The hope is that, after the elections just concluded, the opposing factions in Sri Lanka will be able to seek to resolve their differences around the negotiating table. The country has endured 18 years of civil war. More than 60,000 people have perished in this awful conflict and hundreds of thousands more have been seriously injured.
This election has seen the return to power, after seven years, of the United National Party. The ousted coalition formed by the People’s Alliance of President Kumaratunga had won its shaky mandate largely with its promise to achieve peace with the Tamil rebels. However, it quickly demonstrated its inability to carry through this ambition. Far from talking to the Tamils, the coalition sought to secure the military victory which has eluded successive governments. It was a sign of the outgoing government’s desperation that in the final delays of the hustings, they spread the news that they were about to pull off a secret peace agreement with the Tamils. The electors clearly did not believe this and have turned again to the United National Party (UNP) which has made a clear promise that peace negotiations will begin.
Both sides must admit that there is no military solution. They must accept that if they fail to reach an agreement, violence will continue, interminably and uselessly. Both sides must also admit that their supporters have had enough of war and would settle for tolerable peace terms. Indeed, they must see that peace is the only victory that either side can achieve. The Tamil militants must acknowledge that no amount of blood will build them an independent state, just as the Sinhalese majority must accept that nothing can crush the aspirations of Tamils to have a separate identity. With this precondition in place, it will be possible to begin serious talking about how the ambitions of both sides can be accommodated by compromise. The international community must not allow itself to become totally diverted by the huge task in Afghanistan.
The United Nations should also make its good offices available to the people of Sri Lanka. This support should extend beyond peace negotiations, to the financial underwriting of a recovery plan for this beautiful and potentially highly prosperous island. A generation of Sri Lankans has grown up knowing nothing but violence and bloodshed. The hopelessness facing so many of the country’s 12 million people has caused capital flight and the loss of many of its brightest young people from both majority and minority communities.
It is the responsibility of politicians on both sides of the divide to find ways to restore hope and confidence in their divided society. The examples of South Africa and Northern Ireland and, hopefully, of Afghanistan, demonstrate that a new way of living together can only found by putting aside old grudges and forgiving old crimes, in the hope that a generation on, they will also be forgotten.
Most difficult of all will be the acceptance that 18 years of bloody conflict have been 18 pointless, wasted years. The only way that the intercommunal savagery can be turned to any good account is if it demonstrates, once and for all, that peace is the only option that is left to the people of Sri Lanka.
