Sri Lanka - The Country

Perhaps in no other insurgency in the world are the foes so anal about body counts as in Sri Lanka's bitter 16-year civil war. Each day brings not only bombings, suicide attacks and jungle battles to the headlines of Sri Lanka's newspapers, but also the number of folks who were whacked in the attacks.

Daily, the numbers rack up like computer ATP rankings-300 rebels dead, 500 injured; 25 government troops dead, 73 injured, and so on. Rather than fighting, the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) spend most of their time-thanks to their London PR office-in a media battle with the Colombo government disputing the body count. Both sides in the conflict steadfastly refuse to let DP help with the math. Journalists aren't allowed to cover this little civil war. DP went in only to cool our heels watching fire-walking performances for tourists. However, no matter whose calculator is on the blink, one thing is for sure: some 55,000 Sri Lankans have been killed in this inglorious ethnic conflict since 1983. The LTTE says it has lost only about 10,000 soldiers in 16 years. As usual it is civilians that make up the bulk of the casualty list.

The bitter conflict in Sri Lanka hasn't only claimed the lives of combatants and innocent civilians. It can also chalk up a president, the Navy commander, the government's opposition leader and the husband of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, not to mention India's Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

Just when things seem to be going the government's way, the pesky Tigers blow a few Sri Lankan navy ships out of the water, lay siege to major army bases. and retake strategic towns along the Jaffna Road, the country's most important artery. Or, of course, they also revert to their time-tested tradition of car-bombing Colombo skyscrapers into tiny glass shards, shredding a couple of hundred innocents in the process. These guys make Northern Ireland's IRA look like a bunch of schoolkids with scraped knees pounding caps with a rock.

Perhaps even more ingrained into our memories than tattered duchesses staggering half-naked and bloodied out of Harrods-or body parts twitching on the street alongside a blown-up Kosovo bus-are scenes of downtown Colombo, ripe with screaming Sinhalese, fresh from amputations they hadn't paid for. The glass is falling like a hard rain, unheard by the hundreds whose eardrums have exploded like an aerosol can tossed into a fire.

Although the Sinhalese and Tamils have been at odds with each other for more than 2,000 years, much of the tension and fighting that has gripped the island has occurred only in recent years. The fighting began in earnest after a Tamil Tiger ambush of an army patrol in the Jaffna area in 1983. Sinhalese all over the island then went on a rampage for the next three days, murdering and looting Tamils and burning down their villages. Perhaps 2,000 Tamils were killed in the uprising.

The north and the east of the island have been war zones for the better part of 14 years. Although areas in the south are still relatively safe, nowhere on the island is actually Tiger-free. The former LTTE "capital" of Jaffna was taken by government troops on December 5, 1995. The entire Jaffna peninsula was wrested by the army in May 1996. But the rebellion continues. Even visiting the ruins at Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa is risky. The Batticaloa region remains the Tamil Tigers' principal area for staging operations in the south.

President Kumaratunga, during her election campaign in 1994, promised to find a peaceful means of ending the war, and the government offered a proposal for "devolution" to the Tigers, granting Tamil provinces in the north and east nearly complete autonomy. The government move was lauded both internationally, by moderate Tamils, and by Sri Lanka's imposing and Tiger-backing neighbor, India. But a restless military persuaded Kumaratunga, whose ruling coalition party had a majority of only one vote, to launch an attack on Jaffna and the north on October 17, 1995. Government forces were spectacularly successful in capturing Jaffna in December, but took heavy losses. According to the government, 500 soldiers died while nearly 2,000 Tigers were killed. The guerrillas, of course, claimed the reverse figures in their continuing war of body counts.

By 1988, the entire country was in turmoil and the economy was crippled. In 1999, Government forces had increased tenfold (to 126,000 soldiers) since 1983 to battle the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers, or LTTE). More than 55,000 people have died since 1983. The Tigers have been pushed back into the jungle where leader Velupillai Prabhakaran vows to continue their fight. President Kumaratunga claimed in January 1996 that the war would be won in 12 months. She was wrong. Today, more than 6 percent of Sri Lanka's gross domestic product is shoveled into the 16-year-old civil war. In May 1996, government forces took the Jaffna peninsula. But it hardly declawed the Tigers. In 1996 and 1997, the LTTE rocked the capital with a series of massive bomb blasts, including the Central Bank and the World Trade Center.

And the Tigers didn't lick their wounds simply by trashing a few buildings in the capital. They've continued to be a formidable military force in the field. In July 1996, LTTE forces besieged the key northern military base of Mullaittivu about 170 miles north of Colombo. They took the base on July 22 after a five-day siege, where some 1,400 government troops were killed. Although the government claimed the base was still in government hands, Tamil Tiger spokeswoman Helen Whitehead told DP in London a rather different story: "We have taken the base at Mullaittivu," Whitehead said. The siege marked the bloodiest fighting of the conflict. And just to keep Colombo on its toes, two LTTE bombs aboard a commuter train in the capital killed nearly 70 innocents on July 24 that same year. In December of 1999 the president was barely missed being blown to bits.