Editorial

Can Sri Lanka win the peace?

No analyst worth his or her name can doubt the terrible atrocities committed by the Tamil Tigers in the 26 year old battle to win an independent homeland for their minority community in Sri Lanka. Their campaign has included hostage taking, suicide bombings and other ruthless acts of violence to achieve their aims. Victims have included both Sir Lankan and foreign targets, including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who were seen as obstacles hindering the success of their military and political strategy. Yet none of this justifies the bloody tactics of the Sri Lankan army to finally rid the country of the Tigers. The argument of some Sri Lankan officials that the end justifies the means is questionable not least for the tens of thousands of Tamil refugees who have had to endure a living hell to protect themselves and their families in the war zone. A substantial portion of the blame rests with the Sri Lankan army's indiscriminate shelling of the last Tiger stronghold in the country's North East corner. According to one estimate at least 7,000 civilians have been killed and more than 15,000 wounded in the first five months of this year, including those who died when a mortar struck the only functioning hospital in the war zone. Those 200,000 who managed to escape the horrors of war found themselves facing appalling conditions of another kind — over crowding, few medicines and little food — when they arrived in the resettlement camps organised by Colombo.

Small wonder then that international human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch earlier highlighted what they believe could turn out to be war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan forces when they carried out indiscriminate shelling of hospitals and other medical facilities in the former war zone. The British and French foreign ministers, David Milliband and Bernard Kouchner, were more circumspect in their jointly published observations. They described the Tigers as a terrorist organisation, but went on to comment that the Sri Lankan government must show 'humanity and self interest' to win the peace. Somehow the Sri Lankan authorities still do not get it. They blame the UK, because of its colonial policies of settling the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and India, for instigating the conflict in the first instance. If Sri Lankan diplomats in Western capitals are to be believed, it was India's Mrs Indira Gandhi who had propped up Tamils to get even with Colombo, which had supported Pakistan in the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

In this Alice in Wonderland perspective, the majority Singhalese have been exemplary in their treatment of their Tamil brothers who have never had any reason to complain. In fact, according to Colombo-speak, the Tamils are beneficiaries of free health, education and employment opportunities that have allowed them to assert themselves as equal partners in the Sri Lankan state. How else, for example, could some 2,000 Tamil doctors benefit from state funded medical education that propelled them to emigrate to a better and more comfortable future in the UK? These doctors and other Tamil immigrants like them (200,000 in all) now have such a grip on the British political process that any government in London has to taker their views into account when dealing with Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, alongside the pantheon of foreign villains are Sri Lanka's 'true' friends, such as Pakistan and China, who have been more than generous in supplying Colombo with all the weapons it required. In the past few years China has emerged as the largest aid donor  nearly US$ one billion last year  and the largest supplier of arms. In return the Chinese have been allowed to develop the southern port of Hambantota as a refuelling and docking centre for its Indian Ocean fleet. But in the coming months Sri Lanka will need more than support from Pakistan and China if it is to restore its international credibility.

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