SRI LANKA: The ceasefire negotiated between the LTTE and the government is put at risk by political enmities in the capital, Colombo, reports Rahul Bediin Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka
The ravages of war in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula scar the verdant region, some 21 months after the ceasefire between the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) fighting the government for an independent homeland for nearly two decades and the start of peace talks between the warring sides.
A traumatised population, besieged by around 40,000 soldiers stationed across the peninsula, thousands of shell-scarred and abandoned houses and decapitated palm trees are the legacy of ferocious, seesaw battles fought between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan and Indian armies.
A UN-sponsored community mental health programme has recently begun work in Jaffna, the Tamil Tigers' cultural and political capital some 350 miles north of the capital, Colombo, to treat hundreds of people, including women and children suffering from war-induced trauma.
The Sri Lankan army seized control of Jaffna from the Tigers in 1995 after weeks of fighting in which hundreds died.
Five years later the LTTE, outnumbered six to one by the army, almost succeeded in recapturing Jaffna after forcing more than 10,000 government soldiers to retreat. But it stopped just short of the ravaged town that was further devastated by the conflict.
Shells and mortars rained down on the town for days, with one artillery round falling inside the Jaffna Bishop Sandranayagan's bedroom and several others in the nearby churchyard.
Innumerable bombed-out houses line the six-mile drive along the palm-lined dirt road from the seaside Palaly military airport to downtown Jaffna that still has checkpoints manned by soldiers carrying assault rifles.
The landscape is grimmer on the militarily strategic A9 highway heading south from Jaffna to the LTTE headquarters at Killinochi, 40 miles away, on either side of which are minefields and homes, warehouses and buildings flattened by aerial bombing and artillery shells.
For two years from 1987 the LTTE battled an Indian expeditionary force sent to disarm it. It retreated ignominiously after more than 1,340 of its soldiers died.
"We live in a prison of rubble and bricks where one-third of the peninsula, including large parts of its most fertile land growing rice and coconut remain under military control," Sodinadan of the council of non-governmental organisations said.
The government, he added, had done little or nothing, despite promises to help rebuild over 120,000 houses and buildings destroyed in the fighting.
After six rounds of talks with the government, the LTTE had walked out of the negotiations in April, accusing Colombo of not doing enough to resettle refugees and to redevelop war-ravaged Tamil areas.
In the nearby coastal village of Savatkaddu, 100 war widows want to join the Tamil Tigers to avenge the killing of their fishermen husbands by the military.
"If the ceasefire was not in place we would have willingly volunteered to fight for the LTTE," said 28-year-old Sahila, head of the village Widow Association whose husband was shot by navy commandos while out fishing.
Activists said their keenness to join the LTTE stemmed from widows in traditional Hindu households having no rights and being treated like pariahs and evil omens, banned from participating in religious functions including weddings.
The LTTE's female cadres earned a formidable reputation as fighters, especially as suicide-bombers. One female bomber assassinated the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1990 for sending an expeditionary force to Sri Lanka to disarm the Tigers.
The months of peace, meanwhile, have brought dividends to Jaffna such as new hotels, banks, Internet cafés and shops selling such consumer goods as computers, refrigerators and air-conditioners.
Power generation, a rarity during the war years, is relatively constant today, while mobile telephone networks operate efficiently.
Japanese cars have slowly begun replacing the city's numerous antiquated Morris Oxford, Morris Minor, Mini Minor and Hillman cars, many of which were adapted to run on kerosene during the conflict years because of a shortage of petrol.
But Jaffna residents fear that the peace process might become hostage to the political standoff between the President and Prime Minister, and consequential tensions with the LTTE might just end their brief boom period.
"The ceasefire is fragile," Bishop Thomas Sandranayagan said.
The 65-year-old monsignor, who is a Tamil, declared that the political standoff in the capital, after President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacked three senior ministers from the government of the Prime Minister, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe, and suspended parliament, could "impact negatively" on the Jaffna region.
Other city residents who are willing the calm to continue echo the Bishop's warnings.
"The LTTE want to be patient and work for peace and we hope they are successful," Mrs Ponmalar Rajeshwaram from the Council of Non-Governmental Organisations said.
The LTTE, led by Vellupillai Prabhakaran, that has been battling ethnic, economic and linguistic discrimination imposed on Tamils by the Buddhist Sinhala majority since independence over half a century ago, has not reacted so far to the political impasse in Colombo.
But sources in Jaffna close to the LTTE said the rebels were activating their cadres, having doubled their numbers to nearly 20,000 after the February 2002 ceasefire.
"They want to be prepared for a high-intensity war should the need arise in order to dictate their political terms," an LTTE supporter said.
The Tigers continue to levy taxes in their areas of control, daily collecting around 10 million rupees (€92,000), mostly from heavy tolls levied on goods passing through their territories.
This money, along with earnings from their narcotics-smuggling operations, is utilised to finance the LTTE's administrative machinery, open new schools and repair war-damaged buildings and roads.
It is also used to arm their cadres with sophisticated weapons smuggled in from Thailand and Indonesia through tiny islets in the Jaffna peninsula, difficult for the Sri Lankan navy to patrol.