More than three years after winning the war against the
LTTE, the Sri Lankan Army retains an overwhelming presence in the North
and East of the island, deploying 16 out of its 19 divisions in the
Tamil-dominated regions.
Information available with The Hindu
indicates that besides three divisions in Jaffna, there are three each
in Killinochchi and Mullaithivu, while five divisions are stationed in
Vavuniya. Another two divisions are deployed in the East. Three
divisions are headquartered in southern Sri Lanka.
The
information, from an internal Sri Lankan military document showing the
deployment in a series of maps for a PowerPoint presentation, is for the
month of June 2012, but there have been no significant changes since
then.
A former Indian Army officer, Colonel (retd.)
R. Hariharan, who was with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri
Lanka, and with whom The Hindu shared the information for an
assessment, said the manner in which the troops were spread out in the
entire North and East was suggestive more of an Army in ‘operational
readiness’ than in post-conflict repose.
The
colour-coded maps show the wide spread of the battalions that make up
each brigade in every division. The document does not mention the exact
numbers of soldiers, and any estimate of numbers of troops has to be
based on what is known about the Sri Lankan Army’s divisional strength.
A
Sri Lankan division is smaller than that of most other armies, and has
between 6,000 and 7,000 soldiers. Taking the lower number, that would
mean that 85,000-86,000 soldiers are at present in the North and East.
This number does not include the separate deployment of a Task Force in
the East, and of the Navy and the Air Force.
The
continued military presence in Tamil areas is viewed as hampering
post-conflict ethnic reconciliation. The
Army is entirely Sinhalese, and
the people of the North are almost entirely Tamil.
India
may raise the issue during President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s September
20-21 visit to India. The Sri Lankan President will meet Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh on Thursday and will also call on President Pranab
Mukherjee.
Sri Lanka has defended its right to deploy
its Army where it chooses within its boundaries and stressed that these
decisions were based on national security assessments.
In
a recent interview to an Indian newspaper, Mr. Rajapaksa said that for a
country recovering from three decades of armed conflict, there had been
a steady progress in troop withdrawal from northern Sri Lanka, but
keeping the military there was also a measure of abundant caution
against the reactivation of militancy in the region.
The number of troops in Jaffna had gone down, he said, from 27,000 in December 2009 to 15,000 in June 2012.
He
also said troops were necessary for “development work” in the northern
Sri Lanka. But it is precisely the role of the Army in “developing” the
North and the East that is seen as a matter of concern.
Ahilan Kadirgamar, a democracy activist in Sri Lanka, told The Hindu
that the army’s role in civil administration in the North and the East
was a matter of concern, but could not be separated from the
militarisation of Sri Lanka in the post-war years.
“Sri
Lanka, as a whole, needs a debate on demilitarisation and a change in
the role of the military in the governance of the country for the
situation in the war- affected regions to return to normalcy,” he said.
The
de-militarisation of the North and the East is one of the benchmarks
against which Sri Lanka’s compliance with the United Nations Human Right
Council resolution will be assessed.
The March 2012
Human Right Council (HRC) resolution requires Sri Lanka to implement the
recommendations of its own Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation
Commission’s report. One of the LLRC’s key recommendations was that the
government must significantly reduce military presence in the North and
the East.
There had been several depositions to the
Commission that the military was a parallel authority in the region,
more powerful than the civilian administration. The commission heard
that though the military’s help in development activities, like
road-building, had been useful, their continued presence was a source of
constant insecurity to the local people.
The
military’s occupation of private lands that were converted to High
Security Zones during the decades of war has prevented resettlement of
the original owners.
India is in the chair of the
troika appointed by the Council to assess Sri Lanka’s progress in the
resolution’s requirements. Spain and Benin are the other two countries.
The troika is to liaise with Sri Lanka and write a report that will be
debated at the review sessions in Geneva in the first week of November
this year.
While Mr. Rajapaksa has had recent
meetings with Dr. Singh on the sidelines of the NAM and Rio Summits, the
two leaders are expected to hold substantive discussions for the first
time since the President’s visit to New Delhi in June 2010.
In
these two years, the atmospherics have changed. An Indian official said
the relations between the two countries were “intense” and require
“management.”
Several irritants have crept into the
friendly ties over the past three years. For India, these would include
what is seen by New Delhi as foot-dragging by the Rajapaksa government
over resolving the Tamil question, and the perceived close relations
between Sri Lanka and China.
For Sri Lanka, what
rankled most was India’s support for the HRC resolution, which pulled up
the Rajapakasa government for its failure to address human rights
violations and other issues arising out of the final battle against the
LTTE in May 2009; and, since then, the rising anti-Sri Lanka sentiment
in Tamil Nadu, culminating recently in an attack on pilgrims.
New Delhi sees Colombo’s subsequent advisory to its nationals against travelling in Tamil Nadu as an “over-reaction.”
Sources
in the Indian government said all these issues would likely come up for
discussion at the meeting between Dr. Singh and Mr. Rajapaksa.
On
a political settlement of the Tamil issue, India has been emphasising
the need to demilitarise Sri Lanka’s North and East and hold provincial
council elections in the North as early as possible so as to hand over
governance to elected civilians.
After his meetings
in New Delhi on Thursday, Mr. Rajapaksa is scheduled to fly the next day
to Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, where he will participate in the
foundation-laying ceremony of the International Buddhist University. He
will return to Sri Lanka on Friday.
