War not the answer, say weary Sri Lankan troops

Trincomalle district (Sri Lanka), Aug 28: Scanning the horizon as Tamil Tiger rebels fire mortar bombs towards their makeshift camp, troops in this corner of northeast Sri Lanka say renewed civil war is futile.

''No-one can win the war. It is a guerrilla war, so we can't win,'' said one officer freshly drafted in with reinforcements to the restive district of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka's northeast as mortar fire boomed from nearby rebel lines.

''They are inside the jungle. If it was a conventional war, then it might be different.'' Hundreds of soldiers and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters were killed and many more injured during August, the worst fighting since a 2002 truce halted two decades of civil war. Now there is deadlock.

''The LTTE are attacking us, so we are acting in self defence,'' the officer said. ''We came to protect the people and the peace accord.'' Troops approached by Reuters refused to give their names for fear of being disciplined.

As the officer spoke, soldiers bathed in a muddy stream running beside the camp, washing their hair with bars of soap as troops in camouflage body armour and carrying assault rifles jumped out of locally-made armoured personnel carriers.

Across the road, hundreds of residents displaced from shelled villages are camped in tents and palm frond-thatched huts.

Bunkers made from green sandbags, railway sleepers and palm tree trunks pepper the main supply route leading to the nearby war-scarred eastern town of Mutur, -- now a ghost town on the edge of a strategic harbour 160 miles northeast of the capital Colombo after tens of thousands of residents fled.

Sick of Killing

''We don't like fighting. We don't like war. We like to have peace,'' said another officer who fought a fierce battle for control of a disputed water sluice that triggered the latest fighting, which Nordic monitors say has left the truce dead on the ground. ''I'm sick of my boys being killed.'' ''I carry a Buddha statue with me. I don't like to kill. But we have to fight. I'm doing it on behalf of innocent people, not only the Sinhalese but also the Tamils,'' he added, sweat beading on his forehead under the burning sun. ''But people are now getting water because I fought to open that sluice.''

The government and the Tigers each accuse the other of trying to force a full-blown war, and diplomats see little sign of compromise vital to hopes of jump starting peace talks. The rebels, who demand a separate homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east, have pulled out of talks indefinitely.

''War is not the solution. We need peace negotiations, a settlement,'' the officer added.

Sri Lanka's protracted conflict had already killed more than 65,000 people even before the latest bout of war.

Others want to take the war to the rebels.

''It's not the army who started the war. The LTTE made the army fight back. We had to, or we would have been taken prisoner,'' said one corporal as he patrolled through the ruins of a village the foes battled over for four days.

Children picked up bits of mortar bombs which destroyed a local mosque roof and now lie scattered in the dusty street.

''Even during the peace talks army guys were still killed,'' he added, walking on with his unit. ''What talks? We've just got to hammer them,'' he whispered to a fellow soldier.

Reuters