Mahinda Rajapaksa: The Hard-Liner

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa sits at the head of a long banquet table, presiding over what looks like a hotel's lunch buffet. The mood is informal as Cabinet ministers, their clerks and assorted relatives and friends line up patiently to eat in the main dining room of Rajapaksa's official compound. Outside, on the streets of Colombo, he is the all-conquering hero. In May, Rajapaksa's government ended Sri Lanka's 26-year-long civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the capital's broad avenues are dominated by enormous banners glorifying him: "You are a divine gift to the country. May the gods bestow their blessings on you." But here, inside, Rajapaksa seems more like a down-to-earth family patriarch, nourished as much by the red rice, jackfruit curry and spicy fried fish as by the praise and demands of the supplicants who interrupt him. At one point, a young couple present him with a stack of betel leaves to be blessed. He chats casually with them; they show off their infant son. (Read "War's End Hasn't Stilled the World's Young Tamil Voices.")

A barrel-chested rugby fan, Rajapaksa, 63, will need that common touch to bring Sri Lanka to a true and lasting peace between the island nation's Sinhalese majority (which is mostly Buddhist) and Tamil minority (mostly Hindu). The civil war began in earnest in July 1983, after nearly 3,000 Tamils were killed in several days of systematic anti-Tamil violence. It was the low point of what Sri Lanka's Tamils felt had been decades of official discrimination and military repression in Tamil-majority areas in the north and east. The LTTE took up arms in the name of those grievances, raising the call for a separate Tamil homeland and eventually becoming one of the world's most feared terrorist organizations. Over the years, moderate Tamil political leaders worked to reach a political solution, and several governments in Colombo tried talks with the LTTE, but by 2006 a shaky cease-fire had fallen apart. The army pushed full-bore to finish off the Tigers, particularly its charismatic leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and Rajapaksa would not brook questioning, by the press or his opponents, of his government's tactics. But now that the fighting is over, Rajapaksa's overwhelming military victory could prove Pyrrhic if he fails to give equal attention to reconciliation. (See pictures inside Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory.)

Rajapaksa faces questions about human-rights violations over the targeting of civilians in the final offensive, unexplained disappearances of Tamils and controls on the media. He must revive an economy that has been badly strained by military spending. Most importantly, he will have to restore to their homes and livelihoods some 300,000 Tamils in the north, a major chunk of the population of that region, who fled the fighting only to be detained in overcrowded internment camps. Without that crucial first step toward peace, Sri Lanka's alienated Tamils may never feel truly part of the nation. "If that does not happen, we are in a downward spiral in every way," says Vasudeva Nanayakkara, a Sri Lankan politician who has known Rajapaksa for more than 40 years as a friend and frequent ally in Parliament. "The way in which the state treats the victims of the conflict — that will be the basis on which national unity will be forged."

In a rare interview with TIME on July 10, Rajapaksa made no apologies about how he prosecuted his war with the Tigers. "We showed that you can defeat terrorism," he said. The U.S. and Europe, his biggest trading partners, publicly criticized his apparent disregard for human rights, but he dismisses the West's objections. "Some people think we are still colonies," he said. "That mentality must go." (Read "How to Defeat Insurgencies: Sri Lanka's Bad Example.")

Roots of Ambition
Who is the man who tamed the Tigers? Above all, he represents Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist heartland in the rural south. His sarong and tunic are the spotless white of a devout Buddhist; his reddish brown scarf the color of korakan, a rough grain eaten as the staple diet of poor farmers. Everything about Rajapaksa — his big laugh, his rough-and-ready English, his bejeweled fingers and ink-black hair — marks him as part of the rural bourgeoisie, not the urban élite educated abroad. This is more than just an image. He was elected to Parliament as its youngest member in 1970 and moved slowly up through the ranks of his party while building a base of support in his home district of Hambantota. One minister in his government, who has known him since his early days in politics, says his desire to be President was obvious: "He was methodical."

Rajapaksa's political biography was crucial in maintaining support for the final military offensive against the Tigers. The LTTE pioneered suicide bombings, and a generation of Sri Lankans lived in fear of random attacks on buses and markets, and relentless political assassinations. Four Presidents before Rajapaksa had tried a combination of military action and negotiation against the Tigers; within a year of his presidency, he abandoned talks and bet everything on force. He appealed to Sinhalese nationalism to recruit soldiers, promising them good salaries, pensions and respect. The cost was high. At least 6,200 troops were killed in the last three years of the war — more than the total U.S. military deaths so far in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Rajapaksa's popularity remains undiminished. In his victory speech to the nation on June 3, he spoke a few lines in Tamil as a gesture of reconciliation, but most of the oration was spent in praise of "our armed forces who astonished the world by their skill in war." He linked their effort to the nation's heroic past defending itself against invaders. "The lessons we learnt from those great battles of the past are ingrained in our flesh, blood and bones."

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