First tsunami, now war SL survivors can't win

Vinayagapuram Camp (Sri Lanka), Dec 24: Squatting under a makeshift shelter in a refugee camp in volatile east Sri Lanka, grating coconut for a curry as monsoon rains thunder down, tsunami survivor Kamalini Kandasamy has seen it all before.

The 26-year old and her husband had expected to spend the second anniversary of the island's worst natural disaster in their rebuilt home on the tsunami-battered east coast. Instead they are on the run again -- this time from renewed civil war.

Kandasamy and her family are among thousands who have fled Tamil Tiger rebel-controlled territory in the eastern district of Batticaloa to escape the crossfire of fierce artillery battles and air raids. She paid an unimaginable price.

''When the bombs fell, I started running and fell in the shock,'' she told Reuters, tears welling in her piercing blue eyes. ''I was 9 months pregnant. I was immediately taken to hospital. My child was stillborn.'' ''We do not know what the future holds for us. Now I am told my house was damaged by shelling,'' she added. ''If peace really returns, I would prefer to go back. That's my place.'' More than 3,000 people have been killed this year in a series of air raids, ambushes, land battles and suicide attacks as the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fight a new chapter in a two-decade civil war.

The conflict has largely been confined to the northeast, where the Tigers run a de facto state under the terms of a now battered 2002 truce.

PEACE CHANCE WASTED

A golden opportunity to capitalise on the tsunami disaster as a basis for cooperation and peace, as in Indonesia's Aceh, was squandered when majority Sinhalese hardliners went to court to derail a 3 billion dollar aid-sharing pact between the state and rebels, and succeeded.

''By blocking the joint mechanism for tsunami work, the Sri Lankan government ... blocked international tsunami aid reaching our affected people,'' rebel political wing leader S P Thamilselvan said. ''Sri Lankan governments have always neglected the Tamil homeland.'' The Tigers, who say they are resuming their fight for an independent state for minority Tamils after President Mahinda Rajapakse rejected their demands for a separate homeland, have said the island is on the brink of a full-scale war.

Both military and Tigers have hampered access to conflict areas, and artillery duels have made it too dangerous for aid workers to operate, forcing many organisations to shelve or abandon tsunami projects altogether.

''The conflict has majorly disrupted tsunami rehabilitation projects due to lack of access, fear, risk,'' said Martin de Boer, who heads International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) staff in Batticaloa.

''It affects aid organisations because they have to react to an influx of internally displaced,'' he added. ''They have to choose their activities.'' Three of the Red Cross's seven planned tsunami projects in the area have been halted by the conflict.

The December 2004 tsunami hit around two-thirds of Sri Lanka's coastline, wrapping around the island as the waves travelled on to India. All along the coast, derelict houses, rubble and razed foundations still stand witness to a disaster that killed 35,000 people in Sri Lanka and around 230,000 in total.

NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

Along the palm-fringed south coast, the government's Reconstruction and Development Agency says around 98 percent of around 25,000 planned permanent homes have been completed -- though the lynchpin tourist industry there is suffering from cancellations due to the war.

In the Tiger-dominated north, the number of completed houses drops to 29 percent.

Along the coast road in the hardest-hit eastern province of Ampara, many still live in rudimentary shelters made from metal sheeting and thatched with palm fronds. Creepers and undergrowth consume tsunami-ravaged houses whose owners either abandoned them or perished.

But there are success stories.

In the eastern village of Vaddavan, which lies around six miles from forward defence lines which separate rebels from government territory, fisherman Mylvaganan Sathyamoorthy cannot believe his luck.

Sri Lanka's biggest local charity, Sarvodaya, and two Austrian non-governmental organisations, are putting the finishing touches to 142 houses they have built further inland for survivors whose coastal homes were obliterated.

''I am very happy that I am going to settle down in a house two years after the tsunami,'' he said, as builders plastered over bricks and stacked boxes containing his future bathroom and kitchen.

''This is a much more solid house than I lived in before.'' ''We are even being provided with solar energy,'' he added, gesturing to a set of solar panels to be installed on his new tiled roof. And he has plans for his old temporary shelter. ''I might open a grocery store, or perhaps a spice-grinding mill in it,'' he beamed, his wife laughing behind him.

REUTERS

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