Conflict headed for bloody, decisive phase- Uyangoda

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 01:16 GMT]
"With the umbilical cord between Sri Lanka’s conflict-management process and the international community, in the form of the CFA, having been severed, both parties are now relatively free to conduct the war in the way they feel suitable, with no external pressures regarding human rights or humanitarian consequences. In the coming months, the conflict will become a war without checks or balances, a war without inhibition," Prof. Uyangoda says in a dispassionate analysis that appeared in a southasian monthly, Himal, on the reasons and aftermath of the formal abrogation of CeaseFire Agreement.

Uyangoda observes that politics of CFA and related negotiations provide a good perspective on the "larger dimensions of Sri Lanka’s conflict."

On the reasons for signing of the CFA, Uyangoda says, "The CFA was originally meant to provide the ground conditions of de-escalation, as well as a framework for political engagement between the state and the LTTE. While at the time Colombo was willing to consider an advanced form of devolution as a framework for a constitutional settlement, the LTTE, which was advancing the interests of a state-seeking ethnic minority, was also exploring acceptable alternatives to secession."

But the CFA polarized the Sinhala polity dramatically into two camps, Uyangoda observes. "The People’s Alliance and its Sinhalese nationalist allies appealed to the insecurities of the Sinhala and Muslim masses, on the argument that the CFA provided undue legitimacy to the LTTE, thereby endangering their safety and security as well as the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity," writes Uyangoda.

He mentions 2005 as a year of missed opportunites, unexpected opportunites for peace created by tsunami and the PTOMs agreement.

On LTTE's decision to enforce a boycott of Sri Lanka's presidential elections, Uyangoda says, "Why did the LTTE leadership indirectly help Rajapakse to win the election over Wickramasinghe, for whom a vast majority of Tamils would have voted in the absence of the enforced boycott? The simple answer is that the LTTE wanted a new phase of polarisation and sharpening of contradictions between the Sri Lankan state and the Tamil polity. Unfortunately, the events of 2006 and 2007 served the LTTE’s strategic objective to a considerable measure."

Uyangoda concludes that "Both parties [GoSL and the LTTE] have managed to establish a distinct measure of relative autonomy from the international actors, in their decision-making processes and actions with regard to the conflict," and asserts that Sri Lanka is moving towards "a war without inhibition."

Prof. Uyangoda is a Professor of Political Science at University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and is a well-regarded commentator on Sinhala and English media in Sri Lanka. He was one of the Marxist rebels who led the armed insurrection to capture state power in 1971 and was incarcerated for many years after the rebellion was ruthlessly crushed by Sri Lankan armed forces.

External Links:

Himal:

An agreement to fight some more