Calls for the Sri Lankan Army to stop attacking the now tiny enclave still occupied by the Tamil Tigers and 50,000 Tamil civilians, apparently been forced to stay with them, are unrealistic. There have been too many cease-fires in the past that served only to allow the Tigers invaluable breathing space to regroup. Colombo is on the verge of winning a war most people, including many members of governments past and present, thought was unwinnable. They are not going to stop now.
But it is the way in which victory is gained that remains important. There remain strong grounds for believing that while the authorities may win the war, they are already set to lose the peace. This stems from the fact that in the last few months of military success, there has been no concerted effort to create a dialogue with the Tamil community, through moderate Tamil leaders who can assure people that there will be no return to the social and economic discrimination that so helped fuel the insurgency that began in 1983. Therefore even when the last Tamil Tiger is disarmed, there is a very real danger the core problems will remain.
And it is not just Sri Lanka’s relations with its Tamil minority that are now in question. There has been international anger at the government’s refusal to grant entry to one of the EU team of three foreign ministers seeking to mediate. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was blocked from joining his French and British counterparts, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband who visited Colombo yesterday. The Swedes with the Norwegians have played a long and honorable role in negotiations between the rebels and the government. In their insistently even-handed approach, they have clearly incurred the ire of the Sri Lankan authorities.
Aid organizations, including the UN have been warning of a catastrophe unless there is a cease-fire to allow access to the thousands of trapped civilians. Meanwhile, security forces are busy processing those Tamils who have managed to flee the final enclave, seeking to weed out Tamil Tigers who have mingled with the crowds. There is clearly another humanitarian issue in the feeding and sheltering of this mass of refugees in government-run camps.
The intransigence of the Sri Lankan government both toward would-be mediators from the EU and toward most aid agencies is damaging the country’s international reputation. Nor are the strict controls on the international media helping the authorities. Journalists are not allowed near the front line but are given strictly controlled facilities trips through areas like the rebel’s former capital Kilinochchi and the key town of Mullaitivu that was captured soon afterward. Even in their heyday, the Tamil Tigers were no less proscriptive of foreign media and now they would certainly not welcome journalists in the hellhole they have created for themselves and their people. The upshot is that when this bitter war is over, Sri Lanka may no longer be viewed by the world as a beautiful pearl hanging from India, but rather as bloodstain teardrop.
The promise to change America
The Independent commented on the first hundred days of US President Barack Obma, sayig in part:
It is an arbitrary number, of course, and it offers almost no clue to the eventual verdict, either of the voters or of history. But it is still a landmark and one which any elected leader knows will be seen as setting the tone for what follows. Barack Obama’s first 100 days were always bound to be subject to particular scrutiny, not only because of the hopes generated by his campaign, but because of his uniqueness as the first African-American president and the national and global economic crisis in which he took over.
Now, as so often, it is as though the two sides of the Atlantic existed in different worlds, and were judging two different presidents. In the United States, the grumbling has already set in. Although more than two thirds of Americans believe that Obama is doing a good job — far higher than for either of his two predecessors at a similar stage — the approval rating is not as positive as for either Kennedy or Eisenhower. The wave of euphoria that greeted Obama’s election has subsided fast.
In part, this is because the hopes he raised were so high, especially among America’s disadvantaged. In part, it is because the Republicans, still licking the wounds from their defeat, have spurned the cross-party cooperation Obama favored. There is no political unity on how to tackle the economy. But it is also because the ideological fissures, so deep during both the Clinton and Bush presidencies, were reopened by Obama when he published the White House documents relating to CIA interrogations. His efforts to draw a line under this shameful chapter had the opposite effect. From abroad, the back-stabbing intricacies and self-absorption of Washington politics loom less large. Indeed, they fade into the background compared with the scale of Obama’s feat in winning the election in the first place and the calm assurance with which he has handled his first months.
