Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
Inside a camp controlled by Sri Lanka's militant rebels, I investigate rumors that the Tamil people are being shortchanged in tsunami aid.
Jan 25, 2005 | The pace of work has been relentless. I don't know if it's because I'm inspired or because I was starved for inspiration for so long. But I've been tapping off a power cell that seems to get charged only in fantastically edgy environments. Many times my partner here, photographer Dwayne Newton, has asked if I'm happy. It's tough to be happy amid such sadness but there are moments. "I'm happy when I'm writing," I reply. And it's true. To paraphrase Hemingway: If some places seem good, it's because we're good when we're in them.
Today, Dwayne and I pile into our muddy four-wheeler and stop at the Mercy Corps office to pick up the ever-patient Mr. Tangal, a local employee who will serve as our translator and liaison during our journey to Muthur. Muthur lies only 10 miles south, across Kodiyar Bay and along the coast, but we will have to detour far inland to reach the place. The camp itself is in a nearby village called Samboor.
The trip is significant, for this will be our first sojourn to a camp located in territory controlled by LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) or, as they're more infamously known, the Tamil Tigers. Since the early 1980s, the militant Tigers have been fighting, violently and futilely, to divide Sri Lanka into two nations: Sinhalese and Tamil.
We're making the three-hour trip for two reasons. The first is that I want to see if the rumors are true that the Tamil camps are being shortchanged in tsunami aid and neglected by the Sri Lanka government. The second is that Anna Young, one of Mercy Corp's expat dynamos, has asked us to see how the off-the-beaten-track camps are faring, compared to the ones we've seen around Batticaloa and Trincomalee.
It's another hat for me to wear. Three weeks in-country, Mercy Corps is still short-staffed and my role has expanded. At some point, my input on these scattered settlements won't be necessary. But for now, Anna says, any intelligence that we can bring back, along with our photographs and stories, will be useful.
As we're driving on the various roads, paved and otherwise, that will bring us to Muthur, Dwayne makes two observations. "You know what you never see here?" he remarks. "Sunglasses." It's true; in most Asian countries, cheap sunglasses are a sidewalk vendor industry. "And the other thing? No bugs on the windshield."
Goddamn, he's right. We've driven more than 600 miles and I haven't seen a single splattered insect. It's the sort of information that we can take no further; our interest in the subject ends with its articulation. But after a while, one begins to feel that every observation is somehow a key, no matter how small, toward unlocking the secret of this strange, polyglot land. It's as if the merest thing, like the way men hold babies, or the fact that elephants appear along the roadsides at 4 in the afternoon, will suddenly provide a cultural "Theory of Everything."
The road gets worse by degrees. As we approach Muthur, we're bouncing through rim-deep ruts filled with mud-red water. We stop at an army check post. Our driver, Sandy (a nickname he earned by miring us in Batticaloa beach), leaves the vehicle and approaches the soldiers. In a moment they smile and wave to us. A guardrail lifts and we amble through.
"Now we are in 'no man's land,'" laughs Mr. Tangal. "Passing from the government to the LTTE areas is like going to another country. Soon we will see the other border."
The dirt track crosses between these warring factions, which have been balanced, since 2002, in a fragile ditente. The road is full of pedestrians, walking back and forth from cosmopolitan Muthur to the Tiger-controlled areas. The women walk and wear saris; the men ride bikes. "These are all Tamils," says Tangal. "Even Muslims are not going into the LTTE zones."
No man's land ends at another checkpoint, where a young Tamil soldier converses with Mr. Tangal and peers at our driver. It's just as well the recruit can't read English; there's a "Singhalese Sports Club" decal on our windshield. But like all the soldiers we've seen, he's as friendly as a Bel Air waiter. The dirty Mercy Corps bumper sticker on our hood seems proof of our good intentions and we're granted entry.
Samboor has been under the control of the LTTE for about 12 years. Entering the area, the tip of an iceberg of Tiger-controlled villages, is like stepping back in time. We see no other vehicles. Brightly painted memorials to fallen Tiger combatants appear along the road, displaying mounted photos of the young Tamil men who perished in campaigns against the Sri Lanka army. It's strange to navigate this backward, sequestered zone, which seems less a homeland than a very rural ghetto. Oxcarts churn the mud as we veer aside to let them by. The local post office is a lonesome edifice, worn as a Wild West antique.
In order to enter the camp, we must have permission from the local LTTE headquarters. We arrive all smiles and shoeshines, parking beneath a bright red flag emblazoned with a roaring tiger, framed by crossed rifles. A meeting of some sort is ending; a dozen Tiger leaders emerge from the tidy white house, slipping back into their flip-flops.
Inside the sparse office, a wooden desk (with a miniature LTTE flag, which I quietly covet) rests beneath a large photograph of Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in full combat fatigues. There are two men in the room: a short, pudgy man wearing a Timberland T-shirt, and a friendly, gazelle-like youth who speaks no more than a few words of English.
Anyone who has traveled in the developing world, especially in the slowly developing world, is familiar with the bureaucratic gymnastics that attend even the most simple and direct request. Suffice it to say that, as the officer in charge is not in, and as nobody knows where to find him, approval for our visit to the camp cannot be granted.
In situations like this, I usually cleave to the journalist's credo: "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission." In this case, though, the anxious Mr. Tangal is wringing his hands. I see his point. We're not journalists; we're representatives of Mercy Corps. And Mercy Corps might prefer it if we didn't leave Samboor at high speed, a cadre of enraged Tigers on our tails.
It seems hopeless; my attempts to underscore our harmlessness and benevolence are met with long silences and muttered apologies. Finally, for lack of any other way to satisfy us, the Tigers serve us tea.
And it is very good (this is, after all, Ceylon). As we set down our cups and prepare to depart in defeat, another vehicle pulls up, this one from ZOA, the Dutch relief agency charged with managing the camps. Serendipitously, the woman in charge is a former colleague of Mr. Tangal's and has worked with him on myriad local relief projects.
Within moments of leaving the LTTE office we are following the ZOA 4Runner through Samboor, toward the largest of the TRO (Tamil Relief Organization) refugee centers.
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