After one cease-fire, two formal peace talks, three wars, we wade deeper into Eelam war IV, and we’re back at square one. Or is it we never left?

Over 2000 deaths post-2006. Post-tsunami, over 700,000 refugees upon a decimated Northeast bloated with bone and shades of displacement. Unidentified gunmen, parcel bombs, white vans, lurk in every shadow. From Devakumaran to Senpathi, infants in Kayts to civilians in Dehiwala, the value of human life varies inversely with rising prices of petrol and rice, rates of inflation and centralization. And a panoply of issues like the 17th amendment or justice for 17 aid workers dangling a top Temple Trees’ to-do list, in the contemporary context, no more a blunt sword of Damocles, unable …

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In Vilunthamavadi, one fisherman said he saw a baby goat tied to the sand swept atop a 100-foot high water tank, 50 meters away in the blink of an eye. In P.R. Puram, another said the second wave, blurred ocean and sky in a sheet of indigo-noire, and the third wave’s aftermath left human and cattle corpses strewn in coconut trees, on the beach, on tea shop roofs, over potholes, in the ponds, swallowing villagers like a hungry elephant, its tide dragging them out to sea like the elephant’s trunk while it eats.

The 2004 tsunami, causing much devastation to coastal districts of South India, almost 4 years later, still afflicts a string of Panchayats along Tamil Nadu’s southeastern coast. Local …

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“There will be a political vacuum in the ethnic relations of this country as long as devolution is a non-starter, a mere word in the south. Despite the balance of forces, the cease-fire cannot survive for long in this political vacuum.”- Dharmeratnam Sivaram, 25.8.2004, ISGA Bashing: Much Ado about Nothing

Almost three years later, all’s manifest. Optics vis-à-vis the humanitarian dimension, are nothing short of egregious. The 2002 cease-fire agreement, as legit today as Eelam IV is undeclared, has taken shrapnel in every clause but 4.4, as the SLA pushes North, violence of the Tigers remaining silent, docile, implying guerilla strategy, weakness, or both.

In the contemporary context, there’s no trust between the parties or mutually recognized platform for talks, thus no …

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