Trapped in conflict, Sri Lanka Muslims mull action

KATTANKUDI, Sri Lanka, July 3: As violence rages between Sri Lanka's government and ethnic Tamil Tiger rebels, the island's Muslim minority says it is caught in the middle, and there is talk of an armed ''Jihad'' group emerging if war returns.

The third-largest group on an island dominated by Sinhalese Buddhists, Sri Lanka's Muslims -- who share the language of the Hindu and Christian Tamil minority -- have long had a difficult relationship with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In the 1990s, the Tigers kicked thousands of Muslims out of the northern town of Jaffna, while in the east Muslim areas were attacked and dozens killed. In the town of Kattankudi, one of the mosques still bears the bullet damage from a 1990 massacre. ''We can't live separately,'' says Mohammed Sharif Deen, 56, who survived the mosque attack by playing dead. ''They have to come and work here, we have to go to their side and sell our things. But if war comes we will fight and then we will die.'' A 2002 ceasefire halted Sri Lanka's two-decade war after some 64,000 had died. But now violence has surged again, killing more than 700 people this year -- and again the Muslims, dominant in the island's business community, fear being dragged in.

The Tigers were blamed for a grenade attack on a mosque in November that killed several people, and there have been other smaller attacks. Some Muslims fear the Tigers see their community as standing in the way of its goal of a separate ethnic Tamil homeland.

With their businesses still recovering from the 2004 tsunami, which hit the east hard, most Muslims say they simply want peace.

''We Muslims are not fighting,'' said 31-year-old fishing co-operative owner Kalender Bashir outside the ruins of his tsunami-damaged house. ''But between the LTTE and the government we are caught in the crossfire.'' RUMOURS OF JIHAD.

The Tigers have fought the government with suicide bombers, ambushes and child soldiers and Sinhalese Marxists fought a bloody insurgency against the government in the 1980s, but the Muslims have largely avoided serious political violence.

However, the rebels say the army is now arming the Muslims and a government-backed ''Jihad'' paramilitary group is already operating in the east. But analysts say there is no evidence it exists and residents say there is no armed Muslim group E-for now. ''There is a rumour of a ''jihad'','' said Muslim businessman Abdul Rafeek, sitting astride his motorbike on Kattankudi's main street as an armoured vehicle roared by. ''Not now. But in the future we may have to do like that.'' Some Muslims have joined the Home Guard, an auxiliary force under police control, and the government is starting a Muslim regiment -- although it has had a mixed reception among Muslims, some of whom feel it will be divisive.

Breakaway ex-Tiger commander Karuna Amman, whose fighters analysts say are likely government-backed and who are facing off against the mainstream LTTE in the east, says he also wants to attract Muslims to his cause.

But none of the Muslims Reuters spoke to were convinced. Karuna was still a member of the LTTE at the time of the mosque attacks that killed over 100 and the expulsion from Jaffna.

While analysts say there is no evidence that Islamist groups such as al Qaeda are operating in Sri Lanka, aid workers report a gradual rise in fundamentalism in the east. More women wear veils, and some girls have reportedly been removed from school. ''The fundamentalists are here but it is not a proper group,'' said Rafeek. ''They are a religious group -- no weapons.'' But some analysts fear that if violence worsens, then some may turn to groups like al Qaeda for arms to fight the Tigers and perhaps also the government.

''The Muslims have only to go to the right place and they get weapons,'' says Jane's Defence Weekly analyst Iqbal Athas.

REUTERS