VAVUNATHIVU, 26 March 2008 (IRIN) - The last 18 years of Kanavathipillai Thangarasa's life have been in constant flux. The 62-year-old man and his family have been displaced from their home on numerous occasions since 1990 by fighting in eastern Sri Lanka between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In 1991, his 15-year-old son disappeared while travelling to the capital, Colombo, 330km from his native village Vavunathivu in Batticaloa District. The strain of those years shows on Thangarasa's face, which is dominated by wrinkles and heavy-set eyes.

"All we have ever wanted is peace, to live like anyone else without fear of having to run in our night clothes," he told IRIN. Like many in his village and thousands of others in eastern Batticaloa District, Thangarasa hopes the latest phase of eviction and resettlement is the last of his lifetime.

Thousands fled and returned to villages like Vavunathivu and Vakari, further north of Batticaloa town, within a span of six months in 2007 when fighting flared up. They remain nervous about their economic futures.

"A year ago I was either living my life in a bunker or running from shell fire," Nalathambi Shanthi, a 23-year-old woman from Vakarai, said. "Today, I am living in a house but still unemployed."

Resettlement plans

Signs of over a decade and a half of fighting are evident. "There are still big holes in the walls of my house," Thayabaran Premila, a 29-year-old mother of three from Uriyankettu village in Vakarai, said.

The last harvest was one of the first in recent times that allowed farmers in the newly resettled areas to cultivate without fear of war. "The last crop was good because we could sell the paddy at a high price," 29-year-old Sinnathambi Wimalendran from Vavunathivu said, noting that rice prices were high throughout the country.

When fighting broke out between government forces and the Tigers in early 2007, thousands of civilians fled villages like Vavunathivu and Vakarai, which were then under the control of the Tamil Tigers, to the relative safety of government controlled parts of the district.

By June 2007, government forces had chased out the Tigers from areas they held in the eastern district and a massive resettlement drive was launched. According to the Ministry of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services, 31,200 families (104,000 people) have been resettled in the district, with 27,000 of them, including the Thangarasa family, returning to Vavunathivu.

Lagging behind

Despite the mass resettlement, areas like Vavunathivu still lag far behind the rest of the country in development, according to economist Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, the author of the recent study Economy of the Conflict Region in Sri Lanka: From Embargo to Repression, published by the East West Center, in Washington, DC.

"Newly settled areas have a long way to go," he told IRIN. "They lack basic amenities and infrastructure such as proper houses, roads, electricity, water supply and telecommunications. Further, human resource development is at a very low level."

"It is very important that jobs are created to ensure long-term sustainability of these areas," Thandi Mwape, the head of the Batticaloa sub-office of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Several international organisations have launched programmes targeting people involved in fishing, home gardening and food crops in the newly resettled divisions of Batticaloa.

Roads need repair and houses, most of which still bear the tell tale signs of a protracted war, need rehabilitation.

Kick-start development

Mwape said the UN and other agencies provided transitional shelters during the resettlement and that government agencies were looking at ways to reconstruct permanent houses.

The government hopes the successful completion of elections on 10 February for nine bodies in the Batticaloa District, including those overseeing Vavunathivu and Vakarai, will kick-start localised development projects.

Each of the councils was allocated Rs 2.5 million (about US$23,000) by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 20 March swearing-in ceremony in Colombo. "You now have to find solutions to their [voters] problems," he told the newly elected members.

The Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), a breakaway faction of the Tamil Tigers, won control of all nine councils at the election, the first held since 1994.

The newly resettled families are eager to get back to normal productive lives. "My village is still overgrown and looks like a jungle," Thangarasa said. "With half broken houses, flooded roads and people still living off handouts . . . it's time for all of this to change."

ap/bj/sr

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