SRI LANKA:Sri Lanka's 2007 defence budget is to surge 45 per cent and there are plans to recruit 50,000 more troops for the army, writes Tom Farrellin Jaffna.
Older residents of Jaffna recall the Irish priests with nostalgic affection, associated as they are with the prewar years.
The statue of Cork-born Fr Timothy Long stands atop a pedestal outside the Jaffna public library, an imposing domed building with a mosque-like, Mughal design. As rector of St Patrick's College, Fr Long educated many Jaffna residents in an era when the industrious nature of Sri Lanka's mostly Hindu Tamil minority won them favour under the British.
But ethnic harmony began disintegrating within less than a decade of the British departure in 1948.
Politicians from the island's majority Sinhalese community - whose Buddhist clergy preached of "Holy Lanka" being consecrated as uniquely sacred to Buddhism by Buddha himself - began legislating discriminatory laws in an effort to redress the bias shown by the British colonists.
By the late 1970s, Tamil youth began agitating for the creation of "Eelam" (Precious Land), an independent haven in the north and east of the island.
In the early years, militant outfits received weapons and training from India, a cold war opponent of Sri Lanka.
Thirty years on, any kind of resolution to the Tamil conflict seems as remote as ever. Widespread optimism accompanied the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement of 2002 between the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
But even before the 2004 tsunami killed at least 35,000 Sri Lankans and led to bitter squabbles over the provision of aid along regional and ethnic lines, intransigence was evident in both camps.
Sitting in his office adjacent to St Patrick's College, Jaffna's Bishop, Dr Thomas Savundaranayagam reflects forlornly: "Recently some Irish people have been visiting and they have been talking about the solution in Ireland which would be a model for Sri Lanka. But the conditions here are different."
Led by the uncompromising and reclusive Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE controls a large swathe of territory south of the Jaffna peninsula, known locally as the Vanni.
After widespread criticism in Sinhalese quarters that the ceasefire deal was biased towards the LTTE, president Chandrika Kumaratunga suspended the conciliatory government of prime minister Ranil Wickremesinge in 2004.
Wickremesinge, running on a pro-peace ticket, was defeated in the 2005 presidential election by the nationalistic Mahinda Rajapakse. A boycott by the LTTE in majority Tamil areas probably cost Wickremesinge 180,000 votes.
President Rajapakse's avowedly hawkish brother Gotabhaya serves as defence secretary and has spoken of "wiping out" the Tigers within three years.
To that end, the 2007 defence budget is to receive a 45 per cent hike and there are plans to recruit 50,000 more troops for the Sri Lankan Army (SLA).
Life is austere and restrained for the 650,000 residents of the claw-like Jaffna peninsula, cut off from the rest of the island by resumed fighting.
SLA checkpoints ring the city, with civilians being frisked and searched at regular intervals.
Although the Jaffna market is alive with a cacophony of noise, on the adjoining streets the traffic is meagre - mostly bicycles, autorickshaws and quaint British cars dating from the 1950s, giving Jaffna the feel of an anglophone Havana.
But a tropical Dresden or Beirut is evoked in the area around the pentagonal 17th century fort. The empty shells of former shops, churches and houses stand scarred by artillery and small arms fire. Over the years, Jaffna has passed in and out of Tiger or government control and was even temporarily held by the Indian army in the late 1980s.
In order to preclude infiltration by land or "sea Tiger" attacks by the LTTE's armed vessels, the government has created special high-security zones in the peninsula, moving locals out.
"In the Jaffna peninsula, the area is very limited," says Joy Rose Gnaneswaram, a Jaffna housewife who works with a foreign NGO.
"Each and every piece of land is owned privately so there are no lands to establish homes for internally displaced persons.
"With only limited spaces, they stay with friends and relatives."
Life for local humanitarian workers is precarious in Sri Lanka's renewed civil war. Last August, after SLA and Tiger forces had battled for control of the eastern town of Muthur, 17 local staff with Action Contre Faim (ACF) were found shot dead, still wearing their ACF T-shirts.
The LTTE had vacated Muthur at the time of the killings, leading to accusations that the security forces were involved. More recently, the International Commission of Jurists has accused the government of tampering with the evidence in the ongoing investigation, most notably the removal of a bullet recovered from the scene, a type mainly used by the military.
However, the LTTE is accused of killing six Sinhalese tsunami aid workers in nearby Batticaloa on April 1st this year.
Jaffna was last month described as "one of the most dangerous cities in the world to be a journalist" during a visit by the International Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression Mission.
Armed guards stand outside the entrance to the Jaffna offices of Uthayan(Dawn), a Tamil daily. NV Kanamailnathan edits Uthayanwith a skeleton staff of three and lives as a virtual prisoner here.
He displays the bullet holes in the walls, and the vandalised computers. Last May, unidentified armed gunmen burst into the newspaper's offices, killing three staff; and in August, an arson attack produced fire-damage estimated at €22,000.
"I can't go out. I have been identified and targeted so many times. I narrowly escaped in 2001 and in 2003," he says.
The LTTE was subject to a ban by the EU on May 19th last year, following an attempted suicide bomber attack on the commander of the SLA, Lieut Gen Sarath Fonseka, which killed 10 people.
In 2005, the Tigers assassinated Tamil foreign minister Lakshman Kadirigama, continuing a long Tiger tradition of eradicating Tamil politicians who oppose Prabhakaran.
Sri Lanka's minister of social security Douglas Devananda is a former armed militant who received training from the Palestinian Fatah organisation, and was imprisoned by the authorities in the early 1980s.
As leader of the rival Eelam Democratic People's Party, he has survived 10 Tiger assassination attempts. He is leery of the idea that the Northern Irish peace process provides a model for Sri Lanka.
"Gerry Adams's or Martin McGuinness's characters are different from Prabhakaran's character," says Devananda.
"Prabhakaran's problem is that it's difficult for him to survive in a democratic set-up. So he wants a piece of land to rule as a dictator. That's his goal."
The EU ban was condemned by Martin McGuinness who was one of the last foreign politicians to visit the Tiger leadership in the LTTE-held town of Kilinochchi last July, shortly before the strategic A-9 highway was closed.
The defection of his powerful eastern commander Col Karuna Amman in 2004, combined with the death in December of his chief negotiator and ideologue Anton Balasingham, may well push Prabhakaran towards his long promised "final war" to retake Jaffna.
Balasingham was reportedly one of the few people with a moderating influence on the Tigers' leader.
However, the LTTE has suffered badly from the split with Karuna's supporters, losing most of its territory in eastern Sri Lanka.
Furthermore, the LTTE's international fundraising network has suffered badly in recent months, with a string of arrests amongst expatriate Tamils in Britain, Canada and the US.
Sri Lanka's foreign secretary Palitha Kohona draws a comparison with Ireland: "The IRA succeeded for a long time in tying down 20,000 British troops in Northern Ireland, largely because of the moral and financial support it derived from the diaspora," Kohona told The Irish Times.
"Once the diaspora decided this was not going to bring any joy to the Irish people and stopped the funding . . . maybe that could have contributed to the Good Friday agreement.
"And I hope that the message gets through to the LTTE that in the long run, it cannot survive as an organisation without the backing of the diaspora."