Yet another year has passed by drenching the once peaceful island of Sri Lanka in more blood than ever in its decades-old ethnic war that has already consumed over 65,000 lives. Dark clouds of war have gathered as the country witnessed stepped-up violence between the government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers, causing some 3000 deaths in 2006 alone, and the Norway-brokered peace talks derail.

The LTTE's chief negotiator Anton Balasingham, credited with being a sobering restrainer for the Tigers' deadly war machine, died at his London home ending years of his battle against diabetes, renal failure and finally bile duct cancer. Lanka watchers were quick to conclude that Bala's death could be a serious setback to peace efforts--as if one needed reasons to shoot down any semblance of a crawl towards resolution of the conflict that now seems to be messier than any other violent insurgency across the world.

There were further reasons to despair. The Sinhala hawks slammed the Mahinda Rajapaksa government for initiating a process, however rickety, aimed at devolving powers for the Tamils and working out a permanent solution to the Tamil issue by signing a 'historic' MoU with the rival United National Party. With his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in a minority in the Lankan Parliament, President Rajapaksa needed the support of the opposition UNP to be able to push through any devolution package for the Tamils, hence his MoU with archrival Ranil Wickremesinghe, the UNP chief and former Prime Minister.

The JHU and JVP have threatened to oppose any package for the Tamils that would mitigate their misery living as second-class citizens in their own country and suffering large-scale deaths and property loss in the crossfire of hostilities between the state forces and the LTTE.

"If instead of blaming external forces, the JVP and JHU look within to find out what went wrong, they might begin to understand the political realities, rather than make demands that drive the Tamils further into the arms of the Tigers," cautioned the University Teachers of Human Rights (UTHR), an independent rights group in Sri Lanka, in its latest report .

Elaborating on the deepening Sinhala-Tamil divide, the UTHR recalled how the JHU spokesman had recently declared that the bodies of four lakh Tamils would be sent back to the North. "This came as a meeting of minds, in response to TNA MP Gajendran's bravado in parliament that the 40 thousand Sinhalese soldiers in Jaffna would be sent back to the South in body bags. It is to be much regretted that the JHU spokesman's remark did not elicit a sharp condemnation from president Rajapakse or the UPFA, given the past bloody outcome of such rhetoric," said the Jaffna-based rights group.

Such irresponsible behaviour was not the sole domain of Sinhala chauvinists as even the State has time and again shed its responsibility to adopt divisive strategies. Take for instance the recent talk of forming a Muslim battalion in the Sri Lankan Army, as a move to protect the Muslims against the Tamil militant attacks. "A comprehensive strategy must address the history of state sponsored violence and the alienation of the minorities as the result. An attempt to use one minority militarily in an insurgency involving another, against a history where the State has been cynical about the lives of both, would complicate problems of peace enormously," lamented the UTHR.

True, the Lankan Muslims face urgent problems of security and threat to their livelihood. The right way to address these is to have Muslim representatives at peace talks intended at a comprehensive settlement.

In a controversial verdict that was at once rejected by the Tamils as being racist, the Supreme Court ordered breaking up the northeastern province that had been created by the 1987 Indo-Lanka accord acknowledging that the northeast constituted the traditional homeland of the Tamils. All the judges in the Constitution Bench that pronounced that ruling were Sinhalese, pointed out R. Sampanthan, senior-most MP in the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

Mr Sampanthan led a team of five TNA MPs to "very fruitful and eventful" meetings with Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi in Chennai on Dec 20 and with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in Delhi two days later. The TNA team could not meet either of them when it came three months back since India did not want to be seen getting close to anyone identified with the LTTE, banned in India in 1992 for assassinating Rajiv Gandhi the previous May.

It may be too soon to talk about any change in the public mood in favour of the Tigers, though. If the pro-LTTE Tamil nationalists are getting shriller by the day, that is because of the change of government in the state after the defeat of the AIADMK chief Ms Jayalalithaa, a sworn enemy of the Tigers. Also, the rising toll of Tamil civilians in the island, separated from Tamil Nadu by a narrow stretch of sea, angered the pro-Eelam campaigners in the state.

The spurt in violence predictably brought in a fresh influx of refugees since January this year. They came with gory tales of state violence and oppression. Also, the closure of A-9 highway by the government citing security concerns, led to actute food shortage in Jaffna peninsula. While the Tigers demanded the reopening of the highway, the government said the LTTE wanted the highway only to collect taxes from the traders bringing in the essentials from the south. Also, Colombo accused the LTTE of rejecting alternative supply routes for the food to reach Jaffna.

While their friends in Tamil Nadu stepped up anti-Colombo rhetoric, the Tigers too were busy carrying out their deadly missions in the island. They tried to assassinate two high-profile personalities in Colombo—defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse, the younger brother of the President and the army chief Sarath Fonseka—the latter was credited with making a statement during his recent U.S. trip that his government would talk with the Tamils only after militarily weakening the LTTE. Though both these men survived, the incidents brought to the fore yet again the macabre truth that the Tigers could strike anywhere in Colombo and elsewhere too, at any time.

There is still some confusion whether India has shifted its Lanka policy in favour of supporting the Tigers against Colombo. Around the same time that Prime Minister Singh was hearing out the TNA team, his foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was telling the media in Chennai that there was no change in Delhi's stand that any solution guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities for the Tamils should also be within a united Lanka. Also the concerned parties should resolve the issue among themselves, as India would not play any direct role—a huge dampener of spirits that soared from the TNA's Delhi darshan.

There is a growing feeling here that the Indian 'obsession' with unitary Lanka is a bit too utopian considering that the LTTE holds vast stretches in the north and is pushing hard into the east to regain control it was forced to yield to the breakaway faction led by its former regional commander Karuna, who is backed by the government.

The Heroes' Day speech on his birthday in November by the LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran could not have been more ominous, even if some cynics could dismiss it as the usual Tiger growling. With the Sinhala rulers not yielding to the legitimate rights of the Tamils and not making any substantial offers, the Tamils had no option but to fight for Eelam, said the big Tiger.

His international isolation got worse as the U.S. cracked the whip and the 25-nation European Union banned the LTTE. Worse still was the ban announced by Canada, home to the largest Lankan Tamil population in the world contributing a huge chunk of expat remittances into the Tiger war effort. Also, peace broker Norway is reported to have thrown up hands.

"Anarchy looms over Sri Lanka," said the UTHR report, slamming both the Tigers and Rajapaksa regime. " There has been more than 20 years of discussion on federalism. The South needs to come up with a concrete set of proposals now to convince the Tamil people that there is an alternative to LTTE's suicidal track," it said, adding that w ithout putting the LTTE "on notice to discuss a political settlement, the long term consequences of such talks are growing anarchy in the North-East…"

A heavily mined long road ahead? It sure is.