Tears, but no protests

A strange element in Sri Lanka´s long-drawn civil war, now in its fourteenth year, is that despite the blood that has been shed and the limbs that have been lost on both sides of the lines, there has been little in the form of protest. The country has not seen angry demonstrations with ordinary people taking to the streets, refusing to offer their sons as cannon fodder. Despite the yearning for peace among people of all classes and communities, the carnage continues to be accepted with stoicism. Why? There are two reasons. On the Tamil side, there is fanatical motivation. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), has been able to inspire his fighters in a way that few guerrilla leaders in contemporary world history have been able to. The glass cyanide capsule that LTTE cadres wear round their necks and bite if captured, tells its own story. So also the numerous suicide killers who have blown themselves up for the Liberation Tigers.

On the other side of the bloodied fence, the young men fighting the war for the Colombo government most often do so because they have nothing else to do. Unemployment has long been the country´s biggest problem and although most politicians and, indeed, many other Sri Lankans would like to think that patriotism inspires most of the soldiers (and sailors, airmen and policemen) at the front, the reality is that they are fighting for their pay.