Over the course of 2008, Groundviews published over 250 compelling contributions from ordinary Sri Lankans, award winning poets and authors, renowned academics, diplomats, civil servants, leading civil society activists and others.

Sri Lanka closes out its 60th year of Independence, though in the strictest sense it lasts till the beginning of next February when we celebrate our 61st Independence Day. It is a moment to take stock.  Due to all the wrong turnings we took and the right ones we did not at and since our Independence six decades ago, we have spent a quarter century commemorating our independence in conditions of a separatist civil war. This will in all probability be so next year too. However it may not be so the year after, and from then onwards, because of what we have achieved this year. And I do mean “we”: the leadership, the government, the military, the vast majority of people, the dissident Tamils. 

What has been the balance sheet of 2008? It is that we are winning but have not yet won. Victory is on the horizon but it has not yet been achieved. 2008 was the year in which the Sri Lankan political leadership decisively reversed the balance of forces between the state and the LTTE. It is the year in which the country feels itself on the strategic offensive while the enemy is on the (admittedly dogged) defensive.   

The main achievement of 2008 was the shift in the balance of forces between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE and the maintenance of the posture of strategic offensive by the Sri Lankan armed forces.  The Lankan military has succeeded in squeezing the LTTE into parts of two contiguous districts and the peninsular neck. The LTTE was unable to make any territorial gains this year. Nor was it able to regain any territory it lost. As importantly or even more importantly, the Tigers lost thousands of valuable fighting cadres. The corresponding losses by the Sri Lankan forces are affordable given the discrepancy in size of the two armed formations as well as the vaster discrepancy in the population base of recruitment. Voluntary recruitment to the Sri Lankan armed forces kept rising throughout the year, while forced conscription in the LTTE controlled areas brought in ill-motivated fighters into the ranks of the enemy.

The main result of 2008, that of the maintenance of the offensive posture of the Sri Lankan armed forces, was a unique one on the part of the Sri Lankan governing elite over the decades since the conflict erupted. As Karuna, ex-LTTE rebel commander turned parliamentarian -who was double-crossed by President Kumaratunga when she allowed Prabhakaran’s seaborne attackers a landing behind his lines at Verugal– points out, these achievements would have been impossible if not for the leadership provided by President Mahinda Rajapakse, Secretary of Defense Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Army Commander Sarath Fonseka. I would add the Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and the Service chiefs Wasantha Karannagoda and Roshan Goonetilleke to the list. A half a dozen good men. But these men would have been unable to turn the tables on the Tigers as they have, and no one else before had done sustainedly, strategically, if not for the morale of the officer corps and rank and file of the armed forces. This morale itself is drawn from the supportive population base, whose active support for the war is manifested in popularity pools which range from a low of a 75% approval to a high of 83%-93%. Thus it is the people, chiefly but not exclusively the Sinhala people, who by their support and sacrifice have provided the foundation for the military success.

What this reveals is an organic identity between the people, the armed forces and the political leadership; an identity between state and society, which is a historic rarity. For the first time we have a leadership that listened to the people on this central issue, that turned itself into an instrument of the people’s will. This is the secret of the success of 2008 and one of the main features of this year.

The Tiger’s Police Chief has clearly indicated to the BBC last week that economic targets will be high on the list of terrorist priorities. What the man and his leaders obviously do not understand from their own record of destructive achievement is that such attacks only clarify matters and swell support for a war to a finish. They do not diminish or erode popular support. The erroneous thinking is based on the parliamentary elections of 2001 in which Mr. Ranil Wickremsinghe won, seemingly on the back of the economic damage caused by the attack on katunayake airport and as a result of the emergence of a lobby of corporate fat cats calling itself Sri Lanka First. What this interpretation fails to take into account is that the real secret of that election is something that has been known since 1952, namely that if the forces of the Centre (the SLFP) and the Left (be it MEP, LSSP, CPSL or JVP) remain disunited, the Right wins. In 2001, the SLFP and JVP ran against each other. The combined SLFP - JVP vote was larger than the UNP vote. Today, the JVP will run against the SLFP, but it is a divided and diminished party, whose main orator will run with the governing coalition.    

