Sri Lanka has again found itself in the midst of military conflict between the government and the separatist Tamil group called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after a few years of relative peace. Since the beginning of 2006, more than 4000 people have been killed and the total number of killings has reached more than 70.000; most of them were civilians. Recently, Prabhakaran, the leader of LTTE stated in his annual address that the Tigers would "renew their struggle” if the government did not take serious moves toward peace. Since then Sri Lankan population got used to hearing about more and more violence in the news. Claymore mine attacks, the hostilities between the Sea Tigers and Sri Lanka Navy, the killing of sympathizers on both sides and the assassination of the commander of The Sri Lankan Army are few examples among many. The Mavil Aru water dispute was followed by the Jaffna and Mutur offensives and then The Chencolai air strike came as an answer from the GOSL (Government of Sri Lanka). Since the beginning of 2007 the military is using its full strength to defeat the LTTE yet the last air strike initiated by the Tigers carried the conflict to another dimension. Sri Lanka is unique in a sense that the secessionist group has that much military capability to strike back. It seems like today violence has become the official language of negotiations in Sri Lanka. Both sides are willing to fight since it seems like they don’t learn any lessons from past negotiations and the conflict is escalating each and everyday.

In this paper, the aim is to analyze the effects of violence on the peace process in Sri Lanka between 2000 and today. The question that this paper hopes to answer is whether violence had played the role of a catalyst or an obstacle to the course of the peace process. Firstly, the theoretical frameworks describing the peace process and violence will be analyzed. Secondly, a brief history of the conflict will be given with a special focus on the events after 2000. Finally, with the help of the theoretical concepts and frameworks, the case will be analyzed with a special spotlight on the various categories of violence. The reason why this specific time period is chosen is that 2000 represents the date when both parties agreed to accept Norway as a “facilitator” and until today the monitoring mission which was formed after Norway’s initiatives is still in Sri Lanka trying to observe the violations of a ceasefire agreement which is today just on paper. Last but not least, current events will be included since they are very important in terms of evaluating the role of violence during the peace process in Sri Lanka.

Due to the limited scope of this paper, a whole summary of events could not be demonstrated. On the other hand, accepting the fact that the peace processes have various dimensions, this paper does not claim that it is a whole appraisal of the success or failure of the negotiations.

VIOLENCE AS A CATALYST OR AN OBSTACLE FOR PEACE?  

Ethnic problems and violence are usually studied together when it comes to civil wars and multiethnic conflicts. However, discussing violence as a part of peace processes also became common due to its role in the course of the negotiations. The initiation of a peace process may stop the violence between the conflicting groups; on the other hand it may escalate when a peace process starts. In some cases, peace processes are overturned by violence like in Angola; in some cases it played the role of a catalyst and hastened the procedures for a sustainable peace settlement like in South Africa. According to Krishna Kumar, despite the signing of an agreement, post conflict societies are hardly ever at peace since it takes time to eliminate fragmentation, polarization and the tendency to commit violence. (Cited in Darby: 2001) Bringing the parties to the negotiation table is difficult considering the fact that there is a history of violence which creates mistrust and fear between them. The peace processes in civil war torn countries are extremely fragile and the law and order situation cannot prevent the parties going back to arms if the peace process is not satisfactory for both sides. According to Darby, violence redefines itself during the post agreement phases and new sources of violence replace the political violence in the traditional sense. (Darby: 2001) He defines four categories of the new type which may frequently overlap: violence by the state and violence by militants are the categories that will be analyzed in this paper. There is also violence in the community, and other violence related issues that arise during negotiations.

1-Violence by the State: According to Darby, since the peace process will not cause an immediate decline in the military equipment which the state has, there will be potential illegal violence that might be pursued by the states themselves. After a long mutual hostility, the state might want to use the cease fire as a chance to suppress the opponents or maximize their advantage before entering the negotiations. Since violence helps to create a power asymmetry between the opponents, a military victory might help in gaining more during the negotiations. However, already fragile negotiations could easily be affected by the mistrust that is going to be created by state committed violence. Demilitarization accompanying a ceasefire usually makes the state worry since “the states’ dilemma is between the need to demilitarize in order to keep former militants in the process while retaining the ability to deal with spoiler groups and to reactivate its security machinery if the process collapses.” (Darby: 2001)

2-Violence by militants: If the leader of a paramilitary group is involved in the peace process, the threat of violence in the traditional sense may be reduced however, if there are factions within the militant group, it is possible to see a different version of violence. During the war with the government, there is a unique goal that binds them together, however militant groups have complex organizations and some factions in the group might not be satisfied with the peace process. According to Stedman, during the peace processes the varied interests finding shelter under one umbrella diffuse and fragment. (Stedman: 1997) In militant groups, a faction might believe that compromise is failure and the only way is to fight with arms. On the other hand, another faction might be pleased by political concessions and victories.

