The announcement by the International Committee of Red Cross that it had received over 600 dead bodies after the fighting at Killinochchi in December momentarily focussed the international community on the carnage in Sri Lanka. By January, their attention had passed to the violence in the northwestern provincial council elections and the threat this posed to Sri Lankan democracy in a year of at least four further elections.
Out of these two dark events came two potentially welcome outcomes: the horror of Killinochchi spurred the peace community to further highlight public demands for an end to the war, and a joint committee was formed by the opposition United National Party (UNP) with the ruling Peoples' Alliance (PA) to limit election violence. With gritted teeth, the UNP's Ranil Wickremasinghe and President Chandrika Kumaratunga appeared on the media shaking hands.
This is the first time the PA and the UNP have come together, despite considerable pressure from the international community that the two major parties develop a bipartisan approach to the war. But once the attention of the media, intelligentsia and politicians moves to the next crisis, it also moves away from the gains that have been forged. This switching on and off the spotlight is particularly damaging to Sri Lanka's peacemaking initiatives.
The continuing cycles of ever-escalating violence punctuated by short rests of negotiation illustrate just how important and badly needed is a sustained, strategic approach to peacemaking. But let it be clear: peacemaking and negotiation is not a soft option. Conflict Resolution has become the new buzzword among international agencies, but it is hardly a technical skill. Conflict resolution is firmly located in the political arena. And though it is about developing new approaches to conflict and politics, it can still be top-down or bottom-up, pacifying or transformatory.