Kilinochchi standoff
200,000 refugees struggle in the Vanni
Thousands of Sri Lankan troops are massed outside the northern town of Kilinochchi after five weeks of inconclusive fighting with the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a bid to capture the town.
There are no independent reports of Operation Sath Jaya and government press censorship remains in force. Unconfirmed reports say over 150 soldiers were killed and hundreds more wounded as the Tigers blunted the advance with thousands of teenage cadre and heavy weapons captured at the fall of Mullaitivu in July. LTTE fatalities are estimated at around 60.
Tiger resilience has surprised analysts who expected the guerrillas to beat a strategic retreat as they did from Jaffna town last November. But an Army-controlled Kilinochchi would threaten a road link to front-line Vavuniya 70 kms south and provide a launching pad for new strikes on the Tigers’ real strongholds deep in the Vanni jungles further east. The LTTE clearly means to hold Kilinochchi if it can.
Colombo’s rumour factory also speculates on a growing rift between the military and the government after political expediency and press censorship "buried the heroes of Mullaitivu" - 1,400 soldiers dead or missing after the Tigers overran an Army camp in late July. The Army’s "go-slow" outside Kilinochchi is a message to President Chandrika Kumaratunges’s increasingly beleaguered coalition government which has been conspicuously silent over the fate of the missing soldiers.
The President’s uncle, deputy Defence minister Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatte finally appeared in Parliament on 8 August, 20 days after the Mullaitivu attack to read a 32-page statement acknowledging over 700 soldiers killed. But most of it was taken up with denouncing the previous United National Party (UNP) regime for giving the Tigers guns and money during its reign.
Over 200,000 civilians have fled Kilinochchi, many already refugees from Jaffna town. The government promptly cut all food convoys north of Vavuniya for five weeks until 12 August in the face of protests from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and international aid agencies. Vavuniya’s Government Agent (GA) Ganesh says 475 food lorries have gone north only a third of the Vanni’s needs for August. NGOs estimate around 4,000 metric tonnes of food aid have crossed the front line in the last three weeks.
Akkararayankulam a few miles south of the fighting has gone from sleepy hamlet to bustling metropolis with Kilinochchi traders transplanted and thousands of refugees cramming community halls and schools. For most people food and shelter remain marginal and there is growing risk of epidemic.
By mid-August, medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Holland was treating 1,000 out-patients a day in an improvised clinic in Akkararayankulam’s cottage hospital, over 40% suffering from diahhorea. Malaria is spreading and there are no drugs, antibiotics or chlorine to combat the threat of water-borne disease.
A few thousand civilians have drifted back to Kilinochchi during the lull in the fighting but shelling continues and the town has been stripped bare.
Only 1,500 refugees have crossed the front line to Army-controlled Vavuniya, 70 kms south. Neither the Tigers nor the military will permit a mass exodus. The LTTE’s relief wing, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) has distributed over Rs 2 million of food aid to pacify thousands of middle class Jaffna refugees increasingly disaffected with exile in the jungle.
To combat the Tiger suicide commando threat to Colombo, the military allow only 25 youth among the 200 a-day permitted to cross the Vavuniya front line. Over 1,00 young men are now held in a special transit camp at Vepankulam, a few miles west, some waiting weeks for friends or relatives in the south to confirm their identity.
LTTE cadre penetrated Vavuniya in late August. killing three in a grenade attack on a police jeep. Sixteen civilians were wounded in crossfire before three guerrillas escaped in a hijacked lorry, abandoning it near Asikulam where some of the 50,000 refugees returned from India since 1991 remain in limbo in UN camps, unable to return to their front line villages.
Colombo was already alive with rumour that the government was about to outlaw the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. British Foreign minister Malcolm Rifkind on a 24-hour visit surprised his hosts by telling the press that the UK would not ban the Tigers but would push for a new amendment to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention preventing terrorists or those helping them from claiming asylum.
For the last two years, Sri Lankan Foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has toured Western capitals, campaigning for a global ban on the Tigers to sever their $50 million a-year fundraising arm. The two foreign ministers also discussed a new extradition treaty.
Contradicting a rash of wall posters across Colombo, Mr Rifkind denied he had come to broker a deal for the government who need opposition UNP support to save the devolution package it proposes as a democratic alternative to the Tigers. Tamil moderate opinion has already rejected the proposals and few believe they can form the framework of a long-term solution.
Tamils to be safe from police harassment in Colombo need good social connections or money to pay says recently returned academic Dr Ratnajeevan Hoole in a hard-hitting article in the capital’s Island newspaper, after his sister was arrested as an LTTE suspect. More details under "Being a Tamil in Colombo".
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