New Sri Lanka Fighting Puts Tsunami Aid At Risk

by Amantha Perera

(IPS) VAHAREI -- This fishing village in eastern Sri Lanka, in territory controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels, had been enjoying the precious breathing space made possible by the three-year-old ceasefire in the ethnic conflict.

After 10 years, the absence of open war after the February 2002 truce allowed a semblance of normalcy in this village in this South Asian island nation.

Public transport was restored between the government-held areas and rebel territory, easing the movement of people. Vaharei's fishermen could go out to sea without fear that they would either confront the rebel Sea Tiger boats or those of the Sri Lankan Navy.

The biggest symbol of Vaharei's resurgence was the new hospital complex with its entrance looking out to the sea. Constructed with grants by United Nations and other agencies, the hospital was to have been handed over to the village in February this year.

But the Dec. 26. 2004 tsunami brought the new hospital to the ground.

The damage suffered by the stillborn Vaharei hospital has been estimated at 145 million rupees (almost $1.5 million), according to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition. The same post-tsunami report said that damages to health care facilities in the Tiger-held Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu administrative districts farther north reached more than $4.5 million.

A month after the tsunami, a group of medics from the Italian Red Cross set up a field hospital in the compound that was to have housed the new hospital.

"We will be here at least for another six months," Roberto Balaessefrelli, head of the field hospital, said in March. By it is unlikely that the any permanent hospital would be constructed, and no reconstruction work has started.

Even if the buildings are set up, the government would find it difficult to locate qualified professionals to staff the hospital. The Italians still do not have a single local working with them, other than those in administrative or translation work. "We are looking for local nurses, but we cannot find any," Balaessefrelli said.

The lack of trained professionals is not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka's conflict, which has led to the deaths of more than 64,000 people. After 20 years of war between Tiger rebels seeking a homeland for minority Tamils in this majority Sinhalese country, many have migrated to the south or left the country altogether.

Even if the Italians extended their stay, there would be other problems. The Sri Lankan military has raized concerns that the field hospitals in territory controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tigers are officially known, could give them an advantage in the battlefield.

But whether the hospital comes up or not does not mean much for some. Forty-five year-old widow Kasumathi Thangamani, who has lived all her life at Panichchankerni, south of Vaharei, feels that the tsunami has set her life back by much more than 10 years.

Although one of her children was injured during the conflict, the ceasefire gave Thangamani the opportunity to put up a brick house with the help of a local charity -- until the tsunami wrecked it.

"Now it's all gone, the waves came and I ran, and now nothing is here," she said of her new house. Only the foundation was left by the tsunami. "I don't know how I am going to rebuild this," said Thangamani, who supplements a 100 rupee ($1) monthly government dole by helping out on the beach.

In the area ravaged by the waves around Vaharei referred to as Koralai Paththu North, 2,887 houses were rendered useless. Of the 4,154 houses there, only 431 escaped any damage from the waves. According to government statistics, 3,497 families lost their homes.

More than two months after the tsunami, no reconstruction work has commenced in the area.

Because of its unique location -- Vaharei is a fault line in the conflict between the government and the Tigers and has now been hit by the tsunami -- it posed quite a few unique challenges to aid workers.

There was the danger that mines and unexploded devices had been shifted by the waves. "There are some new mines that are very small and made of plastic, they look like toys. They are not very heavy and could have been easily shifted by the waves," said T Logitha, a Sarvodaya worker involved in the welfare center at Panichchankerni.

Roads to places like Vaharei have also deteriorated through years of conflict, adding to the challenges of post-tsunami reconstruction.

The complex politics in the east stemming from the ethnic conflict -- violence has been rising between the Tamil Tigers and a breakaway group as well as clashes with other Tamil rival groups -- is also hampering relief work.

The Tigers designated the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) to carry out the bulk of the relief work in Tamil-dominated areas. However, the government and other rival Tamil political parties allege that the TRO is a Tiger front and prevents others from carrying out effective relief work.

"The TRO is not allowing us to do any work," said S Baheerathan of the People's Liberation Organization of Tamileelam (PLOTE), a rival Tamil political party operating from Batticaloa.

"The people who have been affected by the tsunami are frustrated by the continuous killings by the gunmen in the districts of Batticaloa and (the adjoining) Ampara. People come to us complaining that these violent acts are committed by the LTTE," Ira Thurairathin, national organizer of the Eelam Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF-Pathmanabha faction) in Batticaloa, another rival Tamil party, said.

But Steen Joergensen, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission district head for Batticaloa, said: "To be honest, we don't know who is behind these things."

Anubmaran, head of the LTTE office in government-controlled Batticaloa town, said that no one was being prevented from carrying out relief work.

The east remains an area to watch -- civilians are caught in between as Tigers battle other Tamil groups, and in the wake of the killings that followed a breakaway by its former eastern commander, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, alias Karuna, in March 2004. He has since defected to government-held areas in April 2004 and has remained underground, although killings of LTTE and breakaway figures continue.

The killing of the former head of the LTTE office in Batticaloa in July started off a series of tit- for-attacks between the Tigers and their rivals. Since then, only once have the attacks subsided, in the wake of the tsunami, only to resume in February.

The highest-ranking LTTE leader to be killed during the ceasefire is the Tigers' political head for the East, Eliathamby Lingarasa alias Kaushalyan, gunned down on Feb. 7. On Mar. 21, Mangalan Master, a top Karuna lieutenant, was ambushed and killed.

It is unclear how long would tsunami relief operations can be in place and how far can the relief effort reach, under rising tensions. One attack, not to mention shellfire, can drive aid convoys scampering out of affected areas.

The air around Batticaloa is pregnant with an all-out battle for supremacy between the Tigers and Karuna loyalists. The Sri Lankan military reports that the Tigers have deployed new brigades recently, and says it too has added troops into the east.

Meantime, civilians -- who are tired of decades of conflict, have yet to reap the full peace dividend promized by the ceasefire and are hard put thinking of the future after the December tsunami -- feel even more down and out.

"People say that they feel like they are the worst. They say that they have always been targeted by the gods," Sarvodaya aid worker Logitha said. "They get everything here, the war and tsunami. The town people were at least spared the war."