The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

The mutant peace and its evolution
'All of us here are only too aware that peace is not the simple absence of war; it entails an active engagement to understand and address the root-causes that endanger peace and generate conflict'.

So said the President addressing the United Nations on September 21st.
Then she went on recently to inaugurate the sessions of the National Council on Peace and Reconciliation. That seems a classic case of not addressing the root causes that endanger peace and generate conflict. Well, almost.

Government spin doctors say that this is a spanking new device to analyze the conditions that have created war. But to the simple untrained eye it looks like dumping more stale food over a pile of already rotting garbage. Among the pieces of rotting victuals on the pile are the J. R. Jayewardene All Party conference, the Premadasa All Party conference, the Kumaratunga All Party conference, the Mangala Munasinghe Select Committee, etc..

Above named were all "devices'' to "forge'' a "consensus" on the issue of conflict in the country which have yielded much in terms of forests of paper trails.

But 'peace'' or the absence of it is the biggest chip that Chandrika Kumaratunga carries on her shoulder. In her camp, the spin is to say that everybody but herself is an obstacle to peace.

Her recent UN General Assembly address needs to be viewed against this backcloth. It's a speech which though labelled a success by certain political actors, that was made against the backdrop of the government sponsored peace Tamasha -- the current episode in the Sudu Neluma series, which can be dubbed "we close bars for peace.''

The strategy here is to paint Chandrika Kumaratunga as the main votary of peace, while all others are terrible obstacles to it, without whom Chandrika Kumaratunga would have installed peace in a day like installing a light bulb at President's house. This kind of posture stems from the peace chip on her shoulder. Whatever the President's strengths are Ranil Wickremesinghe is looked upon in this country, as the peace-man. Chandrika Kumaratunga is thought of as the necessary evil when Ranil Wickremesinghe bends over backwards too many times, and provides a spectacle of a doormat which has been placed for the Tigers to wipe their feet on.

But when he is not a doormat - - it is still Ranil Wickremesinghe who is looked upon as the man of peace -- and never is the Kumaratunga name associated with peace, after the disastrous Chandrika-medallion peace campaign in Jaffna in 1994. This state of affairs is like slow ingestion of poison to the Chandrika Kumaratunge psyche. For a gadfly from the social scientists circle, a Francophone liberal from the flower-child sixties, somebody who got herself nominated for the Nobel Peace prize to be seen as the country's powerful witch (hawk?) as opposed to the holy man of peace on the opposite side, Ranil Wickremesinghe, it must be galling.

Her latest contortion seems to be to re-invent this rubric, and place herself as the chief votary of peace - - but then what does she do, but start another peace Tamasha, an All Party conference which started off like a Liberal party seminar with some attendees, some observers and a roomful of indifferent boycotters passing smart comments from the sidelines?

While all this happens of course, the Sri Lankan conflict is mutating. Mutations keep happening all the time, in nature, said a lecturer on genetically modified foods, when he spoke last week at an American sponsored lecture. But that kind of mutation is another interesting topic for another day.

The conflict on the other hand is mutating so rapidly that we seem to be confronted almost with a "species change.'' The old dinosaur the LTTE seems to be mutating into ---strangely -- something like homo erectus, maybe even homo-sapiens. The LTTE which looked like a robot outfit led by a man prone to fascist tendencies, is showing its human face by displaying its vulnerabilities. After Karuna, more splits are occurring, and this week we have the news that Susai and one of his companions have engineered another split within the organisation's ranks.

This is pleasing no end to the H L de Silvas of this world, who are smashing the LTTE ISGA proposals with glee, like children taking apart a new toy. With the absence of war, there is nobody to ask them silly questions anymore like "why aren't you people sending your sons and daughters to war??''

Another mutation - - the archangels of Sinhala salvation in the form of the bhikkus of the Hela Urumaya have shown themselves to be so comic that the people have almost stopped laughing, through fatigue.

So that's the story. The conflict landscape is changing, and the other mutation according to the LTTE side of the conflict-analysts, is that the Americans are slowly championing the cause of the Sri Lankan government seeking in return their pound of flesh.

Obviously, in a time of mutation, a vast span of time but a wee blip in the evolutionary calendar, there are changes that baffle the eye and keep all living things in a state of wonderment at nature's cunning. It's like the vast ice-age which comes after a giant meteor collides with the earth, where the dinosaurs suddenly go extinct, and there is a state of natural flux in which nature does all types of spectacular things and only time will tell what will be the next quantum change in species evolution.

It's becoming almost that dramatic out here. The LTTE is "humanized'' by its very vulnerability. But it's like the Empire Strikes Back over there. While the organisation is showing it is only too human and susceptible, its core demons are refusing to be struck down. They are striking back with a pyromaniac frenzy, killing here, there and everywhere.

The Hela Urumaya is providing the comic relief. The Americans are watching from beneath a cloud, the ISGA is being torn apart by a Lilliputian Sinhala lobby while nobody in the country is genuinely interested because they are all worried about the next price hike on gasoline.

We have to think therefore, that nature intends for such times of periodic upheaval! In terms of the evolutionary parallel, the sun will come out after the ice age, the oceans would have moved apart we suppose (…or something like that anyway, I'm not the expert) -- the dinosaurs would have been counted out of existence and will be well on the way to fossilisation, and a new species will be foraging in the sun-kissed habitat of the post ice-age epoch.

Everybody is waiting for that to happen here, it looks like now. "Nature' will not lift its veil and show a peek of what's going to be; that will spoil the show. Will the old dinosaurs, the LTTE actually become extinct? The H.L de Silvas, going by the smirks on their faces, almost seem to think so. Or will Chandrika Kumaratunga be the only dinosaur that will really go extinct after this miasmic period of transition?

All that can be told is that everybody including the LTTE is awed by the pace of change. The government of Sri Lanka, the LTTE, the Sinhala lobbyists, the Americans, the Indians etc., will all react to the current flux in different ways ? their behaviours will vary from the puerile to the downright hysterical, but everybody seems to be telling each other at least in their body language that the only thing that can be done is to sit it out and await the result of this particular cycle of evolution in this conflict.

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