A Bloodied Paradise

Miles and miles of unspoiled beaches, long stretches of thousand-acre paddy fields and a sprawling lagoon surrounding the city make Batticaloa an ideal holiday destination. But today life in the eastern Sri Lanka town is anything but a picnic. As dawn breaks over the picturesque Batticaloa lagoon, a long queue of school-children, office workers and traders line up along the bridge which divides the town to face a laborious check by the army. By dusk, the town shuts down and no one ventures outside till morning, when major roads are carefully searched for landmines and rebel ambushes before civilians can move.

The roads in Batticaloa district are dotted by army camps and heavily armed soldiers carry out checks on incoming and outgoing vehicles. The calm of even the main town is periodically shattered by bomb blasts and gunfire, followed by cordon and search operations. And things can only get worse, what with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military readying for a major showdown, which some analysts believe would be decisive in a 12-year-old separatist war that has cost the nation over 50,000 lives.

The army abdicated control of the district to the rebels four months ago, when it withdrew troops from the region for the massive 50-day Operation Riverasa to capture the LTTE stronghold of Jaffna peninsula. Soon after losing their crown jewel, Jaffna city, the rebels concentrated on strengthening their presence in Batticaloa, sending over 1,000 battle-hardened cadres east with orders to destabilise the region. Although the rebels have carried out a series of attacks on military camps and foot patrols, their main target has been the infrastructure. Says a Muslim trader: "They have destroyed power lines and telephone exchanges. This has angered the people."

The rebels have also concentrated on disrupting transport by hijacking buses and sabotaging railway lines. "The first thing the army has to do to normalise the situation is to bring transportation back to normal. Without that nothing works," says Joseph Pararajesingham, member of parliament for Batticaloa from the moderate mainstream Tamil party, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). He is the only elected MP who still lives and works in the embattled Batticaloa.

For the rebels the priority is very clear. "We are not politicians now. We are freedom fighters," claims Sivagnanam Karikalan, deputy leader of the political wing of the LTTE and the political boss for Batticaloa. But like any good guerrilla organisation, it continues to look into the problems of the people in areas where it still dominates. Surrounded by armed rebel cadres, Karikalan criss-crosses Batticaloa district in a Yamaha trail-bike captured from the army, discussing problems ranging from difficulties faced by school-children to the hassles in getting fuel and fertilisers for farmers. At a school just five miles from army formations north of Batticaloa city, he is quick to deny that he is on a recruitment drive. "I am here to discuss the shortage of teachers," he says, adding that the LTTE has no shortage of recruits.

"Without a presence in Batticaloa, the LTTE's dream of a separate state will come to nothing. The LTTE has already lost part of its Jaffna stronghold. If the military forces them out of here as well, the geographical entity of a separate state is lost," says Harry Miller, a 72-year-old Jesuit priest who has lived in this city for nearly four decades. "The LTTE has to retain undisputed control over a majority Tamil district in the eastern province and it appears they have decided on Batticaloa," adds Paikiasothy Saravna-muttu, research consultant at the Centre for Policy Research and Analysis at the Colombo University.

The LTTE wants to create a separate state from six districts in the north and east of the country. It controls most of the Jaffna, Mannar and Mullaitivu districts and part of Vavuniya district in the northern province, but lacks the same level of dominance in the two crucial eastern districts, Trincomalee and Batticaloa. The army has more or less maintained control of the multi-ethnic Trincomalee district.

Tamils constitute 75 per cent of Batticaloa's population. About 23 per cent are Muslims, with a vast majority making a living from farming and fishing. In the past the Tigers have targeted the Muslims to incite communal passions. With 12 years of war having severely disrupted most economic activity, the district is an ideal recruitment base for the rebels. "Sixty per cent of the population is below the poverty line. Those who are joining the rebels are youth who feel that they have no future. There is no major recruitment of school-children," says Miller.

THE army is now getting set to re-establish control over the district. Elite special forces and police commandos launched Operation Rivikirana last week to protect the main supply route from rebel attacks. "We have destroyed the LTTE infrastructure in the north-western part of the district and pushed them out of the area," says military spokesman, Brigadier Sarath Munasinghe. Unlike in the northern the-atre, where the army launches massive set-piece offensives to recapture rebel-held areas, the strategy in the eastern theatre is dominated by classic anti-guerrilla warfare methods. "You will not see large-scale military operations in Batticaloa. We will use special forces to keep the Tigers on the run," says Munasinghe. The army has shifted its gameplan from setting up camps in strategic areas to cutting off the rebels' access to population centres after they successfully attacked isolated camps, leading to heavy casualties. But others are sceptical of this strategy.

"The success of the army will depend on whether it has the men to hold on to cleared areas by establishing camps. Otherwise once the army goes back they return to the area," says Joseph Pararajesingham. Miller agrees: "The people have little choice. When areas keep changing hands between the military and the rebels regularly, the people are very cautious. They do not want to be seen taking sides. They learn to live with those who are in control."

The army and the elite police commandos, called the Special Task Force (STF), have a tough job on their hands. The rebels control about 65 per cent of the land area of the Batticaloa district. "That may be so. But most of it is jungle and paddy land. We only need to dominate populated areas and we control about 60 per cent of such areas," says a senior military officer in Batticaloa. For the people the choice is to continue to tread a careful path, not to get on the wrong side of either the military or the rebels.

"The rebels do not have the type of committed support from the people, as in Jaffna. But I believe that about 40 per cent of the people here sympathise with the rebels," says Pararajesingham, who argues that a political solution cannot be negotiated while the fighting continues. "The government's theory of a political solution while continuing the war against the Tigers offends the Tamil people. In a military offensive it is the civilians who will get caught in the middle. People feel that the problem cannot be solved without bringing the LTTE into the mainstream."

Says Miller: "I do not think this war will end soon. Despite the fact that the army has retaken parts of Jaffna, the rebel leadership and their armoury is intact. It is unlikely the LTTE will go for a political settlement as long as Velupillai Prabhakaran is their leader." But Karikalan disagrees, while conceding that there cannot be peace without making a deal. He says the LTTE is not interested in anything other than a separate state: "We are prepared for talks with the government, with third party mediation from a neutral country such as Sweden, the Netherlands or Canada. But we are only prepared to accept something equal to Tamil Eelam (the separate state the LTTE wants to create in the north-east of the island). The Tamils must get equal rights."