Monica Toft has studied how wars end. She's author of the book, 'The Fog of Peace'. She tells anchor Marco Werman that although Sri Lanka's government declared an official end to its 27 year old civil war with Tamil rebels this week, the government's triumphal may be unwarranted.
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MARCO WERMAN: The civil war in the south Asian nation of Sri Lanka has ended. For nearly three decades the Tamil Tigers or the L-T-T-E have been fighting for a homeland for the mainly Hindu Tamil minority. The war killed more than 70,000 people, but government forces prevailed this week. Today, Sir Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapakse told the parliament, "We all must now live as equals in this free country." Monica Toft doesn't know what will happen in post-civil war Sri Lanka. But she has written extensively about the aftermath of other civil wars. She's the author of the forthcoming book, Securing the Peace. Now, Monica, help us out here. The Rebel Commander is killed and the 30-year-old civil war Sri Lanka is over. It just seems so easy. Can it be?
MONICA TOFT: This has been a military victory that's been quite painful to achieve. The L-T-T-E seems to have been routed. They have got the major commanders killed. They've basically sort of squeezed them between the coast and a very small strip of land and the final offensive seemed to have succeeded in routing the rebels. And the fact that the L-T-T-E actually surrendered. "They say we are defeated. We surrender." Is a very good sign, because they're accepting defeat.
WERMAN: So as you watch what happens with events in Sri Lanka in the coming months, what are you going to be looking out for? What factors do you thing will be kind of the most crucial ones to determine whether this has ended or whether there's still kind of like something going on, some rebel activity going on, on simmer?
TOFT: Well, I wouldn't be surprised if we have some. We talk about, you know, spoilers, people who, you know, operate doing some terrorist attacks here and there. But in terms of broad military offensives on the part of the rebel organization, the L-T-T-E, I don't expect that. A lot of this is going to rest and it does rest on the shoulders of the government under the president Rajapakse, whether he is vain glorious and uses the victory for popular support or whether he sort of humbles himself in the Sri Lanka nation to say, "We do have a large minority population and we need to give them proper political and economic rights." I mean, there is a reason why this rebel organization was in existence and it's that the Sri Lankan Communists have felt as if they were second class citizens for many decades.
WERMAN: This was, after all, a civil war in a nation state. I mean, will there be a problem of kind of like the same old divisions remaining?
TOFT: Yes. These are very difficult and very deep cleavages. This did not start in 1983. When independence came and actually even before independence, there was a good deal of resentment among Tamils that the state was becoming Sinhalese. Sinhalo was made the official language. Buddhism was made the preferred religion. So these are deep seated concerns among the Tamil community.
WERMAN: As an expert on civil wars, Monica Toft, do you challenge the commonly accepted idea that negotiated settlements are the best way to end civil wars. So what do you make of this particular ending and what intrigues you about it?
TOFT: Historically speaking when I talk about that, I want to talk from 1940. Most civil wars have ended by military victory. About 60% but since the end of the Cold War, actually military victories have become fewer and if we look another most recent example is the War in Chechnya with Russia. And so, the international community has really pushed negotiated settlements. They tried it in Sri Lanka. They tried multiple cease fires. The Norwegian government actually was quite involved in it. But the government and the Tamils reneged on each of those cease fires, and when the government started this offensive in November, actually it came under a lot of heat from the international community because of the sense that negotiated settlements are the way to go. Basically, the president thumbed his nose at the international community and said, "No, we've been fighting this for 26 years. We have a strategy to defeat the Tamil and we're going to do it." And in a sense looking at scholarship and research, maybe the decision was a correct one. The question is, "What does he do now? Does he recognize the rights of this population because he does now hold all the cards as a result?"
WERMAN: So finally what do you think real reconciliation should like at this point in order for the peace to keep?
TOFT: That's a tough one. I mean, real reconciliation it has to be forthcoming from both sides. Both sides are going to have to come to terms with their responsibility in what led up to the conflict and eventually the war. And that's a very difficult thing for populations to do, to admit that they were, in part, guilty for what happened and what transpired.
WERMAN: Monica Duffy Toft is an Associate Professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. She is the author of Securing the Peace. Thanks as always, Monica.
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