Sri Lanka's Shattered Peace
تاريخ النشر: 01/02/2007
الناشر: مركز الإمارات للدراسات والبحوث الاستراتيجية
نبذة نيل وفرات:This paper will address issues relating to Sri Lanka’s current security situation and the ongoing fear that the country is engaged in a “half-war” that threatens to destroy the peace process and make a mockery of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). Despite the onset of an apparently robust peace ...process following the CFA, the war now appears to have restarted. Arguably, the fourth Eelam war that is currently unfolding may prove to be the final and decisive war for Eelam. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) appear to be well-prepared, well-armed, well-funded, focused and motivated. Every punitive attack mounted by the government brings collateral damage and Tiger recruitment potential in equal measure. In contrast, the Government of Sri Lanka’s security forces are in disarray: chains of command and decision-making appear fractured; the commander-in-chief seems out of touch with the politico-strategic reality of the current situation; and the state lacks a strategy to deal with the coming onslaught. Morale among the security forces is low and human rights abuses are on the increase, as is desertion from the zone of conflict.
The reality of the fourth Eelam war for the LTTE is an outcome that can only be the same as, if not more beneficial than the status quo. Moreover, key policy questions are not likely to focus on how to reintegrate the LTTE’s military and political entities back into Sri Lankan state structures, but how to understand and deal with an emerging Tamil protostate that may well have defined its existence without the help of external actors-other than the Tamil diaspora. As such, Eelam, or its derivative, will have specific and unique social, political, cultural and historical dimensions that will define its relations and enmity with the Sri Lankan government, India and other members of the international community. The success or failure of this project will determine whether or not a line can be drawn under two decades of civil war, but also whether or not the thousands of Sri Lankans – Sinhalese, Muslim and Tamil – trapped in or close to the theatre of conflict can begin to expect the entitlements and human security that they have been denied for so long by both sides. إقرأ المزيد