What constitutes a crisis in education – the closure of 660 schools over a decade or some Muslim girls wanting to wear headscarves to ‘Buddhist’ (read state) schools? Indubitably the latter, at least in the myopic view of some Sinhala supremacists. These self-designated saviours of the Sinhalese seem as sang froid about the plummeting of education expenditure by a massive Rs. 34.54 billion in the last two years as they are about the alarming increase in malnourishment and under-nourishment.

US President George Bush ‘responded with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown’, at least according to a memo containing ‘upbeat talking points’ sent by the White House to cabinet members (and published by The Los Angeles Times). This in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression with more than half a million job losses! President Mahinda Rajapakse’s self congratulatory peroration at Kerawalapitiya was equally dismissive of facts. In it the President presented a roseate hued picture of Sri Lanka’s economic present and future, contrasting it gleefully with the global economic crisis and the economic ‘pneumonia’ affecting the West. A ruling class inhabiting a self-created realty, a weak opposition with a penchant for failure, a Tiger Supremo determined to fight to death and assorted Southern extremists who seem to regard moderation with revulsion – with such real and alternate leaders how can Sri Lanka hope to avoid an existential crisis?

The military gains against the LTTE are welcome but they also need to be seen in relation to the political, economic, financial and social losses. Though inconceivable now, while we are still dazzled by being within ‘kissing distance’ of Killinochchi, Eelam War IV too will end not in victory but in another round of pointless, counterproductive negotiations, not because of Tamilnadu or the West, but because we have simply run out of money. When a country hits financial rocks and starts leaking, the only option is to seek a bailout from international financial institutions; their assistance will be conditional on reducing military expenditure substantially. Objective reality cannot be changed by any amount of braggadocio. That is why the government, wisely, did what it said it will never do - submit to an EU review thereby getting a temporary extension of the GSP+ facility. Countries ruled by leaders who refuse to accept reality even in the face of an existential crisis end up like Zimbabwe. The plight of Zimbabwe began with a task conducive to nation-building – taking over of huge white-owned estates to be distributed to landless blacks. Even necessary tasks, when not implemented with intelligence and reason, produce results which are the diametrical opposite of the expected outcome.

‘The War on Terror’ is a catchy slogan, particularly when a country is as shell-shocked and terrified as America was after 9/11. But as a policy and as a strategy it has been a disaster. The world is a complex place. Any attempt to render it in black and white cannot succeed because it does not fit in with the living reality. Pakistan which has been a consistent ally of Sri Lanka in her struggle against Tiger terrorism is supposed to have sheltered the men who masterminded and carried out the Mumbai attack. Lashkar-e-Taiba (The Army of the Pure) is said to be a creation of Pakistan’s powerful Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), to act as a proxy in the Kashmir conflict. And though Pakistan has arrested some of Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders, many see it as a mere exercise in damage limitation, to avoid aid cuts, international condemnation and perhaps Indian air strikes into terror targets in Pakistan territory.

The truth about Pakistan is also the truth about many other countries, including the US and India – Pakistan is the enemy of some ‘terrorists’ and a friend to other ‘terrorists’. Pakistan is opposed to the LTTE but tolerates Lashkar-e-Taiba; India tolerates the LTTE but is opposed to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistan’s War on Terror is not the same as India’s any more than India’s War on Terror is not the same as Sri Lanka’s. The determinant factor here is not whether an organisation practices terror or not but whether an organisation is opposed to one’s own interests or not. This contradiction underscores one of the main lacunae in the ‘War on Terror’ doctrine - the identification of terrorists. One nation’s terrorist is another nation’s freedom fighter, even after 9/11, even after Mumbai.

Another weakness resides in semantics; the mere term ‘War on Terror’ de-prioritises the political, the economic and the social, without which even military successes become ephemeral. The case in point is Afghanistan, an early success story turned into a chronicle of failure due to the de-prioritisation of the complex tasks of rebuilding. The terminology also enables its practitioners to justify conduct which is irrational, stupid or criminal. The Augustinian concept of ‘just war’ was used to justify wars which were the antithesis of justice and fair-play (such as some acts of the Crusaders and the wars on ‘heretics’ particularly Cathars). The ‘War on Terror’ too was believed to be just innately, making otherwise abhorrent practices permissible in its cause. This led to the justification of such atrocities as the torturing of prisoners and the killing of unarmed civilians. Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym), a US Air Force official who led an interrogations team tasked with tracking down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has opined that half of US casualties in Iraq were caused by foreign fighters who joined the insurgents primarily out of anger over Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Abuses in Kashmir (for example the recent rape of a 13 year old girl allegedly by Indian soldiers) and 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat are grist to anti-Indian terror groups just as anti-Tamil deeds and words by the Lankan forces help none but the LTTE.

