I Am Confused About the On-Going Conflict

We then move up the Puttalam Mannar Road to Salamabad, a small settlement of 150 families many of who came from Mannar in the mass evictions of 1990. Behind the Masholla, the small Muslim prayer hall, we met an old bearded man, Mr Mustafa who cheerfully tells us that he is 72 years old. Under the shade of a Palu, a season sweet fruit tree, we discuss the problems of his village. ‘Many of us here come from a village, Palakuli, only 35 miles from here on the Mannar, Puttalam boarder. It is now under Tamil Tiger control and I have been here with my family for 15 years now’. I am the 4th generation of my family to live in Palakuli, that I know of, but who knows how much further back my family has lived there’. But when I ask him about going back to his village he says ‘I am confused about the on going conflict and I am not sure how we Muslims will gain from any peace negotiated with the Tamil Tigers’.

‘I have visited my home village once’ Mr Mustafa explains ‘about 3 years ago when the Memorandum Of Understanding brokered by the Norwegians, between the Government and the Tamil Tigers, was signed a few of us hired a van and returned to our village to assess what we could do. We had to travel 100 miles or more because the Road is still not open. The village and our lands are now largely over grown by forest and inhabited by wild animal, and the ‘two-legged-tigers’’ he smiles as he refers to the cadres of the Tamil Tigers. ‘We would need a lot of help to clear the village, rebuild our houses and re-cultivate our lands but many of us would do that if only we could get some assurance from the Tamil Tigers that we would have security and would not be evicted again’.