Online edition of Sunday Observer

TIM PAGE,well known photojournalist and author who gave the world a graphic insight into the brutal realities of war in both cambodia and vietnam,turns the spotlight on Srilanka in his latest book the "Political Saffron".An in depth look at what nearly two decades pf conflict could do to a once peaceful nation,the book is also a study of comparisons that measure up the Sri lankan tragedy from a regional and sometimes even global perspective.Page who had visited Sri lanka 20 years ago,cleverly juxtaposes the minds eye images with 21st century pictorial reality,for a tale that is as poignant as it is gripping and vivid.

Other books by page include "Mindful moment,Tim page's Nam, 10 years after:Vietnam today, and his autobiography Page after Page"

The following is an excerpt from "Political Saffron".

Should you be asked to compose the quintessential image of modern Lanka' you would need to organise into the same frame a monk with a mobile telephone an elephant, and an AK. The saffron of the `sangha', the panoply and pageantry of Perahera has been politicised. The once relatively pure Theravada culture overlain with the vestiges of British colonial democracy has been radically altered by 19 years of civil conflict.

A forgotten war. A war which granted little international attention, for it was never really internationalised. Or only briefly by the intervention of India in the late 1980s. Serendib, the jewel of tourist destinations was to be buried into feral nightmare for nearly two decades. Even the Cambodians had their demise ended in less time. And there was a year zero that no-one thought they could surmount in '79. Besides, their case had a broader international bearing, directly involving the superpowers rather than those powers merely dabbling in a bit of arms and drugs traffic. There were front line issues involved, inter ASEAN, between erstwhile enemies, the Thais and the Vietnamese, there were China and the USA, Europe and Japan panting for trade, plunder and posture in the background. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot were evil, there were defined lines of rights and Nazi wrongs. Sri Lanka provided a different demise, the resolution to the centuries old racist divide fuelled by inattention and a drift towards becoming a grown up country.

In 1982-83 I had spent eleven beguiled months roaming this intriguing beautiful isle uncovering its cultural, religious and political intricacies. By beguiled I mean discovering a world that my colonial forebears must have found and been enchanted by. The land was awash with the new generation of long haul tourists come to anoint their pallidity with rays and their curious minds with an elaborate picaresque folkloric. The country was kicking. Apparently at ease and with a deliberate progress towards the same prosperous goals that its Asian neighbours in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand were achieving. The Vietnam War had become history, although normalcy of relations with the West was only just emerging, the US was still intent on embargo and revenge. Sri Lanka had stayed pointedly non-aligned during that war, virtually supporting Ha Noi's policy of liberation and unification. The US had continually cast a coveting eye upon the deepwater port of Trincomalee; even more so after losing Cam Ranh Bay and ceding Subic back to the Philippinos. The civil war in Cambodia was still keeping prospectively friendly nations at the brink of a widening conflict. ASEAN was still to be welded together. The global mess of politics, the corporate control of most business was still looking inward, still not playing the larger circuit. Still in all major senses the island of Ceylon wrapped in antiquated practice was cocooned in family politics, led by the privileged few.

It was blessed ironically, like Londonderry, with some of the highest tertiary education levels, almost total literacy islandwide in a population of 14 million. The level of education was even higher up north in the Tamil populated Jaffna peninsula though the Sinhalese governors would restrict the learning in that language causing resentment leading to aired grievances at the formation of a Tamil political infrastructure. Grievances remained unaddressed; the age-old internecine prejudices were allowed to compound. Less investment and more crucially less water were funnelled to the north and the east.

Under British rule the tanks the reservoirs in the arid North and East had been under a program of gradual restoration, the new dams and irrigation were supposed to complement and complete these erstwhile developments. Vast acreage that could have been brought into fertile line would stay impoverished. Couple this with the rise of ethnic tensions nurtured by reducing the status of the Tamils, undermining their language and culture and you are left with the inevitable blowing into hideous shape.

The Colombo-Jaffna railway blocked by barbed wire

1983 saw the eruption of massive race riots in Colombo and elsewhere recrimatory acts on both sides escalated the crisis to a fuller conflict with draconian powers passing from a moderate government and police force to a system influenced and controlled by those who had come to be, tourists and investments would dry up, revenue needed to resolve the crisis, militarily or otherwise ceased to flow. The benefits of the Mahaweli and Victorian projects would be sucked into fuelling a civil war.