In order to explain this category, Darby makes references to Stedman. In his article, “Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes” he defines one of the biggest threats to the post conflict transition as “spoilers.” Spoilers only emerge during a peace process, that is the feature that distinguishes them from bandits, pariahs and terrorists which are visible also during the conflict times. It is essential to keep in mind that the spoiler groups might have different motivations as well. In order to distinguish them Stedman proposes three categories: limited, total and greedy spoilers whilst Darby broadens the categories to Dealers, Zealots, Opportunists and Mavericks depending on their aims.

As we have seen, violence is a part of the negotiation phases in one way or another. Parties are willing to cooperate and start a peace process when they are in a “mutually hurting stalemate” (Zartman: 2003) situation and/or when they know that they cannot defeat their opponent by military means. At those times, when peace processes start, it is still hard for the both sides to perceive disarmament as an option since one side perceives the other as a terrorist organization whilst the other believes that they are liberation fighters. According to Darby, during the negotiations prisoner releases, decommissioning of paramilitary weapons and reforming the police and security structures are also obstacles which can easily trigger the violence during peace process. On the other hand once achieved those developments might pave the way towards a stable agreement. It is a sign of decreasing mistrust since both sides make concessions on the issues which were unthinkable before the peace process. Not to mention, the peace process can easily be broken if parties make mistakes on one of those areas.

Alternatively, not all processes are damaged by violence. Just as there are cases where analysts assert that violence destroyed incipient coalitions for peace, there are others where scholars assert that violence pushed hesitant elites to full settlement. (Stedman: 2003) In his book, Darby claims that sometimes atrocities are turned into a chance for peace rather than a spoiler. He gives examples from Northern Ireland and Basque country atrocities to prove that sometimes violence may work as a catalyst for peace. He claims that there must be a reason for those kinds of different solutions. He thinks war weariness is a part of the explanation. If the parties, in Zartman’s terms reach a point where there is a “mutually hurting stalemate” and believe that the only way left is negotiation, they might compromise and try to eliminate violence by acting more decisively about the peace process. However there is still the possibility that war weariness will not create an immediate demand by the public for compromise, put another way, the existence of violence is not a necessary condition for moves towards peace. According to him, three factors which play a role creating a catalyst for peace are the quality of leadership, cohesion of the groups in negotiation and timing.

Leadership of a high quality: this factor has much to do with charismatic leadership. A leader of a high quality may calm his followers when violence threathens a peace process. Darby gives the example of Mandela and his reactions to the violence done by white extremists during the 90’s.

The level of cohesion within the parties: This factor is maybe the most important one since to be a leader; one should maintain unity in the group and make his word heard during the negotiations. The more united and cohesive the main negotiating parties are, the easier it is for them to take an effective lead against violence.

Timing: What is important about the effect of violence is not its harshness but its timing. If there is hope for peace and possible violence threathens it, then the parties may choose to condemn such atrocities and gain international support and attention. If the timing is right, it becomes easier to gain public support against those hostilities, Darby points out that the effects of catalytic episodes are transitory and the window of opportunity may fade away easily.

All in all, it can be said that violence has an effect on the peace process in various ways by different actors with a range of motivations. The groups who commit violence could be in or outside the negotiating groups. As mentioned above, it may easily threaten the peace process and cause a turning back to arms or else it works as a catalyst to hasten the peace process.

The On-and-Off Civil War in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has been in a civil war for more than two decades now. The ongoing conflict on the island started in 1983 between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE and continues untill today. The conflict is complicated in the sense that it has various dimensions, such as religion, ethnicity, language, territory, democratic rights etc. There are very different views among scholars about when and how the “Tamil problem” started. Some of the authors take the roots back to 10^th century, some say it started under British colonization and the others argue it started just after they left. All in all, the most observable complications started after the independence when the Sinhalese majority disenfranchised Eastern Tamils from Ceylonese political life. (Singer: 1991) Authors such as Amanda Donahoe argue that: “The Sinhalese majority populated the government and treated the Tamil minority as a threat to the national stability, instead of candidates for conciliation and power sharing.” The continuation of Sinhalese-only politics and other such grievances made Tamils believe that the only option was secession. A guerilla group called the Tamil Tigers started “an independence war” against Sinhalese forces by using violence in various ways. Since 1983 there have been several violent acts such as bank robberies, suicide killings, mass bombings targeting civil society etc.