If the outstanding achievement of 2008 has been the shift to and maintentence of the strategic offensive against the LTTE, what is the main task of 2009? President Rajapakse has, in his remarks to a civil society gathering on December 22nd, already identified it correctly in its historic, military and political dimensions:

“The year 2009 will be the year when our motherland would be finally liberated from the LTTE…There will be many attempts to stall the forward march of the security forces. Malicious elements have already begun to create political unrest by making many problems for the government in an attempt to save terrorists from their imminent defeat. Therefore, I expect that there would be testing times ahead. For this very reason, I would like to declare 2009 as a year of victory for heroic soldiers”. (Lanka Dissent)

The challenge of 2009 is to conclude the war victoriously and do so in a manner that precludes to the extent possible, a prolonged guerrilla war. This is by decapitating and destroying the LTTE’s fighting forces in the battles to liberate Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu. The finest military mind of the post WW2 20th century, Vietnam’s General Vo Nguyen Giap calls this definition of the military goal as “the annihilation of the living forces of the enemy”. It is a myth of the misinformed that a powerful irregular force, especially if based on some collective identity or social constituency, can never be fully defeated, and that even if conventially defeated they revert to or are reborn as guerrilla movements which are impossible to eradicate.  Take three well known examples: Chechnya, Angola’s UNITA and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. All three were defeated and decapitated, never to be reborn as guerrillas.

Part of the challenge of 2009 is that the large unit war will have to be won within a fairly compressed time frame, before the impact of the world economic crisis manifested in collapsing commodity prices combines with the burden of military expenditure to damage the economy. A victory and the restoration of normality will spontaneously generate an economic upsurge.

Having won the quasi-conventional war, the Sri Lankan armed forces will have to eradicate the infrastructure of a residual or resurgent terrorist campaign. This cannot be done and must not be attempted by the Sri Lankan forces alone. It will require the legitimate, large scale engagement of Tamil allies and auxiliaries, and this legitimacy can result only from the constitutionally ordained devolution of power to the Eastern Provincial council and its Northern counterpart. A genuine measure of autonomy and self government, and joint operations with elected local allies has always been the secret of effective counterinsurgency.

The real challenge of 2009 then is twofold and indissolubly twinned: the liberation of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu in such a decisive and comprehensive manner as to pre-empt to the maximum degree the survival of the LTTE as a guerrilla/terrorist force and the redrawing of the Sri Lankan social contract in so enlightened and reformist a manner that the Tamil people feel included as fully fledged citizens enjoying equal rights and genuine provincial autonomy. 2009 must be the year of the full and final liberation and reunification of Sri Lankan territory and upon that reunified territory, the beginning of the construction of a truly Sri Lankan identity, an authentically Sri Lankan nation.

(These are the strictly personal views of the writer).

• Poll: Prospects for Peace in Sri Lanka in 2007
• Views of the Periphery - Competing Views on Thoppigala
• (non) Patriotic (non) Nationalism
• Ranil Wickramasinghe on Thoppigala
• Bloody anniversaries: Indepedence, pogroms, war and peace

Its Christmas day. For a change, I was at home with my family.

Early morning, I went for Christmas Mass in my parish. Many years ago, I had been active in the church, as a student and teacher in the Sunday School, as an Alter Server and in the Young Christian Students Movement. But I had not gone to my parish for a long time, though I have been visiting and staying in churches all over Sri Lanka, especially in the war ravaged North. I thought I will go today, as it was Christmas, also because of my family.

Unlike most people, I didn’t go to the crib in the Church. But I did have images of Jesus being born in a cattle shed 2008 years ago. That Mary was compelled to give birth to Jesus away from her home, as she and Joseph were forced to leave her hometown, while she was pregnant, due to an order of the rulers of that time.

I sat quietly in the church and said a silent prayer for the baby that I saw few weeks ago in Menik Farm, Vavuniya. She would be 40 days today. She had no name when I visited her. A baby born as her parents fled the advancing Army in Vanni. A baby who is forced to live in a mosquito infested, muddy and murky camp, as her parents are not allowed to live with their relatives, but confined to a defacto prison by the military, even though they are not charged with any crime.

The Christmas Mass was taking longer than the usual Sunday service, many prayers and long preaching by the priest.

There were prayers for the rulers and the military that they will soon bring about an end to the conflict with their ongoing military operations, which is on the verge of “victory”.

But there were no prayers for a negotiated, just, political solution that will meet aspirations of all communities.

There was no mention of a call for ceasefire by the two Anglican Bishops and three Catholic Bishops.

There were no prayers or mention of hundreds of thousands of displaced, men, women and children, with inadequate shelter, food, medicine, education, water and sanitation.

There were no prayers for children and adults conscripted as soldiers, their families.

There were no prayers for families of disappeared, those killed.

No remembering churches that were shelled and bombed, as they offered shelter to people fleeing the war, and no prayers for priests killed and disappeared as they were helping the war affected.

No remembering those tortured, those being detained merely on suspicion in inhumane conditions, worse than conditions that some animals are kept.

