A war weary population has demonstrated a determination to stand up to LTTE
President Chandrika Kumaratunga chose her words carefully when she told a Colombo May Day rally that Sri Lanka´s civil war, now dragging on in its thirteenth year, "can be ended" in six months. Too often have leaders of government, both past and present, made pronouncements about a quick end of the conflict, only to have to eat crow. One hopes President Kumaratunga knows what she is talking about, and there are, indeed, indications that her forecast has some basis.
The optimism comes in the wake of Riviresa 1 and 2, the code names (meaning ´sunshine´) for the two operations carried out by the Sri Lankan army in the northern Jaffna peninsula. Riviresa 1 ended with the taking of the capital city of the rebel-controlled north. The price was heavy, with some 500 soldiers and many more Tigers killed, and by the time the lion flag was hoisted over Jaffna in December, it had become a ghost town. The Tigers had either coerced or persuaded the residents to abandon the city before the troops marched in.
Although less dramatic than Riviresa 1, the second operation was cheap in terms of lives and limbs. Even more indicative of success was the fact that the population did not flee as the military campaign progressed. In Thenmarachchi and Vadamarachchi, two densely populated suburbs of Jaffna that the government was seeking to re-take, the population stayed put. The residents of Valikamam, who had abandoned their homes during Riviresa 1, began returning in large numbers. The government, quoting the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), estimated that as many as 250,000 were back at Valikamam and many were still returning in the first week of May.