52 ISIM REVIEW 19 / SPRING 2007 Society & the State FARZANA HANIFFA Muslims in Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict Muslims in Sri Lanka, categorized as a separate ethnic group, are Tamil speak- ing and have sometimes been claimed by Tamil nationalists to be part of the larger Tamil nation. Though publicly rejected by Muslim leaders at various historical moments, this inclusion in the Tamil nation has been attractive to some Muslims living in the Tamil majority areas of the North and East. Muslim youth of the Eastern Province, for instance, participated with Tamil groups in the early militancy against the state, and Eastern Muslim politi- cians often joined Tamil political parties to contest elections. This re- lationship, always difficult, has now deteriorated—with assistance from the state—into a complete polarization between the two com- munities. Muslims have been targeted, displaced, and dispossessed by armed actors of both the state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and recently by the LTTE breakaway faction—the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP). While there has been some improvement in recognizing Muslim grievances since the beginning of the peace process in 2002, this has not resulted in any substantial policy changes to address such grievances. The peace process has failed to take Muslims’ issues sufficiently into ac- count despite Muslim political actors being part of the government. In fact, the preamble to the ceasefire agreement, which set off the 2002–2005 peace process, referred to Muslims as a “group not directly party to the conflict.” While civil so- ciety and political actors’ agitations reversed this understanding to a certain extent, the current regime, with its pursuit of a military solution and a clear majoritarian platform has little interest in Muslim concerns. Today it seems that the meagre gains of those times may already have been lost. This article—through brief descriptions of the expulsion of 1990, the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS) of 2005, and the siege of Mutur in 2006—will trace the history of Muslim inclusion within the conflict and the peace process. The expulsion of 1990 In October 1990, all over the Northern Province, close to 75,000 Muslims were compelled to vacate their homes at gun point, hand over their belongings, and leave. 2 In Jaffna, home to a fairly affluent trader community, the LTTE called all the men to a meeting during which cadres raided their homes. At the meeting, the men were in- structed to leave their valuables behind and vacate their homes with- in two hours. Similar events happened with varying levels of brutality in the five other districts of the Northern Province. The expelled are still haunted by the manner in which they were compelled to leave, of women giving birth on the crowded boats, and of children drowning after falling overboard. Some say that the LTTE sold the abandoned goods at auctions; some say they were given away. These people lost their homes, possessions, livelihoods, communi- ties, and personal histories in one day. They left behind their belong- ings, their community, and their sense of citizenship in Sri Lanka. A generation of children, unable to complete their education, lost their futures. Today they live in over-crowded settlements in the impov- erished district of Puttalam. Their lives parallel the hundreds of thousands of Tamils and Sinhalese in the country who were also displaced and saw their lives destroyed. The Muslim experi- ence, however, has its own distinctive features, which are reflective of their “no-”place status in the Sri Lankan polity. The story of their forced exodus is not widely known. Few commenta- tors give the expulsion the attention that it merits as a highly significant historical event that changed the lives of the Muslims of the North and East. The government has neither established a commission of inquiry nor arranged special administrative provisions for the displaced. A newly established government secretariat for northern Muslims located in Puttalam may handle certain administrative matters for the commu- nity, but there has been no attempt to find a long-term solution. Six- teen years after the expulsion they are still living as displaced persons in a district other than their own, amongst those that consider them aliens. Many of the expelled Muslims fear registering themselves as residents of the Puttalam district since they might, thereby, forfeit their right to reclaim their property and resettle in the North. 3 The host community in Puttalam resents the incursion of the refugees whom they say threaten the meagre resources available in the area. The Tamil-speaking Muslims have problems accessing health care and other state amenities due to difference in language. They can- not go back to their places of origin without the consent of the LTTE, the very organization that expelled them as they fall under their de facto administrative jurisdiction. The other particularity of the suffer- ing of Muslims in Sri Lanka is that their plight does not have a place in any larger nationalist narrative—either a narrative of a liberation struggle (Tamil nationalism), or in a fight to safeguard the mother- land (Sinhala Nationalism). They remain caught in between, and the Muslim political leadership has not been successful in articulating its position in a manner independent of the two nationalisms dominant in the country. This lack of a larger narrative means that many com- mentators have treated the story of the Muslims as little more than a footnote to the conflict. The LTTE and Tamil nationalists have different levels of justifica- tion for the expulsion—some speak of security issues, others speak of Muslims as traitors to the Tamil-speaking nation. In the first flush of the 2002–2005 peace process, former LTTE political strategist Anton Balasingham stated that the expulsion was a “strategic blunder” on their part and that Muslims were free to return. 4 Tamilcelvam, LTTE political wing leader, offered an official apology to representatives of the Muslim community visiting him, and assured Muslims assistance to resettle when the North was under their administration. 5 Return- ing Muslims however, reported different levels of harassment by local carders. Today, close to 75,000 people from the North live in displace- ment in the North Western district of Puttalam with no status, limited state assistance, and barely any voting rights. Given the severe pov- erty of the area in which they are forced to live, the Muslims have be- come dependent on politicians, government functionaries, and NGOs for all elementary needs. To make matters worse, the fact that most Muslim political parties have their primary vote base in the East means that they are not es- pecially sensitive to the particularities of the northern experience. The political process is forcing “solidarity” between the Muslims of the North and the East without taking into account the differences between the regions. For instance, the polarization between Eastern Regardless of when, precisely, Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict began, this conflict is most often cast as one between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. In this bipolar understanding of the conflict, the Muslim community seems to have no place, even though Muslims constitute close to 40 percent of the population in the conflict- affected Eastern Province and have been expelled from the Northern Province. This article describes the plight of these Muslims and analyzes the discursive and political powers by which Muslims are marginalized. 1 Sixteen years after the expulsion they are still living as displaced persons in a district other than their own …