Relief effort risky in rebel territory

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — At the airport in this government-controlled city there are more soldiers than passengers. The small Lanka Air Fokker 7 propeller plane bounces twice before it lands, and rolls to a stop near a crowd of young men dressed in army fatigues and carrying folding stock TK machine guns.

Ed says the villages are full of the dead and dying and they are still digging them out of the ruble and destoyed buildings, mostly body parts of many children.

The soldiers watch Dr. James Laws as he counts the boxes of medicine he has brought on the flight. One soldier whispers to his buddy, and he peers into the boxes, using the barrel of his gun to flip open the top.

Laws isn't fazed.

"Oh, I've seen worse," he says. "Much worse."
The rest of the passengers get on a bus and leave. Laws and his colleagues from Knightsbridge International — Ed Artis and Rob Marcarelli — wait for their boxes, wait for permission to leave, wait for a bus. Wait.

About 30 yards away, three men in a bunker take turns watching the Americans through the telescope on top of a rifle.

"We're in the belly of the beast now, Jim," Artis says to Laws, the Germantown, Ohio, doctor who is attempting to deliver medicine to regions that were both hard hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami and hard to get to by aid workers.

Jaffna is the only major city in the northern part of Sri Lanka that the government in Colombo controls. A decades-old civil war has left northern Sri Lanka in the hands of rebels known as the LTTE — the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam — but after a massive battle in the early '90's the government wrested Jaffna back from the rebel group. Laws and his colleagues want to stock the shelves of as many local hospitals in LTTE-controlled territory as they can.

"I tell you, it ain't simple," he says.

To get to the rebel areas Laws first flew to Colombo, the government capital, and made a similar drop of medicine at a hospital in the south. Here, in the north, the tsunami hit just as hard — initial reports indicate that nearly 23,000 of the Sri Lanka's 50,000 deaths took place here — but international aid hasn't reached most of the region.

Airplanes filled with supplies land at the Colombo airport, but the U.S. Marines who now run the airport are prevented from flying aid sorties over the north. The government in Colombo insists that aid is equally shared between the north and the south, but it has given no evidence that this is true.

Early Sunday, All India Radio, which can be picked up in Sri Lanka, made an announcement that LTTE leader Vellupillai Pirabhakaran had been killed by the tsunami. Local newspapers were speculating wildly about the possibilities of his death, which the LTTE strongly denied. But word was spreading, fueled by a rumor that was repeated over and over — a very expensive coffin had been purchased in the south, and was being flown to the north.

Laws and his colleagues hear the news while at the Colombo airport waiting for the flight to Jaffna. Artis confers with a Sri Lankan friend for a second about continuing on. If the stories are true, Pirabhakaran's death could leave the north chaotic and unruly. They decide to continue the trip.

After a long wait at the airport in Jaffna the bus finally arrives. For five miles the road snakes through a military training ground. Bombed-out shells of buildings have been used for target practice by soldiers, the bullet holes closely concentrated near the edges of the broken windows. The boxes follow in a van — with medicine worth nearly $1.5 million in their possession the doctors want to move fast.

The day before, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan cancelled plans to travel in the north, and the LTTE claimed the government blocked his visit. Tempers were flaring, and in Jaffna the bus got caught in a crowd of student protesters.

"We've got to keep moving," fumes Artis, "This is dangerous."

A protester bangs on the door of the bus, and Artis opens it a crack.

"We don't care about Kofi," he shouts in English.

The bus drives slowly through the crowd.

At Elephant Pass, where for three months in the early '90s the LTTE made a stand against the government, the doctors stop to take photographs next to the rusting shell of a tank. The driver warns them not to step on a mine.

"Don't go looking for golf balls at the end of that road," Laws says.

The LTTE knows Laws and his colleagues are coming. But at the checkpoints in rebel territory, guards keep coming onto the bus, looking inside bags, staring at the passengers, checking passports.

Outside, a TV news crew stands on the road, their equipment inspected by armed guards. Unable to speak or understand the language, the doctors are forced to judge the mood of the guards through the expressions on their faces, their smiles.

The first guard waves them through. But after another 500 yards another guard gets on the bus. He isn't smiling.

"Where are they from?" he asks the driver in Tamil, the language of the LTTE.

"America" answers the driver.

The guard looks at the doctors. Still no smile.

"What are they doing here?" he asks.

"They are doctors, they come with medicines," the driver says.

One second passes.

Two.

Finally, a big smile spreads across the guard's face.

Laws and his colleagues relax. Half the day is spent navigating checkpoints, clearing security, getting permission to get into LTTE-controlled territory. Other aid groups have been turned back, but Knightsbridge gets in.

"You know, we do these things for humanitarian reasons," Laws says later in the evening. "But high adventure, that's reason number two."

"At least today, no shots were fired," Artis adds.

The bus stops at the district hospital in Kilinocchi, the capital city of rebel-held Sri Lanka. Laws examines the hospital's pharmacy, then returns to the van to pick out which medicine to distribute.

The Sri Lankan doctors are happy to see the Americans. Inside the hospital they show the group a set of photographs nearly three inches thick. One photograph is of a room full of bodies, with a child's body facing the camera. His mouth is full of sand. In another, a boy in a coffin is wearing bright pink pants with lettering that reads, "The Starting of a New Millennium."

This is where they came — the living and the dead — after the Dec. 26 tsunami. Nearly 3,000 people died in Kilinocchi, and the hospital put the photographs of the dead on a computer, in case a father needed to find his son's picture, or a wife her husband's.

Most of the photos are of dead children.

Outside the room a woman is screaming and crying. Her voice fills the office. Her mother just passed away from a heart condition that the Sri Lankan doctors say could easily have been treated with the right medicine.

"I was in Vietnam, and I thought I had seen it all. I was in Rwanda for five months, and I thought I had seen it all," Artis says. "But to see what the ocean did to these people...."

The woman's wailing grows louder.

"If this is what the death of one person sounds, can you imagine what it was like the day the tsunami came?" a Sri Lankan doctor asks.

Back on the bus, the doctors are quiet. Half their medicine is gone, and they can make one more stop.

The bus passes Trincomalee to a small city called Nilaveli, where the Central Dispensary doubles as the Maternity Home.

Its cupboards are bare.

"These people, I don't how they do their jobs," Laws says, "They need stethoscopes. They need a pair of forceps. They need everything."


Sir Ed Artis with his Mission jacket he's been around the block

The doctors unload box after box of medicine, and a few cases of baby food. Nearly two weeks after the tsunami hit this is the first aid the hospital has received, even though U.N. vehicles can be seen driving along the road.

A small crowd gathers, but the doctors are in a hurry. They make a list of what else the hospital needs. Artis plans to stay on in Sri Lanka to set up a supply chain, and this hospital is on the top of the list.

As they walk out the door, ready to start the 10-hour drive to Colombo, one nurse nudges a reporter, and points to the doctors.

With a shy smile she says, "Sin ta Klaas."

It was a message that needed no translation.


Sir Ed Artis, Evander Hollyfield, Dr. James Laws

Heavy Weights helping out....Evander Hollyfield went on a mission to the tsunami torn Sri Lanka in hopes of bringing attention to the plight of that area and the people, and hopefully to get other celebrity figures to come and help.

Artis and Laws no strangers to "helping out" have been all over the world and in many dangerous places to deliver medicines, food and medical aid to dozens of war torn countries.



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