Waiting to Exhale

Exiting the international airport in Colombo can be alarming: uniformed men tote guns, and there are acres of razor wire. Colombo's quaint commercial center is clogged with police checkpoints. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lives there; having survived an attempted assassination bombing three years ago, she's not taking any chances. In fact, there's little to fear. Nobody worries about bombs going off in Sri Lanka these days. You can travel just about anywhere on the island: to the northern peninsula of Jaffna or to the eastern beaches near Trincomalee, areas that were off limits for most of the past 19 years of civil war. The government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) signed a truce a year ago which, to everyone's amazement, has held.

Twelve months is a good long time to breathe easier, but Sri Lanka isn't out of the jungle yet. After five rounds of highly productive peace talks—in which the LTTE formally abandoned its goal of secession—the two sides are only now facing the core issues that will make or break a deal, including a rewriting of the Sri Lankan constitution and the delicate issue of when and how the fanatical Tigers will hang up their suicide suits, dispose of their cyanide capsules and surrender their guns. As a result, Sri Lankans are living in unaccustomed security—but they've yet to earn much of a peace dividend.

Some 30,000 Sri Lankans who fled their homeland in the 1980s and '90s came back on visits last year to see if the place was livable again. But foreign investors have been less eager to return. "We need to sign a document with the LTTE," sighs Arjunna Mahendran, chairman of the government's Board of Investments. "That's what people are waiting for."

The prime mover of the peace talks, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, is acutely aware that talks could be long-winded: he often cites the failed peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. "What I'm trying to do," he says, "is move it fast this year to make it irreversible." Wickremesinghe is hoping that a year of normalcy will convince Sri Lankans on both sides of the ethnic divide that these talks, unlike many in the past, must succeed. "It became clear the LTTE could not throw the Sri Lankan armed forces out of the North and East," he says. "Neither could the armed forces crush the LTTE. It was a stalemate. We would have been fighting for 20 years more."

For most Sri Lankans, life is already returning to normal. Colombo's clubs are hopping and its hotels are 90% full. Tourists from mainland China sniff suspiciously at local specialties served on banana leaves and gamble the night away in casinos. Local Romeos on the southern coast prowl for free-spending lady tourists—gentlemen, too—who may be looking for a fling. The country hopes to get 500,000 tourists this year, more than in any year since the war began in 1983.

Just about everyone seems to be wondering how deep is the Tigers' desire for peace. Sept. 11 was a turning point: the U.S. had already declared the LTTE a terrorist organization, and the group has clearly decided that pursuing a deal is better than becoming a target like al-Qaeda. Some in Colombo speculate that Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran may be losing the fighting spirit, or that he's worried about the future of his teenage son. In the past, the LTTE has used truces to rearm and train, which is disturbing. And yet none of the previous cease-fires has lasted more than a few weeks.

Less murky is a political tangle that threatens the peace process. Wickremesinghe is in charge these days, but technically the head of government and commander in chief is President Kumaratunga, who has as much love for her Prime Minister as she does the Tigers. (Her own negotiations for peace concluded with the 1999 assassination attempt that cost her the use of one of her eyes.) Kumaratunga and her political allies are playing the spoilers, whining about being frozen out of the talks, lambasting the LTTE for every violation of the truce, and claiming that life is getting harder under Wickremesinghe. On a recent trip to the ancient capital of Anuradhapura, Wickremesinghe woke at dawn to visit the holy Bo tree, a Buddhist pilgrimage destination. When the Prime Minister's convoy neared the ruins, the walkie-talkies started chattering with a surprise: Kumaratunga was already at the site. The convoy detoured and the Prime Minister wandered around the back of the ruins for half an hour. Finally he aborted the trip and went back to his hotel for breakfast. Foreign diplomats worry that the squabble will pull apart the peace talks.

On his relationship with Kumaratunga, Wickremesinghe says: "It's a rough ride, but we're holding on." Going along on that ride is a nation of 19 million people—and what may be their best chance for peace.

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