(Maya Mirchandani is Senior Editor, Foreign Affairs - NDTV)
20-odd kilometres north of Jaffna, the coastal village of Ilaivalai, quiet against the gentle waves of the Palk Straits with tiny, traditional fishing boats and their empty nets drying on a beach still patrolled by the Sri Lankan army, is a leitmotif for the story Sri Lanka's war-ravaged North tells today.
Six years after the war against the LTTE ended, Jaffna's economy, largely rural (agriculture and fisheries based) and heavily aided, is floundering. It is no surprise then that the issue of Indian fishermen entering the Palk Strait with their trawlers has become such an important political issue between India and Sri Lanka.
The TNA's Member of Parliament, MA Sumanthiran, says they welcome the emotional support from Tamil Nadu, "but at the same time, we urge them to consider our stand and not strike a discordant voice. We have clearly articulated a position of a political solution within an undivided country. They must realize if they are to be supportive of us, they should support what we want." And an important part of what they want is the return of livelihoods and incomes for Jaffna's local population.
To the visitor, Jaffna today is a different city altogether. While reminders of the war can be found around every corner - bullets lodged in old walls, burnt plots of land still waiting to be cleaned up amongst some examples - the city looks new in many parts. New malls and hospitals, good roads and many of Sri Lanka's biggest banks with swank offices greet the eye. Many of its residents admit the road network is the Rajapakse government's singular contribution to post-war reconstruction in Jaffna. But because this was done through foreign aid or external contracts and labour who came in, worked and left, these projects haven't generated either jobs or incomes in the region.
In fact, land - its ownership and the issue of its return from the Lankan army - is a major rallying point for the people of Jaffna. 6,500 acres were taken by the military during the war. The demand for Colombo to release and return the lands to their rightful owners is as loud as the demand for war crimes investigations. The new Sirisena government in Colombo pledged a release of 1, 000 acres as soon as they were elected, but Sumanthiran tells us "villagers have been taken to review only 200 -odd acres of that land just two weeks ago. So the actual return seems to still be a long way off."
Now, many concede spirits are freer and lighter with Mahinda Rajapakse out of power in Colombo, but they say the TNA's' engagement with the new government has to be calibrated differently. While in Colombo, they must push the new government on the investigations, as well as towards working out a final settlement on political devolution for Sri Lanka's Tamils. In the province they must focus on the pressing need to revive the economy.
That pressure, according to MA Sumanthiran, must come from Delhi. "We have achieved this much, the system of Provincial Councils came into being only with India's intervention," he says. And Chief Minister Wigneswaran backs this position saying they look to India to play the role of "collaborator, mediator and facilitator."
Jaffna's population shrunk from 900,000 to 600,000 in the nearly three decades of war as several of its residents fled the fighting. Six years of peacetime has seen some of them return. Tilak Tilagharaj, the owner of Jaffna's first new hotel Tilko, named for himself and his wife Kokila, made the move from the UK, buying derelict, unused land and built it up. Based on his own experience on his first visit back during peacetime, Tilagharaj says for donors or investors to work here, they first need a place to stay. His business now employs about 150 people in all. "I took a big risk, but I wanted to be a pilot for others to come back too," he tells us.
Tilagharaj and Kadirgamar, both in very different fields, are driven by the need to return Jaffna to its lost glory of an economic, cultural and political hub for Sri Lanka's Tamils. Like them, others are beginning to make the journey home, albeit in small numbers, and never without keeping options open either elsewhere in Sri Lanka, or abroad. And while they all agree that the literal road to Jaffna has improved in the last six years, the figurative one to thriving self- reliance is still a long one.
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