Thoughts of a pessimist

Seems like the celebrations are not over yet. Sri Lankans didn’t have a reason to celebrate since the Cricket World Cup victory in 1996. It’s been more than a decade now and this achievement is bigger than anything else for them, which is quite understandable. It seems that people who were never bothered about the war or the country have also joined the fun, and quite rightly so. They say victory has thousands of fathers.

I’m pretty sure most of these people who are shouting at each junction don’t have a clue about what they are celebrating. Is it the end of the war? Is it the death of Prabhakaran? Is it defeating terrorism? Is it the end of terrorists? I guarantee they would not have a definite answer.

I noticed that some of the print media, some key figures in the society and of course some politicians have interpreted this as the end of the terrorism in Sri Lanka. In my opinion, it’s only defeating terrorists, but not terrorism. Sri Lankan armed forces have demolished almost entire leadership of the terrorist outfit and a vast majority of its ranks from top to bottom. But by no means does that imply the end or defeating of terrorism.

My understanding is that defeating terrorists and defeating terrorism are two different processes. Defeating terrorists is a crash-boom-bang process which takes lots of physical effort, firepower and lives where as defeating terrorism is a slow, thoughtful and a tactical process. You need to be patient, make some sacrifices and build respect and understanding between the parties involved for the latter. But no, we are a nation who are not ready for any of those dramas and understandably opted to go on the first track, which is the fast and furious track too, and eventually were triumphant.

Terrorism in Sri Lanka or anywhere in the world has emerged because of social, economical and most importantly political reasons. Therefore only politicians, who have the control over those factors, can defeat terrorism by eliminating its root causes. Terrorists cannot survive once those root causes are no longer there. You may have defeated them militarily but as long as those root causes exist, there’s always a risk of them popping up in some corner.

I am glad that one of the Maha Nayaka theros was sensible enough to quote Lord Buddha to say “there are no winners in war”, while entire country was in a carnival mode. He has pointed out that unless we get rid of the reasons that sparked the war rather than being overjoyed by the victory, there will be many Prabhakarans emerging in the future. This is the simple truth that the Chakrawarthi chapter and many others in the society have forgotten or purposely neglected and this is the simple truth I have pointed out in many of my previous posts.

But the unfortunate and terrifying fact is, overwhelmed by the military victory, the politicians seem to be tactically ignoring their duty of resolving the root causes. Instead, they have sparked widespread celebrations around the country which have been going on for way too long. At the same time, they have created a new curtain to hide behind from all problems, which is none other than ‘patriotism‘, the magical vaccine for all burning illnesses.

In the aftermath of the military victory, people have shown how primitive they are by the way they started to cook and eat traditional milk rice alongside streets. Some of the extremist figures have already declared that there’s no need of a political solution beyond this. Mentality of the general public is also more or less the same which will encourage the opportunistic politicians and slowly but surely deepen the problem.