Madras: For all the romance of its name thousands of young men and women wish they were not at Elephant Pass. The battle to relieve this army camp in the sandy wastes of northern Sri Lanka has become the bloodiest in the island’s eight years of civil war.

The government claims that more than 1000 secessionist Tamil Tigers have been killed since they began their attack on the camp on July 10. Certainly both sides have suffered. At one stage the Tigers overran part of the besieged camp using home-made mortar bombs and armour-plated bulldozers they had filled with explosives.

The government sent reinforcements by sea. But having disembarked on the nearby coast the relief column has clawed forward by only a few hundred meters per day The Tigers are dug into

bunkers and tunnels in the open sandy terrain And for once they have opted to stay and fight rather than hit and run.

There are good reasons for the Tigers to want Elephant Pass. It controls the best access to the northern Jaffna peninsula where the rebels are strongest. If it were to fall the Sri Lankan army in the north would be confined to a few coastal bases dependent on naval support for supplies. The Tigers could then declare defact independence for the Tamil-dominated north.

The Elephant Pass camp also has a stock of artillery to add extra power to the Tigers’ arsenal. Already they appear to have anti-aircraft guns preventing the Sri Lankan air force from flying low in the current battle. Casualties in the besieged camp cannot be evacuated because helicopters cannot land.

Each side says it wants to negotiate; each hopes to prove the other cannot win an outright military victory. The Sri Lankan army which has felt humiliated by past cease-fires is determined that the government should negotiate only from a position of strength. The Tigers wish to prove by their prowess at the pass that such a position can never be reached.

There is a growing recognition in the capital Colombo that like it or not the Tigers is a military power. But deep suspicions remain about their ruthlessness. President Rana Singh Premadasa has challenged the rebels who claim to be the sole legitimate representatives of the Tamil people to stand for election in Tamil areas.

But the Tigers distrust Premadasa and his calls for consensus they say that extremists among the Sinhalese Buddhist clergy are urging him not to give an inch to the mostly-Hindu Tamils. The Buddhist majority believes Sri Lanka was chosen by Buddha as the land where his doctrine (of peace and harmony) ‘should be preserved in its purest form. Buddhist nationalists see Tamils as a column for India’s imperial interests Whatever happens at Elephant Pass the political deadlock remains.( THE ECONOMIST ).

Article extracted from this publication >> August 16, 1991