effect of strengthening Kumaratunga’s candidacy. Until the weekend, the race between her and her main challenger, Ranil Wickremesinghe, appeared very tight. Kumaratunga, scion of a political dynasty, was elected five years ago on the promise of ending the war, but she saw her popularity slip as the military campaign against the Tigers foundered. Wickremesinghe had gained ground by offering to negotiate with the rebels. Now, many Sri Lankans believe that Kumaratunga will ride to victory on a wave of sympathy.

“The bombing will clearly affect the outcome of the election,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, a leading Tamil intellectual in Colombo.

The fighting in Sri Lanka began in 1983, when militant Tamils--members of a mostly Hindu minority who chafed under the persecution of the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese--took up arms against the government. The LTTE rebels and their 45-year-old reclusive leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, are fighting for independence. The government, which dominates the south, refuses to grant it. Numerous attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement have collapsed.

The Tigers occupy a stretch of Tamil-dominated land that runs north to south along the eastern coast. Estimated to number about 5,000, the rebel force ties up an army 30 times its size. A Tiger offensive last month rolled back two years’ worth of government gains and now threatens Jaffna, the country’s second-largest city.

It is a sordid war: Prisoners are killed, suspects are tortured, civilians are murdered, and children die in combat. The Tigers have emerged as one of the world’s most relentless guerrilla armies, whose male and female fighters often swallow cyanide pills to escape capture. In September, in retaliation for a government air raid that killed 22 Tamil civilians, a mostly female force of Tigers entered the village of Gunagula and hacked to death 48 civilians, including nine children and two pregnant women.

“This war is never going to end,” said Sherine Xavier, a lawyer who works with victims of torture in Colombo. “People are just too numb.”

Inside the majority Tamil areas, the Tigers seem well on their way toward building their own state. Rebel officials collect taxes and recruit soldiers--even in some areas nominally under government control. In Batticaloa, a mostly Tamil city on the eastern coast, the Sri Lankan army concedes that it rules the town but little of the surrounding countryside. In some nearby villages, the government and guerrillas all but bump into one another.

“We live under two governments--and two gunpoints,” said V. Nallaiah, a retired factory worker in Puthukkudiyuruppu, a village about 20 miles north of Batticaloa. “There is a daytime government and a nighttime government.”

The Tamils of Puthukkudiyuruppu say they are suffering from the government’s efforts to keep them away from the Tigers. Two weeks ago, villagers say, government troops entered Puthukkudiyuruppu with a masked informant who fingered 13 suspected Tiger sympathizers. The suspects were taken away.

“The nighttime people have a lot of support here,” said V. Selvarajah, the manager of a guest house in the village.

The Tigers appear so sure of their support that even before they apparently tried to kill Kumaratunga, they were trying to sway the election in favor of her opponent. Local politicians say the Tigers have allowed them to campaign for Wickremesinghe in areas under guerrilla control but have warned Kumaratunga to stay away. Analysts believe that Tiger leader Prabhakaran so despises Kumaratunga--who orchestrated a 1995 invasion of Jaffna, the Tamil cultural capital--that he would try almost anything to defeat her, including assassination.

For its part, Kumaratunga’s government says it wants the Tamil people to participate in the election. It is ringing the Tiger-controlled areas with polling booths in the hope of drawing Tamils out. The situation is like that all along the eastern coast: Tiger power overlapping with government control.

“If I want to develop my district, I need the support of the LTTE,” said M. L. A. M. Hizbullah, a member of Parliament from Batticaloa and a Kumaratunga supporter. “If I want to build a school, the LTTE has the bricks.”

Despite such Tiger successes, there is little evidence that Sri Lankans are turning against the war. Last month, after LTTE guerrillas captured dozens of villages and killed hundreds of government soldiers, army generals merely shrugged off the disaster.

“When you are fighting a guerrilla war, you can’t expect success all the time,” said Maj. Gen. Lionel Balagalle, the army chief of staff.

Even after the attempt on Kumaratunga’s life, Colombo and Sri Lanka’s other urban areas seem strangely cut off from the fighting. One reason is the overall economy, which last year grew 5%. At night, Colombo residents fill the fancy hotels to celebrate weddings and holidays. By day, shoppers fill the streets. “Wake up with Madonna,” says a billboard for a local radio station that has an image of a semi-clad blond woman sprawled from end to end. Kumaratunga’s election slogan: “Don’t worry. You’re looking good.”

‘The Poor People Fight the War’

At a recent party in the capital’s exclusive Cinnamon Gardens section, the men said they don’t fret much about the war in the north. Military service, they pointed out, is voluntary.

“The poor people fight the war,” said Dev Perera, an airline technician. “They need the jobs.”

About 30 miles away, the village of Humbutiyawa has given 14 soldiers to the war. Ten are at the front; four lie in the town’s graveyard. One of the dead is Priyantha Gamini, killed in 1992 at the age of 21. His mother, J. A. Shanthi, receives about $60 a month as a pension from the government--and it is the only income she has. She said her son joined the army because there was nothing else to do.

“He thought that if something happened to him, the government would take care of his family,” she said.

Saravanamuttu, the Tamil intellectual, decries what he says is a lack of debate on the direction of the war. He blames government censorship of newspapers and TV.

“The reason why most people in Colombo are cut off from this war,” he said, “is because they have no idea how it is being fought.”

Abeysekera, the human rights worker, says she believes that Sri Lanka’s problems run much deeper than any election--or this or that political killing. Many Sri Lankans, herself included, have seen dozens of friends and family members killed in the war. Many think not of healing but of revenge.

“When you lose a child in war, there are two ways to go,” Abeysekera said. “One is to say: ‘I’ve had enough. I want peace.’

“The other way,” she said, “is to give one more son to the battle.”

Special correspondent Waruna Karunatilake in Colombo contributed to this report.