‘Shadow War’ Fractures Post-Tsunami Promise

In the narrow streets of this ancient town, soldiers in battle gear patrol in nervous groups. Politicians stay hidden in offices ringed by sandbags and barbed wire. Nearly every day, another unsolved killing goes into the police reports, and another body goes into the morgue.

A “shadow war,” they call it, an echo of the civil war that ripped at Sri Lanka for two decades, until a shaky cease-fire was signed in 2002.

But to Batticaloa, which survived the fighting only to be hammered by the December tsunami, things are looking frighteningly familiar.

“I don’t even go into town anymore,” said Sithravel Gunaseelam, 29, a fisherman still living in a temporary thatch hut nine months after the waves left 30,000 people dead and 800,000 homeless. “It’s just too dangerous.”

The tsunami was to have changed all that.

It was a moment of horror that briefly brought this shattered island together, with Sinhalese from the south racing aid to Tamil victims in the north and east, and Tamil Tiger rebels offering help to anyone in need. The stumbling peace process was energized by devastation that saw no ethnic divide.

“For a few weeks, maybe a month, we thought there could be peace -- that the destruction was just so much that things would change,” said Amara Hapuarachchi, a Batticaloa rights activist who helps civilians victimized by the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Instead of peace, this eastern town has become the focus of renewed killings, almost always unexplained.

“I think it was more hope than anything else,” Hapuarachchi said.

But she had reason for hope.

In Indonesia’s Aceh province, scene of the tsunami’s worst devastation, the deaths of more than 130,000 people pushed the government and separatist rebels toward peace. In July, they agreed to end their 30-year war. So far that peace process is on track. In Sri Lanka, though, the dream is gone -- in part because of disagreements over tsunami aid -- and the situation is bloodier than ever: Eastern Sri Lanka has become consumed by near-daily political violence, all-out war has again become a serious worry, and, in the worst single incident, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was assassinated in an August attack widely thought to be the work of the Tigers. The rebels deny any role in the killing.

But neither side can escape blame. In part, the troubles stem from the defiant attitude of the Tigers, a secretive movement that draws many of its soldiers from village children forced into its ranks.

In their formative years, the Tigers’ fight for independence in the north and east of the island had broad support among the Tamils, who make up about 20% of the population and had long faced widespread discrimination from the majority Sinhalese. The war, which began in 1983 and killed more than 65,000 people, sapped much of that backing. But by then the guerrilla army had become a well armed machine.

Unlike the Aceh rebels, the Tigers have much to lose. With the cease-fire, their control of large parts of rural Sri Lanka became, effectively, a Tiger state, complete with border guards and tax collectors.

They also took control of dozens of tsunami refugee camps, including in government-held areas. Critics say they wanted to solidify their power.

The Tigers, though, insist their actions are rooted in a mystical bond to the island’s 1 million Tamils.

“Like a mother to her children, we rushed to our people,” said Rasaya Elanthirain, a top political official with the rebels. “Who would call it a political act?”

But trouble also came from the Sinhalese-dominated government, which is riven by inter-party disputes and its need to placate opponents of the peace process.

Those divisions were reflected in arguments over the billions of dollars in aid after the tsunami, with the Tigers demanding a say in its distribution. When President Chandrika Kumaratunga finally agreed, some coalition supporters abandoned her.

Months later, the question of aid distribution remains tied up in court -- and the opportunity for tsunami-driven peace has passed.

“We lost the chance,” said Father Harry Miller, an American Jesuit priest who has spent six decades here and has become a prominent peace activist. “It didn’t take long at all for people to begin seeing the situation as us-versus-them again.”

It is in Batticaloa that the danger of renewed war in Sri Lanka is clearest.

Although under government control, the overwhelmingly Tamil town sits just a few miles from rebel territory. Drive a few miles away and fortified government roadblocks give way to Tiger checkpoints with uniformed teenage soldiers.

Batticaloa also suffered during a bloody rebel split in 2004, when the Tigers’ eastern branch broke away from the main movement, which is dominated by northerners. The uprising was ruthlessly suppressed, but sympathy for its leader, a rebel commander known as Karuna whose whereabouts remain unknown, remains strong. The Tigers also accuse the Sri Lankan military of backing Karuna’s faction, an accusation the military denies.

All this has put the town at the center of months of shadowy, ever-increasing violence.

The killings -- there have been about 100 since the tsunami -- claim victims from every side: Tiger offices are attacked by men lobbing hand grenades. Gunmen on motorcycles shoot army soldiers at checkpoints. Supporters of Karuna are found dead. While most killings are clearly political, it’s seldom clear who is behind them. No one claims responsibility, and few have been arrested.

Caught in the middle are the town’s civilians.

Ganeshamurthi, a retired railway guard who goes by one name, tried to ease his worries two decades ago by sending his five children overseas to school. They are now scattered across Britain, Canada and the U.S.

Today, he and his wife spend their time planning trips abroad, and hoping things will have improved by their return.

Like so many others, Ganeshamurthi wanted the tsunami to bring peace. But he’s not surprised at what happened.

“A tsunami can’t change the way people think,” he said.