The mad little island
Government troops have not fired on rebel positions since the 2002 cease-fire agreement with the main rebel group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Although no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, the government attributed the attack to the Tigers, saying it bore the hallmarks of previous rebel assaults.
The suspected bomber disguised herself as a pregnant woman on her way to visit the military hospital, the military spokesman, Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe, said. The bomb was detonated near a convoy of vehicles carrying the army commander, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseca, to lunch. The suicide bombing comes on the heels of a steady spate of assassinations and landmine attacks over the last several weeks, which effectively quashed talks on the 25-year-old war that were due to resume in Geneva last week. An estimated 65,000 people have been killed so far in the war.
So what is it these people want?
Both sides have shown through their actions that they do not desire peace at the price exacted: a federal Sri Lanka. Nor does either side want relapse into full-scale civil war. Unless they are idiots, they must have learned that it is unwinnable as well as unbearable. It is simply not an option.
Each must also know that the other is not all of a sudden going to fold. This is not a game of chicken.
That leaves only one possibility. What either side prefers is precisely this teetering on the edge of the abyss in an apparent show of strength.
Too bad gravity is getting the last laugh.
Begged by a war-weary Sri Lanka government to facilitate peace, Norway brokered the 2002 cease-fire that gave respite from a quarter century of carnage. Ever since, despite no end of insults and abuse designed to eject it, it has striven to get the psychotic Tamil Tigers and the rigid hardliners in charge of Colombo to meet and work out a compromise.
Not a chance. In fact, if not for pressure by the international community, the peace process would have ended long ago.
As with the Oslo Accords for the Middle East, neither side was interested in preparing its population for compromise. Instead, the prevailing faction on each side saw the process as a means of wringing concessions from the other side without giving up anything of substance in return.
There is little to do now but to leave this mad little island to war, until it tires of it once again. Though some of them will doubtless be trying, the Sri Lankans — unlike Iraqis — will have noone to blame but themselves.
