| March 05, 2008 | Wednesday | Safar 26, 1429 |
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Sri Lanka longing for serendipity
PERHAPS Sri Lanka’s most famous foreign resident is Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary science and science-fiction writer. As long ago as 1945, he foresaw a system of communication satellites circling the globe. He is the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a book that was made into the famous film by Stanley Kubrick. In 1970, he wrote:
“It may well be that each of Ceylon’s attractions is surpassed somewhere on Earth; Cambodia may have more impressive ruins, Tahiti lovelier beaches, Bali more beautiful landscapes (though I doubt it), Thailand more charming people (ditto). But I find it hard to believe that there is any country which scores so highly in all departments.”
Over the last few years, I have been a regular visitor to the island, and can vouch for most of Clarke’s observation. I would only add, however, that in my limited experience, the freshness and variety of seafood along the southern coast is also unsurpassed. Indeed, it should come as no surprise that the word ‘serendipity’ comes from Serendip, one of the island’s ancient names.
It has a delightful meaning in English, and was coined by Hugh Walpole in 1754, when he applied it to three heroes in a story who were said to be “always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of”.
But in 1983, over a decade after Clarke wrote about his beloved Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, as it was then called), a ferocious civil war broke out that continues to ravage the country. As in similar conflicts in other parts of the world, this one is about territory, ethnicity, sovereignty and religion. An entire generation has grown up in its shadow, and it threatens to continue claiming victims into the foreseeable future.
Despite years of painstaking efforts by friends and well-wishers of Sri Lanka to end the war, selfishness and a lack of will and vision on both sides has ensured that peace remains elusive, even a quarter century after fighting broke out. While it is unhelpful to indulge in a blame game, the fact is that the underlying cause of the conflict is the deep sense of deprivation felt by much of the Tamil population.
Seven years ago, the government of Ranil Wickramsinghe (now leader of the opposition) had come close to a breakthrough in peace talks with the LTTE. A truce was in place, and there was hope that a negotiated settlement based on autonomy for the Tamil North-East would be achieved.
Alas, the government was dismissed by a short-sighted and power-hungry president, and the present administration is bent on crushing the Tamil movement militarily before imposing its terms for peace.
Buoyed by a succession of victories in the east, the military seems confident of taking the LTTE-controlled territory in the north. But the Tamils have shown great resilience, imagination and ferocity in their ability to take the fight to their Sinhala foe in the rest of the country. Terrorist bomb attacks on civilians, and bold strikes against military targets, have kept the government off-balance.
Where the Rajapakse government clearly has an edge is in its legitimacy in the eyes of the world. The LTTE is widely considered a terrorist organisation, and its flow of funds and weapons from overseas has been greatly reduced in recent years. Supply ships in international waters have been sunk, and almost daily air attacks on targets in the north have dented the LTTE’s defences.
Given the imbalance between the two sides in purely military terms, it is only a matter of time before the Sri Lankan army does seize control of the territory presently held by Tamil separatists. But what then?
In a recent column in the Daily Mirror about official claims to finish the war in a year, ‘Gamka’ writes: “When caution creeps into bravado, we can only presume that things aren’t going as well as all the propaganda would have us believe. We will know for sure only this time next year. Also, even if Prabhakaran [the shadowy leader of the LTTE] will be gone by then, Tamil demands for a fair political deal won’t be.
“If moderation doesn’t get into the driving seat on both sides at that point, this will only be the starting point of another generation of bloodshed, distrust and suffering.”
Along the coast (and elsewhere, I am sure), the effects of the war are visible in the half-empty tourist hotels and the neglected infrastructure. A country that should be prospering is being bled dry by an unending and unnecessary conflict.
Just as India and Pakistan have squandered untold blood and treasure over Kashmir, our Sri Lankan neighbours seem to have chosen the same ruinous route to perdition.A close observer of this conflict is Eric Ellis, an Australian journalist who has become a friend as our paths have often crossed in Sri Lanka. Recently, he was in Pakistan to report on the Feb 18 elections, and found himself drawn into a murky affair he described in great detail in the Asian Sentinel.
Briefly, he was invited to join the team of election observers put together by an NGO called the Centre for Media and Democracy. During the pre-election briefing, the group was suddenly joined by an American who boasted of his local and international connections, and simply took over. And although the group detected many irregularities as they were monitoring the polls in and around Peshawar, the American proclaimed to the media that the ‘free and fair’ elections represented a triumph of democracy, and heaped praise on President Musharraf for having conducted them.
Eric Ellis and a group of other observers distanced themselves from this ‘ugly American’, and finally ousted him from their group. But the mystery of who was behind this propaganda effort remains unsolved. Who sponsored the American? We can only guess, but it does seem to be a crude attempt to hoodwink the world about the fairness of the elections.
In the event, official candidates were decimated because of the sheer number of anti-government votes that were pushed into ballot boxes. Had the affair been a close-run thing, it is quite possible that President Musharraf and his henchmen might have done better.
So, thank you, Ellis (and all the other foreign journalists and observers who came), for helping keep the elections reasonably clean.
