Sri Lanka's post- conflict future

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Sri Lanka's post- conflict future
Road to reconciliation :
Firstly, we have done much more in the last five years in terms of basic infrastructure. While infrastructure alone is not enough, without it there could be no development, in particular in areas deprived of basic connectivity for so long. Secondly, we have begun to attract the kind of investment the country deserves and are able to direct it towards regions that suffered from neglect previously. I mean not only areas previously under terrorist sway, but also those areas full of promise in the south and the northwest that successive governments neglected, because their leadership was immovably urban.
Thirdly, we have at last begun to implement the provisions about language that were introduced into our Constitution in 1987. We have much further to go, but at last Government has had the courage to promote bilingualism by regulation. 300,000 public servants should be bilingual by 2013 in terms of the current training program, while 500 of the 5000 new Tamil police officers envisaged have already been recruited.
Human resources development
Text of the speech by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha at the Royal Commonwealth Society, London on September 17, 2010
Fourthly, we are ready now to ensure equitable human resources development through the provision of choice. Though the statist system we had bore rich dividends in terms of basic education, it did not encourage excellence. Also, the system of positive discrimination that had been introduced initially to help rural students hit the better education minorities hardest. Unlike their equally discriminated against brethren in Colombo, they had no viable alternatives. Ensuring that our talented youngsters all over the country have programs to develop their skills is vital, and this is amongst the most important reforms being advanced currently by government.
Fifthly, we have, more quickly than had been anticipated and certainly more quickly than in any comparable situation in the world, we have brought things closer to normalcy for the principle victims of Tiger control, the nearly 300,000 displaced and the almost 12,000 fighting cadres, most of whom had been conscripted against their will.
To put down very simply the current position:
* Fewer than 15,000 still remain in the Vavuniya Welfare Centres, out of the over 280,000 who were there initially, and these enjoy full freedom of movement. Another 12,000 are still not resettled, but are out of the camp, though 9,000 of these return as required. Interestingly enough, when freedom of movement was permitted towards the end of last year, after security checks were complete, comparatively few people took advantage of this, preferring the full support package they were provided within the camps, including all education and health facilities.
* This means that 250,000 have settled down again, most of them back in the areas in the North from which they had been displaced.
* Eight hundred and ninety seven square kilometres have been cleared of mines, out of the 1,744 initially estimated as contaminated. Seventy five percent of the clearing was by the Sri Lankan forces, though we are also grateful to agencies such as HALO and MAG and a number of Indian groups which assisted in the work.
* Of 11,696 former combatants, 3588 have been sent home including all former child soldiers. Vocational training for the others is proceeding apace and another 400 will be released by the end of this month and a further 1000 next month. It is assumed that about 700 may have to face legal process, but government believes that the rest were most probably innocent victims rather than perpetrators of LTTE terror. The International Organization for Migration assists with the rehabilitation program, as does the Hindu Congress.
* Emergency regulations have been relaxed, and further liberalization is planned over the next few months.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we have at last begun to move beyond the polarization that was imposed upon us for so long, so that problems that might have been solved with reason and sympathy turned into bitter conflict.
Language policy
I should expand on what I mean by this, which may necessitate going into the background in some detail. Let me start by noting that we certainly created a number of problems for ourselves in the first quarter century after independence, springing largely I believe from a restrictive language policy that had repercussions also with regard to education and public service employment. In a context in which we were also victims of statism such restrictions caused enormous damage.
Resettled children at school, December 2009

Soldiers helping to clean up a Kovil in Kilinochchi for Thai Pongal, January 2010
But what should have been a political problem, demanding a political solution, turned into violent conflict with repeated attacks on Tamils from 1977.
These were not attacks by Sinhalese in general, but they seem to have been encouraged, if not initiated, by some members of the government of the time. Sadly, given that government also claimed to be closely allied to the West, and also that Human Rights was not as important then as winning the Cold War, there was no criticism in the West then of the monstrosities that took place.
Those attacks obviously contributed to the polarization that took place, not helped at all by the government both postponing elections and instituting a constitutional amendment that in effect drove out the major Tamil party from Parliament.
This was grist to the mill of the various terrorist movements that had sprung up, and it also contributed to more active involvement by India.
This culminated in the Indo-Lankan Accord of 1987 and a program of devolution, which was accepted by almost all terrorist groups, which then entered the democratic process.
The exception was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which took on those other groups then as well as the Indian army. They were aided over the years by Sri Lankan political parties which blamed their rivals for the failure to reach a political solution, while suggesting that the Tigers were little lambs whose desire for peaceful compromise was being thwarted.
Tamil leaders
This foolish or cynical practice did untold damage to the body politic, in particular because it encouraged in the Tigers the belief that they were irresistible and, worse, it made Tamils abroad concentrate their favours and their finances on extreme terrorists.
Meanwhile the Tigers were picking off moderate Tamil leaders, from Amirthalingam to Tiruchelvam, so that by 2001 the TULF began to subscribe to the Tiger claim that they were the sole representatives of the Tamils. Their leader who resisted this, Anandasangaree, was sidelined, a new party called the TNA was started that subscribed to the view that the Tigers alone spoke for the Tamils and, with a little help from the government elected in 2001, the Western world adopted this viewpoint too - even though the 2004 election showed that, even in the East, the monolith had begun to crack.
Drunk with power then, the Tigers refused to compromise, and walked out of talks with the UNP government in 2003 and the subsequent UPFA government in 2006, after they had deigned to attend a couple of rounds in that year, after their three year absence.
They were by now engaging in forced conscription of at least one member of each family, though sadly the UN, which was supposed to protect the people of the area, did not draw attention to this, and we were finally only informed of the situation by the Norwegian ambassador. Given all this indulgence, assuming that military victory would be easy, the Tigers launched two massive attacks in August 2006, to attempt to over-run government forces in the Jaffna and Trincomalee Districts.
They failed. Government, using unusual strategies that the West might well study if it wishes to minimize civilian casualties as well as its own in theatres of conflict such as Afghanistan, managed systematically to drive the Tigers into smaller and smaller territory.
The ploy of dragging civilians along with them as they retreated, aided and abetted by international commentators who suggested this was happening through free will, meant government had to move more slowly than it would have liked, and suffer more casualties. But the strategy paid off, in that in time even the Tiger cadres, or rather the less hard-bitten amongst them, started disobeying orders, and a breach in defences led to nearly 150,000 civilians making their way to safety in April 2009. Nearly 100,000 more were rescued in May, when the Tiger leadership was finally destroyed, making a total of 280,000, including those who had got away earlier, in welfare centres.
There were also around 10,000 former combatants who had surrendered themselves, with around another 1,000 being added from the Welfare Centres after investigation.
To be continued
Courtesy: Daily News