I wondered whether I was living in the same country, whether I was part of “one Catholic Church”.

Amidst my frustration and gloom, some gave me hope and inspiration.

A Catholic sister told me a while ago that she and a priest had shared about the plight of the displaced in the North during a Christmas Mass and asked people for their prayers and donations. People had donated more than Rs. 50,000.

After the mass, I visited three journalists being detained, one of who had written about children being conscripted as child soldiers just before he was detained. I went with a diplomat attached to an embassy in Colombo; she brought chocolates, and stood patiently in the sun with me for close to an hour, while waiting to get in. I will remember the smiles of the people we met and chatted briefly.

I also remembered the wife of one of the journalists, with who I had been in close contact. What would Christmas mean to her? What Christmas greetings, what Christmas gift could I offer her? Will my usual greeting, “Happy Christmas” have any meaning to her?

I met some Catholic sisters who were coming from the prison as I was about to go in. Several other priests - Anglican, Methodist and Catholic – as well as some other friends, who had got my text message, also told me they will visit detainees in the coming days.

So this is Christmas in Sri Lanka, 2008 December.

I could not help reflecting that if Jesus was to be born in Sri Lanka, he would not be born in the Church I went for the Christmas Mass.

It is possible though that Jesus might be born in a Church in the battle zones in the North, that offers shelter to people fleeing bombing and shelling from the sky and around them. Or probably in the prison I visited. Or in the house of a family member of a disappeared. Or amongst the hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Happy Christmas from Sri Lanka.

• Prices Improve In Jaffna
• Personal experience of the Vanni today
• Vanni displaced: when will they be free from clutches of tigers and lions?
• “I need to move out of this camp and have a place of my own”
• Civilian cost of a humanitarian operation: miseries of liberated peoples of Musali and Naanatan divisions in Mannar waiting to go home

I have never felt the
same about blue frothy waters and
ebb and tide
since learning how
your mild self could turn
and gush
hiss and spit
washing out her tomorrows, her
child, her home
and
Blue shimmering water is
now a memory of
a blue baby shirt,
the white sari that blows in the wind
as she feeds the crows and dogs on the
beach in their memory is the
colour of white sea foam…
The breeze that beguiles gulls and
suspends them in mid air is now the
a silence
of sadness that
cannot be stilled.

• Prices Improve In Jaffna
• Howl for a new generation (with apologies to Allen Ginsberg)
• The day after tomorrow
• Until the Guns are silent
• An inconvenient history: A reply to Victory Ivan’s viewpoints on criminal defamation

Minister Bandula Gunawardene appeared on V and implicitly commenting on the Supreme Court decision perhaps made a point that all taxes are made by Parliament. Not quite since the Minister of fiancé can gazette orders under the Revenue Protection Act if my memory is right. True they have to be tabled in Parliament thereafter. The question at issue is not a change in taxes.

The Supreme Court as far as I am aware has not changed the taxes on petrol. What it has done after consulting the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance who submitted pricing formulas decided to fix the price of petrol. It has taken into account the current taxes and levies on petrol. What it has done is to prevent profiteering by the CPC perhaps to cover up its losses on the hedging contracts and the defaulting in payments by the government departments like the CEB, the Railway and the Armed Forces. Should the public be called upon to pay by way of higher prices for the negligence, corruption and incompetence of the government? I think not. Can the Supreme Court intervene in pricing matters? Not unless they are fixed by monopolies or cartels. Doesn’t the Consumer Affairs Authority have the power to intervene where there is monopoly pricing?

Fair prices must be enforced where there is market power by one supplier. This is part of Fair Pricing and is accepted and practiced in every free market economy. Regulation of monopolies and cartels is the duty of the regulatory authority. Where the regulatory authority fails in its duty the Court certainly can and should intervene to prevent undue exploitation by any agency whether owned by the government or the private sector. Hasn’t the Minister Bandula intervened in fixing prices of gas, milk foods etc to see that there is no undue profiteering by those exercising monopoly power either singly or as a cartel. Being a small economy closed to some extent we consumers can be easily exploited. If the Government wants to preserve its revenue from taxes on petrol it can always raise such taxes rather than engaging in veiled criticism of the Supreme Court which in this case is certainly acting in the public interest.

Please Minister Bandula Gunawardene don’t mix up pricing in organizations with market power from taxing powers of the Government.

• Anti-competitive Activities, the source of rice crisis
• Jaffna Prices At MPCS Now Higher Than When Taxed
• Impeachment of Public Officials
• When meritocracy dies and nepotism reigns supreme
• Prices Improve In Jaffna