The ‘Global War on Terror’ has failed to give due prominence to psychological factors, to win the hearts and minds of the people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the Islamic world. Alexander Hamilton has recorded the response of a hardcore terrorist suspect to not being tortured by his American interrogators: "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate" (The Washington Post – 30.11.2008). When the practitioners of the ‘War on Terror’ resort to tactics which are terroristic by any objective criteria, they discredit their own cause and strengthen the enemy, morally and politically. A similar process in self-delegitimisation is underway in Sri Lanka, thanks to some of the abhorrent practices rife under the Rajapakse administration such as extra-judicial killings, disappearances, the neglecting of the plight of the war-displaced. A particularly worrying development is the charge that the Lankan Air Force dropped cluster bombs on a refugee camp in a supposedly safe zone. If true, such atrocious conduct would be both morally wrong and politically counterproductive.

Terrorism should be resisted, by using force when necessary but never by using counter-terror. Winning over potential terror recruits is as important as killing or imprisoning current terrorists. Terrorism does not fall from the sky; it is created on this earth from political, economic, military, socio-cultural and psychological wellsprings. The existence of root causes does not justify terrorism. But terrorism cannot be defeated if the root causes are not understood correctly and grappled with consistently. The ‘Global War on Terror’ failed partly because it failed to undertake this necessary task, because it saw the entire exercise as a struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. But, as we have seen in the aftermath of the Mumbai attack, all too often there is no clear line of demarcation (let alone a Chinese Wall) between supporters and opponents of terrorism. The good can side with the evil, because opportunism is often the real name of the game.

According to media reports a principal in a Galle school had ordered the father of a Muslim pupil out of his office for wearing a prayer cap. This act of bigotry demonstrates that the toxic anti-minority propaganda of Sinhala supremacists has begun to poison the social soil in Sinhala society. Sinhala supremacists, like most religious extremists, believe that all human history is one of conflicts between civilisations. They argue that the war against the LTTE cannot be won without bringing out the fanatic in the Sinhala soldier and the Sinhala civilian.

It is easy to conjure spectres; getting rid of them when the work is done is quite another matter. There is a folk tale of a Buddhist monk who summoned a demon to build a temple wall. The demon not only fulfilled his task but kept badgering the monk endlessly for more chores. The pithy Sinhala saying ‘Yaka bendagaththa wage’ (like having a demon as an indentured servant) probably stems from this tale. In a recent opinion piece, President Zardari of Pakistan reminded the West of its own role in conjuring the spectre of (Sunni) Islamic fundamentalism: "The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a Super Power. The strategy worked but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic (The New York Times – 9.12.2008). It was these malevolent chickens who came home to roost on September 11th. It is a dangerous business, doing business with fanatics. Fanatics are unfathomable because they inhabit a different mental universe, a psychological wasteland in which reason does not exist and any barbarity is permissive in the name of the chosen ‘cause’. And extremists constantly need enemies, to define who they are and to demarcate their universe. Their politics constitute of a relentless search for ever newer casus belli against the ‘other’. The Sinhala fanatics who believe that the Tigers are on their last legs and Tamils taught a lesson in obedience are out looking for new threats and new enemies. And they will not rest until they have created new faultlines in the Lankan social fabric by sending the Muslims and the Christians where the Tamils were sent by their ideological forefathers, the perpetrators of that colossal stupidity, Sinhala Only.

The Army Commander having belittled Lankan minorities with impunity tried his wit on Tamilnadu politicians and walked into a hornets’ nest. According to media reports the Defence Secretary has been compelled to apologise to the Indian Ambassador for Gen. Fonseka’s latest faux pas. This episode underscores the danger of permitting the Armed Forces to meddle in politics. Nor should the military be permitted to operate outside the laws of the country, to function as a state within the state, as it does in Pakistan. Generally armies manage to arrogate such powers to themselves by abusing national security concerns. Appreciating the role played by the Armed Forces against the LTTE should not result in a permissive attitude towards any attempt at building independent power bases because these are incompatible with and harmful to democracy.