To find a peaceful solution, attempts have been initiated by countries such as India and Norway. However, India’s involvement did not help; on the contrary it caused escalation and mistrust between the parties for various reasons. Those inconsistencies caused Indian withdrawal of its peace keeping forces in 1990. In February 2000, Norway’s mediation role was accepted by both sides. Known as the “Norwegian facilitation” the initiative made several attempts to soften the tension and acted as a facilitator rather than a mediator since the government was willing to promise a limited agenda to an external party. (Uyangoda: 2005)

The initiation was criticized because of its slowness since there were no significant talks between the government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and LTTE for more than one year. In the middle of 2001, the government declared that the Norwegian initiative was terminated due to its ineffectiveness. Norwegian facilitation became effective again right after the elections in December 2001. UNF, the opposition coalition of United National Front, led by the National Party formed the new government. (Uyangoda: 2005) During the election campaigns their discourse was about finding a peaceful solution to the ethnic conflict, therefore they did not lose time to start the initiative. After the elections, Norway managed to bring both sides to the negotiating table. With the help of Norway as a mediator, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been agreed upon and a permanent cease fire agreement signed by the GOSL and LTTE in February 2002, paving the way to the direct talks initiated by Norwegian facilitation in September 2002.  With the other Nordic Countries, Norway was given the responsibility to monitor the ceasefire through a committee of experts named the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

 Six rounds of negotiations were held in Thailand, Japan, Norway and Germany between September 2002 and March 2003 with a thematic focus on political issues, humanitarian relief, reconstruction and development of the north and the east, normalization and de-escalation, human rights and children in armed conflict. (Dhanapala: 2005) Unfortunately, the fostered sense of optimism was dissolved after the LTTE unilaterally walked away from the negotiation table in April 2003 and demanded an interim administration for the Northeast under which the LTEE will control the judiciary and the police, as well as oversee land and revenue concerns. (Fair: 2006)  This event caused chaos in the political arena and ended with new elections bringing the opposition side to power. After four years of relative peace Sri Lanka found itself in the midst of civil war again. SLMM observed lots of violations however could not do much to prevent or discourage them. The talks in February, July and October in 2006 failed to restart discussion of a political settlement and violence is still evident.

SRI LANKAN PEACE PROCESS AND VIOLENCE

Violence as an obstacle?

As Darby has mentioned in his book, the disarmament and decommissioning of paramilitary groups are some of the key issues of the peace process. According to the ceasefire and the six round table talks, the LTTE were given control over the northeast and were authorized to retain their arms and military basis in the territory they controlled. (Shastri: 2003)Tiger cadres were allowed to go to government controlled areas unarmed and open political offices. However, the other paramilitary groups were to be disarmed. Although those principles looked good on paper, in July 1 2002, t SLMM monitored 270 violations by LTTE and 110 by the government forces. (Cited in Shastri: 2003) The time period between 2001 and 2007 again witnessed a variety of violent events. SLMM’s efficiency decreases day by day since at the end of the  six years Sri Lanka came to the brink of an undeclared war again. Lars Solvberg, head of the SLMM, explains the character of the mission as:  their duty has been reduced to observing … “how massively the parties are violating this agreement.”(Deutsch Antony 2006, cited in Fair: 2006) The other two issues Darby puts emphasis on are the release of prisoners and reforming the security structures. As a trust building measure, right after the ceasefire and six round table talks both sides exchanged prisoners of war for the first time. In addition to that as a trust building measure the government agreed to lift the long standing embargo on rebel held territory. Those measures were supposed to pave the way towards a stable peace agreement. On the other hand according to Höglund; “Between the ceasefire agreement and 2005 there have been few instances of direct confrontation between LTTE cadres and Sri Lankan forces.” Generally both parties have shown a great restraint and have controlled their forces on the ground.”(Hoglund: 2005) Until April 2003 when the LTTE walked away from the negotiations, there are only a few incidents between the LTTE and Sri Lankan forces which overshadowed the process; such as the clashes between the Navy and the Sea Tigers or a small numbers of violations which would not stall the peace process as deeply as the cohabitation problems between the government and the prime minister. However, when it came to disarmament, the decisions were not so easy for both sides. During this time political assassinations, child recruiting and enhancing arms were pursued by the LTTE side. In addition to that the LTTE had continued to rebuild its military strength and war preparedness until a final political settlement was reached and started recruiting its cadre heavily (from 6000 to 16000 soldiers) during the peace talks. (Ganguly: 2004) The Sri Lankan military also used this time to recruit new soldiers and restrengthen the military. Although there hadn’t been any direct confrontation between the state and the LTTE, the parties were getting ready for a potential war.

