Sri Lanka Goodbye -- and Good Riddance

By Lisa Beyer

When Indian peacekeeping forces arrived in Sri Lanka nearly three years ago to try to end a brutal civil war, exultant crowds greeted them with flowers and handshakes. But when the last batch of 2,000 soldiers trooped onto a waiting ship at the eastern port of Trincomalee last week, completing a six- month withdrawal of 70,000 men, not a single civilian showed up to bid them goodbye. If the locals had anything to say to the "peace-keepers," whose presence brought not peace but one of the bloodiest chapters in Sri Lanka's already violent history, it was more like good riddance. Said A. Sivalingam, a retired senior government official in Trincomalee: "We don't know what the future will bring, but we are glad the Indians have gone."

The final exit of the Indian forces has defused one of Sri Lanka's most combustible issues. But the pullout also created a power vacuum in the island's north and east that was quickly filled by the militants the Indians had been fighting, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who have yet to renounce their goal of a separate state for the country's minority Tamils. For now, the separatists and the central government in Colombo are working in concert for peace, but their alliance is anything but stable.

Meanwhile, Indian military leaders were pondering why things had gone so wrong in their rough equivalent of America's debacle in Viet Nam. Invited into Sri Lanka by then President J.R. Jayewardene, the Indian army's original mission was to collect arms from Tamil militants, who had been trained and equipped by India in the first place. In exchange, Jayewardene promised that the 2 million Tamils, who have suffered discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese (11.8 million), would be given more autonomy over a newly created Northeastern province, where they predominate. But when the Tigers refused to give up the fight, the Indians became embroiled in a guerrilla war that left 6,000 civilians, 1,200 Indian soldiers and 800 Tiger fighters dead. "It was none of our business to send in our army, and when we did, we were so ignorant of the realities on the ground," lamented an Indian major general last week. Pointing to a copy of historian Barbara Tuchman's book on misguided military adventures, The March of Folly -- from Troy to Vietnam, he said, "We can add Sri Lanka to that."

India's presence in Sri Lanka's northeast inadvertently brought even greater misery to the country's south. There, the extremist People's Liberation Front (J.V.P.), a Sinhalese chauvinist group, protested the foreign intervention with a barrage of murders and strikes that created near anarchy. The government replied by dispatching death squads to assassinate suspected J.V.P. cadres. The retaliation campaign worked -- since late last year the J.V.P. has been virtually inactive -- but at great cost. In all, some 17,000 people died in the attacks and counterattacks.

Pressured by Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who succeeded Jayewardene in 1989, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi agreed last year to withdraw Indian troops. The departure was hastened by Gandhi's ouster in elections last November. His successor, V.P. Singh, takes a less muscular approach to foreign policy. Said a senior aide to Singh: "We are glad to get out. We were not wanted there."

With the foreigners gone, Premadasa's government and the Tigers are stripped of the shared mission that brought them together last summer. What's more, the future is mined with potential conflicts. Colombo, for example, wants the Tigers to disarm before elections are held later this year for the Northeastern Provincial Council. Because they have both systematically demolished rival Tamil groups and gained credibility for fighting the Indians, the Tigers are almost certain to win the balloting. But they are loath to surrender their weapons for fear of being attacked by government troops. In addition, it remains to be seen how long an organization that has waged a war for secession can get along with a central government that objects to it.

One development that has improved the odds for peace is Colombo's acceptance that it must genuinely redress discrimination against the Tamils. "The President is absolutely committed to devolving power to the minorities," says Education Minister A.C.S. Hameed. Premadasa's administration is, among other things, drafting legislation that will ensure all ethnic groups a proportionate share of government appointments and promotions.

The current spirit of conciliation, however fragile it may be, has made many Sri Lankans philosophical about their country's unhappy experience with Indian troops. "It was the great hubris that put everybody in their place," says Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan political scientist. "India realized the limitations of hegemonistic ambitions, the Tigers realized the limitations of armed conflict, and the Sri Lankan government realized the danger of keeping its society divided." Now the challenge is to make sure those lessons are not forgotten.

With reporting by Anita Pratap/Trincomalee