Both sides would prove intractable, the Tamil movement driven by splinter factions viciously stamped out by the now emerging all powerful 'tigers' of the LTTE; whose actions in taking control in hindsight are reminiscent of those the Khmer Rouge. Terror became the popular weapon used by all parties in a land that had enshrined the most pacisifist Buddhist precepts. The island would suffer privation and perversion of its fundaments for nearly two decades. The greed of war would consume a once outwardly tranquil society. The sangha would be co-opted into real politik. Lines would be drawn down the middle of the viharas, popular support for a war needed the spin that the saffron clad could evoke. Many young men would leave the poverty of the village for the mincer of the military's seemingly endless escapades covert or declared.

The percentage of the budget going on the war chest was reading 25 per cent leaving even an endless string of garment factories in the new economic zones hard pressed to counter the outflow on armaments. None of the general increments in the living standards of the peasantry have increased in real terms the infrastructure had barely improved in twenty years while there had been a decline in governmental services. The population has expanded by 6 million leaving social services overwhelmed and discontent, the burden increased by thousands of IDP (internally displaced persons) driven from their homes by the fighting and deliberate terrorism equally applied by all warring factions. The government has unleashed STF 9 special task (force) 'black shirts' as often as Prabakaran's tigers have liquidated the moderate voices of opposition and non-violence inside the Tamil heartlands. They could be seen as some of the world's most efficient terrorists having suicide bombed a Sri Lankan PM and being responsible for that of Rajiv Gandhi of India seen as the persecutor of the four year Indian intervention in Jaffna from '86-91'.

LTTE Martyrs Cemetery

Thousands more casualties were added to the internecine body count, the Indians went home in igonomy. Resistance hardened, the defense ministry swelled its coffers, the arms merchants flocked to supply any faction.

With the Indians back in Tamil Nadu across the Straits, more trouble brewed with a whiplash the right wing JVP party went on unsettling reason principally in the south. More young and old were drafted into toting AK's flooding in from China and the newly independent central Asian republics, Israel and the PLO sought opportunities to arm and train opposites. The Americans shipped in a motor pool of GMC 6x6. The Brits kept it flowing to whoever would buy. Lankan brokers of the tools of destruction funnelled their siblings on expensive shopping junkets, fat cats with connections flourished. Suppression of those threatening the secure and privileged was upped, any means were justified as the spiral continued. The ethical stability of a quasi-socialist state was evaporating in internal security measures, the semblances of justice were summarily dispensed. Roadside executions with a Central American flavour were common press.

Except the press the media have been granted only a limited grudgingly given access by any of the contestants vying for the centre of the ring. A conflict virtually unreported in the international media suppressed and censored at home. Occasionally events have flared the story creating an influx of media heavies with prime time airing, assassinations and mega bombings have graced front pages to be quickly relegated. Since the events, the catastrophes inhumanities have been nearly always been contained inter isle, the outside world has nodded over the story unaffected. There has been little internationally at stake. Opposition to the troubles has hardly had voice, the average citizen has remained unaware of the war's progress unless it has come home downtown in a car bomb or drive by execution. Voices of reason have been lost in the clamour for victory. Protest shifted for profits in the name of politics.

The focus had been lost, the actual meaning of peace and reconciliation four times arrived at had been blown away in the Israeli/PLO scenaria: any raison d'etre was let to slide on by. The inherent patience and flexibility once imbued in Sinhalese life seemed to have been flushed away.

Since September 11 "the times they are a changing!" I Everything economics, politics, culture has shifted radically since that auspicious day of retribution. Small wars and terrorism are out, the alliance is in and in control or believes it is. Getting negotiations started between warring factions has been the card played, the stick of coercion lurks above those who will not come to the table. Anything still hanging a terrorist tag will attract the wrath of combined intelligence services. It is intangible to discourse with a suicide bomber. A young dedicated cadre already traumatised by having grown up with nothing except war and the necessities of fraught survival. Two generations have been processed against a backdrop of having their world's blown away the next moment. Their bitterness and emotional frailties make negotiations difficult. Even more the reassimilation of that youth back into the mainstream is more difficult; removing the gun culture is harder than handling out the weapons. Not surprisingly is all those wacky feral places like Bosnia, Cambodia even disciplined Vietnam the Rambo/Ninja cult is a consumerate flavour of the year. Detoxing these young folk and their opposites in an enlarged military can prove to be the crux of survival. It has taken a decade to trim the 90K strong Cambodian forces down to 30.