When it comes to the violence within the LTTE, there was a violent fight due to fracturing between its northern and eastern wings. Colonel Karuna, the eastern commander of the LTTE withdrew his eastern troops from the LTTE claiming that it was favoring the north and not representing the east. According to authors like Höglund, it is generally held that the Tamils in the east feared being marginalized since the leadership of the LTTE traditionally has been drawn from the North. (Höglund: 2005) Karuna was further reported to be upset by the step-motherly treatment of the eastern Tamils by the LTTE and the distribution of resources and funding which they hardly receive from Jaffna. The Karuna- Prabhakaran dispute was one of the biggest conflicts in the LTTE’s history and a civil war within the LTTE seemed inevitable and continued for a long time. On the other hand, the CFA did not stop both sides since both Norway and the GOSL accepted this conflict as the LTTE’s internal business however there had been disputes between GOSL and LTTE about Karuna vs. LTTE conflict since the LTTE accused the GOSL of supporting Karuna and other paramilitary groups while the GOSL accused the LTTE of violating the CFA by killing political opponents and government officers. All in all, with the fracturing of politics in the North-east and South, and the consequent lack of settlement stability, there appeared to be little prospect of resuming peace talks in the immediate future. (Goodhand –Klem: 2005) The violence that the LTTE committed during the peace talks were not just limited to Karuna and the government forces. LTTE was also at war with other Tamil groups. Although the GOSL was negotiating with the LTTE as if it was the representative of all Tamils in the region, there were other Tamil groups who do not recognize the LTTE as the sole representative. There were some Tamil groups which were collaborating with the government against LTTE. As Höglund mentions in her article, violence has been carried out against those groups who worked with the government forces and were disarmed after the cease fire agreement. (Höglund: 2005) She also puts emphasis on the election based violence done by LTTE. The elections in 2004 were highly affected by violence since LTTE did not let the members of the other political parties come and vote in the Tamil held territory and killed several political figures and in total 2303 incidents were recognized. (Cited in Höglund: 2005) On the other hand, LTTE- Muslim community relations were not smooth. The LTTE objected to a separate Muslim delegation at the peace talks although they are %6-7 of the population and in addition to that they were suffering from Tamil hostilities for years. To sum up, it can be said that those confrontations has put the LTTE in a disadvantageous position in front of the GOSL and the international community, questioning its legitimacy as the sole representative of the Tamils.

Violence as a catalyst?

As mentioned early in the theory part, some peace processes are not vulnerable to violence; on the contrary; they may push the hesitant elites towards a peace settlement. Darby also argued that under certain conditions such as leadership of a high quality, unity in the parties and timing; violence may play the role of a catalyst and speed up the peace process. However, if the peace process is lacking those three conditions, violence may not work as a catalyst, and instead cause escalation and a break up of negotiations.

In Sri Lanka, when it comes to leadership and cohesion within the parties, those two factors were the reason for negotiation failures according to many researchers. Although the LTTE had a powerful leader like Prabhakaran, he was not accepted as the representative of all Tamils and as Stedman argues, longtime observers of ... Sri Lanka argue that a negotiated peace remains unlikely …as long as …Prabhakaran leads the Tamil Tigers. (Stedman: 2001)  On the other hand, instead of emphasizing his determination for a peace settlement, he often mentioned that they are ready to go back to arms again if the government does not guarantee an agreement on Tamil terms. The conflict that the LTTE had with Karuna and other Tamil groups also demonstrate that there was no unity on the Tamil side of the spectrum. When it comes to the government, there was a high degree of lack of cohesion between the president and the prime minister since the political system in Sri Lanka combines features from presidential and parliamentary forms of governments. There was always the possibility that president and prime minister could easily be handled by different parties or alliances. In times of political crises the president’s taking over the key ministries, dissolving parliament when she wanted to and always making declarations saying she is not happy with the negotiations and her dictating on the third party mediation caused enormous political instability during the negotiations. The inconsistency between the president Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Wickremashinge paralyzed the healthy peace process several times. Finally in 2004 Wickremashinge’s government fell and the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), a Marxist nationalist party came to power with a more critical point of view on the peace process which did not help the negotiations to evolve. According to some researchers, for the case of Sri Lanka, a peaceful settlement required both time and stability to take on a transformational agenda through a step-by-step approach however in practice these were absent due to the President’s role which tended to be hostile to any kind of concessions. (Goodhand and Klem: 2005) The peace process might have had a chance if the government and the President were more decisive and strong. For those two conditions given by Darby, one may claim that the case of Sri Lanka did not show similarities to the case of South Africa since it was lacking high quality leaders and cohesion in the groups.

