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9. Citizenship and Ethnicity: The Tsunami and the Civil War
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177 9 Citizenship and Ethnicity The Tsunami and the Civil War In mid-2005, Siri and I spoke with Deepak. A fit, humorous man in his thirties, Deepak sat with us on his porch as a group of neighborhood children played an informal game of cricket in the sandy courtyard. Deepak was stationed in Jaffna with the Sri Lankan Army and told us about the post-tsunami situation in the North. Although the area near the Palali Air Force Base was only 150 meters from the sea, Deepak reported that it was not extensively damaged. However, the waves inundated the supplies buildings, and the water soaked the stocked items or washed them into the ocean. The army facility at Point Pedro fared worse; fifty soldiers and a number of civilians died there, and over seventy soldiers were injured. Deepak said, “Mostly it was people in the fighting units who got caught. They were spread out along the beach, fifty to one hundred meters from the sea. There are dunes there—only sand. So a lot of people got caught in the waves.” On the day of the tsunami, Deepak was at home in Naeaegama. Because of the disruption caused by the disaster, he took two extra days of leave. Deepak returned to the North aboard an airplane laden with relief and recovery supplies. The military brought food and clothing from donors in the South to the tsunami-affected people (mostly Tamils) near Palali. They also brought tents and other equipment, and they helped make temporary shelters. Deepak reported that food and medical aid also came by ship to Kankasanturai, a major Jaffna navy base; this aid was distributed in the Mullaittivu area. 178 | The Golden Wave Deepak favorably compared the relief work done by the armed services with that done by civil servants, saying, “We distributed what we brought equally. When the army gives things, there is no way to steal it. The brigadiers are in charge. They are strict, and the stuff is distributed correctly. People can’t cheat.” But Deepak pointed out that in areas controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, also known as the Tigers), the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM—an international group monitoring the 2002 cease-fire) and the Red Cross handled the aid. “The army can’t go there,” he explained. Siri, Deepak, and I then discussed the grim realities of fighting a guerrilla war. Deepak told us, “There are Tigers up there in civilian clothing. They killed the SSP recently [referring to the death in Jaffna of Senior Superintendent of Police Charles Wijewardena, a well-liked senior officer]. That was the LTTE pretending to be civilians . They don’t usually attack the army, but you can never be sure.” Deepak concluded , “Now we are back to our normal condition up there. We have constructed some temporary buildings. Before the tsunami, we were using houses borrowed from the civilians.” Aid Distribution and the Ethnic Conflict Deepak’s depiction of the post-tsunami military situation in the Jaffna area reveals a momentary glimpse of the island’s long-standing ethnic conflict. Sri Lanka suffered from 1983 to 2009 with a festering civil war that pitted Tamil-speakers in the North and East against Sinhala-speakers in the Southwest. The conflict grew out of disputes over language policy, access to land and resources, educational opportunities, and political autonomy. It blossomed into a conflagration ripe with ethnic chauvinism and jingoistic nationalism. The LTTE, an armed insurgency group, advocated for a separate state encompassing the Tamil-majority areas. The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and its armed forces rigorously disputed this claim both politically and militarily. The LTTE and the GoSL signed a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in February 2002. At that moment in the conflict, the LTTE controlled large portions of the North and East. After a year and a half of negotiations, in October 2003 the LTTE proposed an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) as an intermediary step towards a federalist devolution of power. Unlike prior LTTE proposals, this one did not call explicitly for formation of a separate state. But pronationalist Sinhala political forces rejected this proposal and brought about a crisis in government. The president, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party or SLFP), called a brief state of emergency and dissolved Parliament. In the ensuing elections, the United National Party (UNP), which had spearheaded the peace process, lost its majority in Parliament. In late 2004, negotiations had...