What Does It Look Like To Win a War on Terror?In Sri Lanka, it's fewer suicide bombers, a real estate boom, and hundreds of thousands of Tamils still packed into overcrowded camps.
Updated Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009, at 3:11 PM ET
TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka—As I almost dozed off admiring the verdant landscape—a lush tableau of thick jungle and terraced paddy fields that calls to mind Raiders of the Lost Ark—a soldier rapped his knuckles against the car window and ordered us to pull over. After a quick search, we were back on our way. Three or four military checkpoints later, we arrived at the port city of Trincomalee. Buddha statues and bell-shaped stupas gave way to gas stations displaying the visages of Vishnu and Jesus.
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StumbleUponI traveled to this predominantly Tamil pocket of Sri Lanka out of curiosity: I wanted to see what victory in a war on terror looked like. After all, that is what the government claims to have accomplished in May. In fact, President Mahinda Rajapaksa is so confident of victory that he has already turned his attention to wiping out drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, just as he did the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
It was an elusive peace. Like other fronts in the war on terror—Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind—the war had been declared unwinnable. Numerous cease-fires and dialogue attempts failed. Even Mother Nature proved incapable of pacifying the island. The brief truce after the December 2004 tsunami never quite stuck. No, it took a major offensive that pinned down the LTTE's top leadership before finally wiping them out, an attack that reached a crescendo in May 2009 and also reportedly killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians in the process.
Sri Lanka may have been just one front against terrorism—a conflict driven more by ethnic nationalism than religious extremism—yet it represents a microcosm of the broader war on terror. A heavily armed transnational actor with a vast network of financial resources abroad? Check. A willingness to attack civilian populations? Check. Training camps to turn impressionable children into suicide bombers? Check. A charismatic, elusive leader at the top? Check.
There was no one cause of the war. After its independence in 1948, the Sinhalese majority resented that the British colonialists had given minority Tamils, most of them scattered across the north, preferential treatment and higher-paying jobs. That bred ethnic nationalism and discriminatory practices, which fed into Tamil desires for self-rule. It also fueled the Tamil Tigers' early 1980s campaign of terror against Sinhalese civilians and government outposts, with suicide bombings their signature trademark. All told, the 26-year war left more than 60,000 dead on both sides and many more displaced.
Back in Trinco, I saw no "Mission Accomplished" banners. The closest thing was a motivational slogan outside a Dutch fort that read: "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going." Such a chirpy message might seem odd in a former war zone, but locals here are eager to put the war behind them and "get going," as it were.
Outside a downtown clock tower shaped like a lighthouse, men in colorful sarongs and sandals flashed toothy grins. A dog missing one eye limped past. Flies swarmed over a basket of fish. "Trinco is famous for its flies," said the fish seller, smiling.
Trinco is also famous for its natural harbor, one of the world's largest. Where ships used to ferry in arms to the Tigers, wooden fishing vessels now bob along its tranquil waters. One of the island's best-kept secrets, a narrow stretch of golden sand called Nilaveli Beach, can be found just north of here. A few guesthouses are popping up along its virgin coastline. "With the war over, Tamils are coming back and going into real estate," A.S. Jayawardena, a former governor of Sri Lanka's central bank, told me.
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Sri Lanka was a civil war, more akin to the US civil war than to the current US "war on terror". It is true that the Tigers, and the government too, used terror as a weapon of war. The same was true in the US civil war, or just about any war I can think of.
The distinction is important. First, in Sri Lanka, one possible--even perhaps reasonable--solution was partition of the country, a solution that would have suited the Tamils but not, apparently, the rest of the country. The parallel with the US civil war is almost too obvious to need pointing out. Second, the military targets were clear and certainly within reach: the Tamil Tiger army stationed in the northern part of the island. They were defeated, eventually, by a brutal but straightforward military campaign. Again, I hardly need point out the similarity with the US civil war.
By contrast, the so-called (not any more, at least officially) "war on terror" had about as much to do with war in this conventional sense as the "war on drugs". We are not fighting a standing army that occupies a piece of land. We are fighting organized criminals scattered here and there, potentially pretty much anywhere in the world. The inability of the Bush administration, numerous pundits, and the great American voter to make this obvious distinction is one of the main factors that got us into the Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire.
Beehner's perpetuation of this error does him and the CFR no credit.
-- lloyd667
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As someone who returned recently from Sri Lanka, I can relate to much of the content of your article. Thanks for keeping the description well balanced.
I see the need for reconciliation of people who are stuck in camps. At the same time, I see the government's need to clear the areas of unexploded ordinances and land mines before people are allowed back to their homes. If not, the first time a person gets injured or killed, the same critics will bash Sri Lanka for not protecting it's people. Strangely, a good number of western journalists do not seem to see this truth.
As your article seems to suggest, I think the world must give this country a bit more time before passing judgment. They have achieved something that seems to elude much more advanced militaries perhaps through sheer desperation and innovative anti-insurgency strategies. Contrary to what some commenters here seems to think, this was a two folded war with a classic insurgency coupled with conventional war. The Sri Lankan government had a fight and defeat both at the same time.
-- Y.B.
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