In terms of timing, one may argue that the Sri Lankan negotiators missed the window of opportunity for several times and let many chances fade away. In early 2000, when Norway was asked to mediate by both sides, war weariness was building as the clashes between the LTTE and Sri Lankan forces went on. The LTTE declared a unilateral ceasefire in December 2000, then cancelled it on April 2001 and started launching offensives again and got the control of important areas However the Sri Lankan Army fought back and both sides sustained serious injuries from those hostilities. The suicide attacks carried out by the LTTE inflicted noticeable damage on the Sri Lankan economy and when at the end of 2001 both sides were in a situation of “mutually hurting stalemate.” On the other hand, after 9/11, when the “war on terror” became the new motto of the international community, the LTTE showed its willingness to initiate peace talks due to the fear that the GOSL would gain more and more support for their cause from US and other international actors. Besides, the GOSL’s “war for peace” strategy was criticized by many human rights organizations and therefore it was beneficial for both sides to agree to negotiate with more decisive positions. The MoU, CFA and other achievements gave ground for hopes since this was considered a miracle in the Sri Lankan conflict. However, both sides used the peace process to buy time and rearm and get ready for a potential war. When the LTTE left the negotiation table in 2003, there could have been serious attempts to save the process yet there were no leader or unity in the groups that could manage to handle the situation. The second window of opportunity could have been the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004 which caused more than 30.000 deaths in the region. Both sides suffered from the disaster and it could have created a public support for cooperation and reconciliation if the leaders had used this opportunity wisely. In contrast, disagreements arose over the distribution of aid that came from the donor countries. Although the government and the LTTE agreed on the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS), it received a high degree of criticism from the JVP and Muslims and caused political instability. Therefore, Kumaratunga had to cancel the P-TOMS due to the political pressure which was perceived as a mistake for the sake of potential peace with the LTTE since after the Tsunami there was a tremendous decrease in violence. However, after the disputes over aid, the LTTE started political assassinations and used violence during the elections. The tsunami could have been an opportunity for both sides to build a new beginning with good will and trust yet it caused escalation and more violence. According to some researchers the position that Sri Lanka is in today is not a stalled peace process but an undeclared civil war. As demonstrated above, violence in Sri Lanka did not work as a catalyst for a peace settlement since this case does not fulfill the conditions suggesed by Darby. Accepting the fact that there are other variables that were effective during the process, in this paper it is claimed that those three factors were one of the explanations for the failure.

CONCLUSION

When it comes to the question that was asked in the beginning, the answer is pretty easy. There was no way for violence to work as a catalyst in the Sri Lanka case since the parties could not even come close to the definitions of the conditions given by Darby. During the peace process both sides had shifting stands and also had fractions within their own parties and internal political rivalry between the two main Sinhalese parties proved most critical in undermining substantive negotiations. Moreover, the splits in the LTTE paved the way towards more violence rather than peace. The negotiations were exclusive more than inclusive. There were many other groups who were not represented at all such as Muslims and other Tamil splinter groups. In addition to these, the government made such simple mistakes and stalled the already fragile peace process with its obsession about power asymmetry. The GOSL has never accepted the LTTE as an equal party and used every option such as the 2003 Washington meeting, to remind it to the LTTE.  The negotiations lacked sufficient impetus for a shared understanding of the nature of the conflict and both sides tried to perpetuate their own interests rather than using empathy to understand each other’s positions. The evidence shows that the cease-fire agreement remained on paper and despite some efforts most of the time both sides paid only lip service to their commitments. On the contrary, they used the peace process to buy time to rearm and get ready for a potential war.

If violence did not work as a catalyst, did it work as an obstacle? It is really hard to give a concrete answer. Although in Sri Lanka the negative effects of violence on the peace process are evident, according to the author, the relation between the violence and the other reasons for the negotiation failures constitute a vicious cycle. Violence is sometimes observed as the reason for the break up of negotiations but mostly is observed as the result of an unsuccessful peace attempt. All in all, in this paper the effects of violence during the peace process are accepted to be an obstacle for healthy peace settlements. Yet, when it comes to the reasons for the negotiation failure in Sri Lanka, violence will take its place under “cohesion problems within the groups.” Unless a certain degree of unity is reached within the groups itself and unless the degree of mistrust is decreased by more serious and committed CBM’s, violence will remain dominant in the island as an obstacle or as an outcome.

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Journal of Turkish Weekly

2 June 2008