Life eases for Sri Lanka coastal town

By Dexter Cruez

MANNAR, Sri Lanka (AP): Bulldozers crash through lush green foliage, clearing a wide strip of land on either side of the road. Soldiers follow behind, erecting fences with reels of razor wire and sandbag bunkers.

This is the new front line of Sri Lanka's civil war. At nightfall, hundreds of soldiers take positions along the line, the pitted highway from the northwestern coastal town of Mannar to Vavuniya in the interior.

For the past nine years, most of the 50-mile (80-km) road was controlled by Tamil rebels, along with nearly one-third of this island nation.

In February, troops mounted on bulldozers and tanks drove up the road and opened a land route to Mannar, a pocket under government control previously accessible only by sea.

The rebels offered little resistance and melted into the jungles to the north. But the capture of the road was declared another success in a string of recent victories for the government in the 14-year war.

Since December 1995, the rebel Tamil Tigers have been driven deeper and deeper into the rugged, sparsely populated countryside. They lost the northern Jaffna Peninsula, which had been their capital, and then lost Kilinochchi, where they had retreated from Jaffna.

The Tiger rebels also scored major victories. Although they did not try to hold onto territory, they overran heavily defended army bases and proved that they were still an effective fighting force.

The capture of the Mannar highway, which also cut off the rebels from a wildlife reserve south of the road, seems to have cheered Mannar's inhabitants.

Until now, it took a seven-hour boat ride to reach the mainland for Mannar Island's 30,000 people. "Life has become more comfortable," said Velupillai Visvalingham, the island's deputy administrator.

More fishermen are venturing out to the sea, confident that their catch will be on the 15-20 trucks that head out daily to major cities on the newly reopened road.

Another 20-trucks drive into Mannar daily, bringing food and other essential items that are swiftly reappearing on shop shelves.

People are traveling more freely to and from Mannar on the twice-daily public buses.

Prices of food and many other items have tumbled, but the cost of fish has increased because fishermen are now able to transport their product out.

Thousands of people living on the mainland also have access to the facilities - few as they are - in this garrison town.

"After the road opened, the number of patients visiting the hospital in Mannar has almost doubled," said Paul Schneider, an American surgeon working for Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).

There can be no illusion, however, that peace is near. In early April, the pounding of artillery shells could be heard in the night, and streets were deserted as soon as the sun settled below the city's skyline.

The offensive also displaced about 20,000 villagers living alongside the road from Vavuniya to Mannar who fled into the interior, leaving hundreds of shops and homes abandoned.

"Villagers living on the northern side of the road have become discouraged because they are unable to cultivate their rice fields," said Xavier Croose, a Roman Catholic priest in Mannar.

The military ordered a 1,000-meter (yard) buffer of uncultivated fields beyond the defense line, depriving farmers of revenue-earning land.

"My paddy fields have been destroyed by animals and I have had to shift my home," said Ramaswamy Chinniah, a farmer at Ganeshapuram, a hamlet about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Vavuniya.

The military has offered to let farmers harvest their crops within an agreed time, but no one wants to take the chance.

"People are scared they could get caught up in a gun battle that could erupt between the troops and rebels," said Croose, who is president of the Mannar Association for Relief and Rehabilitation.

With greater access to the town, soldiers have stiffened security procedures, issuing identification cards to civilians in an effort to prevent infiltration by rebels.

Restrictions have been imposed on fuel, some medicines and building materials that can used to manufacture bombs.