Getting once civil war wrecked states to integrate the guerilla and regular elements, often ethnically disparate is a challenge for any UN guided body.

The aid missions, the NGOs which needs be, must arrive after a cease fire/peace process have to be kept in country until their aims start to bite into remodelling the peace. For the donor nations and organisations it is necessary to keep the pot on the stove, without transparency in the media both national and international, the aid will dry up, interest will ease away to the next good cause preferably one not beset by obstinancy or intractability.

Most of the island is almost blissfully unaware of the damage and poverty on the other side. Colombo, taught with road blocks and barricades, the downtown world trade zone a mini fortress and reasonably so, still continues its louche lifestyle as though the north and east, Vanni, do not exist. Everywhere needs a lick of paint the infrastructure unaddressed lets trees sprout from rooftops roads unfixed, the disenfranchised residing in rail road side shanties cluttering the once palm-lined strand south to Mount Lavinia. Brown outs in the power system are gossip column headlines, understanding the rotational cuts zone by zone or town is as impossible as calculating roulette. Tourist establishments once thriving have slipped back to a Faulty Towers crossed with Mr. Bean attitude. It is kafkaesque with a giggle and habitual 'what to do'. The once efficient rest house system islandwide is a total crumble, service almost non existent. A whole service industry needs a wake up call. Luckily, having lost half of their airline fleet to a Tamil bombing at Katunayake Airport, Gulf Air has stepped in with a new tranche of Airbuses.

Tourists are not encouraged to venture far from the beaten approved track albeit that none has been killed during the conflict' neither side wishing to draw the wrath that could incur in already depleting revenues. Even handling a large new influx of visitors would strain an industry that has been let to be rundown and mildewed. Surprisingly the ATM machines even in 'frontline' towns like Vavuniya spit forth fresh rupee notes. The clientele using these facilities is limited, national income levels are amongst Asia's lowest. In Tamil controlled 'liberated' territory they run a parallel system of government a replication of ministries, even a rudimentary justice system replete with law school. The discipline and structural tightness inside their turf though economically deprived has a feel of a socialist state post liberation. Criminals are not tolerated crimes against the people dealt with severelly. Communal work sees the harvests reaped and the fields tilled. There is a paucity of motorised transport the tractor the prime vehicle. These hard won and organised elements will not be relinquished lightly, they will want and need to control their own local affairs. Some form of region autonomy is now recognised as being necessary to keep the cyanide sisters from going back on duty. Preserving an independent cultural identity parallel to an overall island one is tantamount to a lasting peace. Scottish devolution has not destroyed its own idosyncraticities and has not affected Britain's overall characteristic. More Scots have now taken up their own language and native patterns than before.

Peace is not necessary the good news that graces front pages: Bad news is more likely to make headlines. For too long we have been regaled with the Rambo-ness of derring do in conflict. An eight year old in the West is subjected to 800 virtual deaths on the screen of pefidity, the TV set, per annum. In reality he is unlikely to witness the real thing. We are cautioned prior to the evening news broadcast that images we are about to see might upset or disturb us. They must to make the point that conflict is futile. The media in Lanka must also wakeup and publish the raw truth about their conflict which now under the benevolent stewardship of Norway and other Scandinavian countries has a peace commission, a holding cease fire and the onset of real negotiations. A mere two violations over three and a half months gives great hope when you think of other ceasefires brokered and broken within hours.

Commerce will recommence, opening up markets along once forbidden highways, schools can re-open, agriculture can once again be practised, ordinary folk can live without threat or fear.

We should not forget the legacy this conflict has bequeathed on its resolutionaries, that of the landmines, over 1.2 million according to UN groups and MAG. Each side has used them in quantity, indiscriminately as defense at major bases and posts. The army still paranoid is clearing and sowing for re-enforcement; the LTTE is clearing to free up its land hoping that the ceasefire and talks in Pattaya will germinate a durable solution and peace.