Meanwhile, the LTTE has also been responding to government’s readiness for a major offensive with equal degree of confidence, claiming that they have the capacity to thwart any government military push into the Vanni. For ordinary citizens as well as enthusiastic observers like me, it is very difficult to even guess how the war trajectory will really unfold in the coming weeks and what its outcomes would be. One can only say with confidence that the civil war in Sri Lanka has now reached a decisive stage with no return.

Extra-military costs

Military outcomes and consequences are only one side of the story of any internal war. Internal civil wars have human, social and political costs. Parties that are conducting war and their allies usually show little or no consideration for such extra-military costs of war. A sentiment that is being popularized these days is the plea to the President “to finish it (‘LTTE terrorism’) off once and for all” while people are ready to endure economic hardships, “tightening their empty bellies.” Spreading such martial sentiments through propaganda is also a strategy by the government to build popular expectations of an imminent victory.

The government at the moment does not seem to be concerned at all about possible political consequences of not being able to fulfill such bellicose expectations. Now the situation is that even if the President for some unforeseen reason wants to even slow down the much-promised military campaign into Vanni, he will not be in a position to do so. The political expedience of regime stability through war seems to have completely taken over the logic of reason, policy, events and processes.

Since the concern for the welfare of the country, the people and the country’s future is not the monopoly of regimes that are entrapped in the war option, the dissenting citizens have a right and a duty to reflect on some of the negative political consequences of the war build-up. Many of them are already visible around us.

Tamil alienation

First and foremost is the continuing and heightened alienation of the Tamil citizens from the Sri Lankan state. The way in which the government has been conducting the war in the North-East and implementing a new state security regime in the rest of the country is one defined by a sense of ethnic supremacy and arrogance, because in its deeds the government does not convey the message that it cares for Tamils as citizens. The message the Tamil citizens have got from the government is that the government treats each Tamil – young or old, man or woman, sick and able bodied – as a potential and imminent threat to the Sri Lankan state and its security, unless that Tamil is a supporter, well-wisher or participant in the government’s counter-insurgency war.

The above statement is not an exaggeration that should warrant a five page polemical response from the government’s War Secretariat. The way in which the Tamils are treated in security and search operations, whether it is in Jaffna or in my neighborhood in Dehiwela, communicates to Tamils just one basic message. In war their citizenship right to fair and equal treatment by the state is suspended. If they want equality and dignity as citizens, this is not the time for it.

No malice

I say this not with any malice to those who run, or mis-run, the Sri Lankan state at present, but with the hope that they will begin to learn about the elementary principles of democratic governance in conditions of ethnic- civil war.

Government leaders should realize that in their blind commitment to winning the military war against the LTTE, they are sowing the seeds of losing the political war.

In the present political context of heightened militarism and ethnic majoritarian and statist bellicosity, it is not easy, possible or even advisable for people like me to offer any sober advice in public to the President or his advisors as to how to politically manage the war with the LTTE without alienating the Tamil citizens from the state, or subverting democratic norms, institutions and practices.

Regime and the state

The gradual erasure of the distinction between the state and the regime and the growing belief among leading members of the government that they are the state and that after them it would be the ultimate catastrophe is another consequence of the present stage of civil war in Sri Lanka.

The proclivity among ruling politicians in Sri Lanka to equate themselves and their regime with the state is not a new thing introduced by President Rajapaksa and his brothers and their propagandists. It began during the United Front regime of 1970, and was spearheaded particularly by the SLFP and LSSP in that coalition. It continued under JR Jayewardene and Premadasa regimes. This practice of a regime identifying itself with the state took a back seat during Wijetunga, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickramasinghe administrations. It is now back in practice in earnest, with a vengeance.

What happens when this distinction between the state and the regime is erased? The answer is not so unfamiliar to Sri Lankan citizens who still maintain some historical memory of the 1970s and 1980s. It marks a particularly authoritarian drift in governance in which liberal democracy is seen as an unaffordable luxury, and even a threat. It is a kind of post-democracy in which the state and regime security is viewed superior and prior to people’s security, the rule of law subservient and subjected to the unchecked and arbitrary powers of the executive, minority communities an unnecessary burden on the welfare of the majority community. This unfortunately is a tendency that moves forward quite fast in Sri Lanka today.

Impact on the state

The corroding impact on the state is the most crucial and irreparably damaging political outcome of civil war. It militarizes the state as well as state-society relations. It enhances to an extreme extent the repressive capacity as well as the will for repressive intervention of the state. It widens and reinforces the rift between the state and ethnic minorities. It normalizes the abnormal behaviour pattern of the state and the regime. It radically undermines the democratic foundations of the state. It brings to the fore patriotic-militaristic demagogy as a source of wisdom and vision.

We have been witnessing how all these are happening before our very eyes. But the fantasy of a great military victory prevents many people from seeing through it the other realities beyond the ideological illusions. In these conditions one who foresees it can only become a traitor to be pilloried.

One of the most interesting and disquieting aspects of the Sri Lankan state’s retreat from the rule of law under the imperatives of civil war is the erasure of the distinction between the legitimate Sri Lankan state and the LTTE’s state-like practices. On issues of human rights violations and military excesses in the conduct of war, in assaulting the media institutions and media freedom, in dealing with the skeptical and slightly critical international community, and in its expression of narcissistic arrogance, the present government seems to admire, follow and imitate the LTTE with great deal of self-pride. That really is a sad development, a new contribution by the present regime.

Mirror-image

This is pretty bad for a regime that claims to be a partner in the international system of democratic governance. Mirror-imaging the LTTE particularly in the area of human rights and humanitarian issues is self-defeating and self-destructive for the government. It prevents the government from occupying the moral high ground. Actually, the world is watching the government as well. As a result, the regime is beginning to face a legitimacy crisis internationally. This is a point that the bearded as well as suit-clad defenders of the regime, who can speak fairly good combative English, should realize sooner than later if they really want to defend their regime.

When I read through this essay before sending it for publication, I notice a strong sense of despair and frustration expressed in every sentence of it. It is a sense arising out of the realization that there is very little, if not nothing, that individuals like me who foresees the impending catastrophe for Sri Lanka, can do to prevent it. We don’t have a strong peace movement that can prevail upon the government as well as the LTTE. Our opposition is trying to be more real war-like than the Rajapaksa regime. The civil society movements are quite weak, particularly in conditions of heightened ethnic enmities. Nor do we have international actors who can decisively influence the decision making process in Colombo and Vanni. It looks like that the major international actors want to see how the Sri Lankan state succeeds in its counter-insurgency war so that they can apply those lessons in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere. We are who we are – a people whose destiny is predicated on the outcome of an unpreventable and impending war for which there are many well-wishers and a very few skeptics.

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