Rajpal's Column

6th February 2000

Some more war and some more papers

By Rajpal Abeynayake

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"One of the odder, and usually unremarked aspects of the Sri Lankan conflict has been the quality of academic documentation and analysis that it has generated. Writers in places far afield as Ruwanda, Cyprus and the Balkans frequently cite one or the other of the many studies of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka for comparative illumination.

A remarkable amount of this work has been carried out under the auspices of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies…..'' So says Jonathan Spencer, writing in the Daily Mirror (British) of August 2 1999.

The same sentiment is echoed at other locations around the world.

Said Sadanand Menon, a former arts correspondent of the Times of India (who got kicked out of that paper for his irreverent reporting of the Delhi cultural scene) that "nothing in India compares to the work done in Sri Lanka about the ethnic conflagration there.''

Lanka's own Kumar Rupesinghe, in one of his forays in Colombo from Norway, said that some thousands of papers had been written about the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, the most written about conflict in the world. Sadanand Menon, for one, says that Kumar Rupesinghe is right.

These vast acres of papers on the ethnic conflagration of Sri Lanka offer different types of relief to different types of people.

The ongoing crisis can offer the bread and butter to research persons in Non Governmental Organisations.

Or a generous trade for various parrots and PhD's.

This is not to disparage everyone who puts pen to paper and trots out a thesis on the Sri Lankan "ethnic conflict.'' In Colombo last week for instance, there were literally hundreds (thousands?) of persons who had made it to Sri Lanka because they had made the Sri Lankan ethnic problem their subject for cerebral rumination and international networking. This was at the Neelan Tiruc-helvam commemoration event, a huge gathering of Neelan admirers from all parts of the globe who had convened in Colombo for the event which incidentally was sponsored by the financially high-powered Ford and Rockefeller foundations, among others.

All of what's cited above hopefully illustrates the second most important dimension of the Sri Lankan problem - the part of the conflict that is enacted away from the Wanni jungles and in the international capitals and in the boardrooms of opinion making organisations.

Minister Mangala Samaraweera, for instance, made more than one nod at the relative importance of international NGO's when he took a hefty swipe at Article 19, the international watchdog organisation whose job it is to protect the right to "freedom of speech.'' Samaraweera was blunt and sarcastic in turns - something like a regular cynical newspaper columnist.

Maybe his swipes had their merits and demerits, and there were certainly occasions in the letter, when he seemed to take the wind off the sails of the nice man who heads Article 19.

Small countries react in interesting ways to the slights that emanate from the developed world.

The late Premadasa for instance, would have perhaps made the current British high commissioner persona–non-grata if he had heard about the new visa bond regulations that the British government is contemplating for Asian countries. He sent poor Mr Gladstone an ex-ambassador packing for some non-licensed election monitoring; Gladstone was later found in Russia, where he reportedly couldn't avoid trouble as well.

But, the Eelam war makes it difficult for Sri Lanka to retaliate against international slights.

When Prabhakaran's thoughts from the North are promptly despatched to all foreign embassies via the Internet — he said recently in his martyrs day speech: "that the whole world marvels at the military capability of the LTTE and the ability of its forces to gain vast tracts of occupied territory in a day " - there is an acute need for the Sri Lankan state to court most of the bullies from the West.

Last week, for instance, it was perceived in the cocktail and drawing room circuit in Colombo that the independence day celebration was a disaster in terms of psychological operations. Perhaps the whole celebration could have been moved to Temple Trees, if the President couldn't move out of Temple Trees for the celebration, but then who are we to pontificate?

On the one hand, the Sinhala nation was taking it cautiously, and seemed to be convinced in the notion that discretion is definitely the better part of valour.

Symbolically, the government is now suffused with representations of pro-active Sri Lankan sentiment.

There is Dinesh Gunawardene and others who to some extent define the change in terms of government policy towards the LTTE since 1994, that lost age of innocence when this government was on its honeymoon.

The week after the elections for example, several Sinhala papers concluded by way of interviews and analysis that the People's Alliance has received a "mandate for war" in its new term. This position was not contradicted by the government and its pursuit of the war is by all means its prerogative.

So if the government's priority is war — maybe tinged with a teetering hope for political settlement and negotiations, shouldn't the government's suffering image, at least in the face of some of the LTTE's offensives, disturb the government's general leadership?

Mangala Sama-raweera may dash off a letter to Article 19, and take a few good swipes at the LTTE in the bargain, but if that campaign is going to be followed by an independence celebration that looks like a caving–in to the LTTE plastic explosives squad, then it appears that the part of the war that gets written about most, the psychological aspect, is conceded. But then, who are we to pontificate?

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