Amid harsh rhetoric, Sri Lankans fearful

A small but encompassing word explains why Nagamuthu Nagalingam fled his home of 80 years, and why he has little intention of going back: “Fear,” he says flatly.

Fear of brutal intimidation by Tamil Tiger rebels. Fear that his youngest son may wind up being “disappeared,” by people and for reasons unknown. Fear that government troops, having just driven the Tigers out of eastern Sri Lanka, are gearing up for a major assault on the rebels’ stronghold in the north, where Nagalingam lived the simple life of a farmer until a few months ago.

“Whether they capture the north or not, we are the ones suffering,” Nagalingam said on a muggy afternoon, sitting in the weed-choked courtyard of a dilapidated guesthouse here in the capital. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Few Sri Lankans do -- except, perhaps, for President Mahinda Rajapakse and his circle of close advisors. So far, none of them is saying exactly how the next chapter will unfold in the dirty ethnic civil war that has convulsed this teardrop-shaped island for 24 years.

But based on the last 21 months, during which a cease-fire was blown to bits and 5,000 people have been killed, suing for peace hardly seems to figure on any list of options under consideration by either the Sinhalese-dominated government or the Tamil rebels, known formally as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, who seek to carve out an independent homeland in north and east Sri Lanka.

The Rajapakse administration appears particularly loath to negotiate now that it is gripped by euphoria over its recent gains in eastern Sri Lanka, which allowed it to proclaim the area free of enemy fighters after months of battle. The president speaks confidently of having the rebels on the run, and has vowed to restore “freedom and democracy to . . . all of Sri Lanka.”

Such hawkish rhetoric is by no means a first in this country. The history of the last quarter-century here is littered with leaders who believed that they would be the ones to rout the fearsome Tigers and unify the nation. None has succeeded.

So Sri Lankans are bracing for a long, lethal summer. Life over the last year and a half has steadily become more miserable, especially for residents of government-controlled Jaffna on the island’s northern tip, who are squeezed by food shortages and frightened by artillery fire.

To many in the north, the beating heart of the homeland that the Tamil separatists wish to establish, a battle in their backyard seems a matter of when, not whether.

“I think there will be a northern offensive. The government does not believe that a negotiated settlement with the LTTE is possible,” said Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka. “Also, the government’s parliamentary majority depends on nationalist parties who advocate a military solution. But the offensive may not be soon. It may be a gradual one.”

The government knows that taking the north is an entirely different proposition from recapturing the east.

Eastern Sri Lanka has traditionally been more diverse, with a population composed of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, and of both Tamils and Sinhalese, the island’s dominant ethnic group. The Tigers’ hold in the region has always been weaker.

In the mostly Tamil north, however, the rebels are so entrenched in the steamy jungles that they run a mini-state. Their discipline, zealotry and ruthlessness are legendary, to the point that many fighters wear cyanide capsules around their necks in case of capture. The group was among the world’s first to use suicide bombers, and though it claims to have given up the practice, the rebels’ recruitment of children continues.

Storming the Tigers’ northern redoubt would be a long, bloody and expensive undertaking.

“In the north, the LTTE would be pushed against the wall,” said Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. “They’ll have to fight back. They have no place to run.”

As commander of the Sri Lankan army, Fonseka has his hands full. He is trying to mop up and maintain a grip on the newly “liberated” east, prepare for another potential phase of conflict and recruit thousands more soldiers. Ideally, he said, he would add 20,000 men and women to his ranks, bringing army forces up to 140,000.

Defense already accounts for nearly 1 out of 5 rupees the Sri Lankan government spends -- a huge chunk of the national budget, especially for a country as poor as this one.

“The government seems to think, ‘Forget about the expenditure -- let’s let the writ of government authority prevail in the north and east,’ ” said former air force chief Harry Goonetileke. “But there will have to be more belt-tightening. If you push to the north, that will mean more belt-tightening for the people of Sri Lanka.”

At the beginning of the year, residents staggered under inflation of 20%. The rate has since come down, but still hovers in the double digits.

According to projections by the Asian Development Bank, Sri Lanka’s expected economic growth in 2007 of about 6% will be the lowest of all South Asian nations except Nepal.

Fonseka waves such concerns aside.

“Ending up with a bankrupt country is better than ending up with half a country,” he declared in an interview at army headquarters here. “If you want to beat the enemy and save the country, you have to make a few sacrifices.”

Fonseka said he would maintain 20,000 soldiers in the east to keep the peace, but others estimate it could take twice that many to do an effective job.

Last month, the government announced an ambitious plan to rebuild and develop the east, and to hold local elections there by year’s end, a pledge greeted with wholesale skepticism by analysts and other observers.

Many displaced people have returned to their homes, but there are reports that in some cases, officials cut services to refugee camps, leaving people with little choice. Independent monitors have been blocked by the military or allowed only limited access to the area.

And there continue to be allegations of collusion between government troops and a breakaway rebel leader known as Col. Karuna. His followers, allegedly with the tacit or even direct support of the army, are suspected of kidnappings, harassment and other crimes in the east.

For their part, the rebels say they will switch to guerrilla tactics and go after soft targets to disrupt the economy.

Although the Tigers acknowledge setbacks in the east, few observers discount their continued capabilities. At least twice this year, the group shocked government forces by mounting assaults from the air, using light planes that they had apparently smuggled into the country in pieces and assembled in the jungle. One of those sorties, at the end of April, managed to penetrate all the way down to Colombo, where two fuel-storage facilities were bombed, sustaining minor damage.

Pressure from the international community, including the United States, on both sides to go back to the table to hammer out a political solution has produced nothing.

For this reason, all eyes are turned to the north, wondering when the storm brewing there will break.

Some say it already has. Skirmishes and shelling are frequent. In mid-July, days after the government declared victory in the east, the army attempted to pierce deeper into the jungle in the north, a foray that resulted in heavy casualties for the Sri Lankan military, and possibly for the Tigers as well. A few days later, rebels launched a deadly predawn raid on a military post in the Mannar district.

Some of the uglier aspects of this war have also reared their heads, including a wave of unexplained abductions in and around Jaffna.

That is why 21-year-old Pratheep Arulanathan, a Jaffna native who works as an insurance company claims adjuster, is trying to emigrate to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

He fled from the north down to Colombo several months ago, applied for a visa, got it and was on the verge of leaving when the Sinhalese-dominated government, to widespread outrage, ordered the expulsion in June of hundreds of ethnic-Tamil citizens from the capital, purportedly as a security measure.

The courts overturned the expulsion order -- but not before Arulanathan had been detained and sent partway back to his hometown, causing him to miss his flight to Dubai.

He has applied for another visa. He does not know whether he will succeed again. But of one thing he is certain.

“I can’t go back to Jaffna,” he said.

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henry.chu@latimes.com