As the war draws to a close Sri Lankans eagerly look forward to a crushing and decisive victory over terrorism.. However, one enigma of these last days of the conflict that may puzzle future generations who look back on our time is the consistent reluctance of the government to allow reputable international media like CNN, BBC and AlJazira to cover the war. Brilliant journalists of unimpeachable integrity like John Simpson, Martin Bell, Christiana Amanpour, Kate Addie, and Anderson Cooper, have brought distinction to such channels. Why was an ostensibly golden opportunity of neutralising the disinformation of terrorists and silencing skeptics with the truth passed by? Ironically, dedicated reporters from these channels have been permitted to cover much larger global conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. American and European taxpayers who pay for those wars have the privilege of watching unbiased reports and analyses of war on their TV screens filed without fear or favour by independent reporters working for international networks in conflict zones. At the start of the Iraq invasion in 2003 hundreds of "embedded" reporters reported from the war front having attached themselves to military units. Despite some limitations on the information such reporters are permitted to transmit and understandable attempts by the military to manipulate them to get its own story told – they too play a part in giving citizens who pay for the war as accurate and independent a picture as possible of what is happening.

By comparison Sri Lankan tax payers have not been so privileged. They have had to settle for whatever the state reports or what they are told by compliant journalists who find it hard to transcend their innate prejudices. Now, that may be good enough for a large proportion of a gullible population that only wants to be told what it likes to hear. The problem is that throughout the history of human conflict down the ages the first casualty of war is truth. There is no denying that all over the world in the bitter "information warfare" waged by combatants in parallel with the warfare on the ground inevitably inaccuracies, omissions, and exaggerations abound. But, who can blame them cynics and pragmatists would say – "war is a deadly business where the end justifies the means and we can’t allow truth to get in the way!" So, we have to endure the bewilderment of rival protagonists putting out their own contradictory version of events true or false. Is there a way out of all this confusion?

One solution in democratic societies that value transparency and acknowledge the people’s right to an honest accounting of public funds expended in the war effort is for independent journalists, too, to enjoy the right to report from the front. Reluctance to let them in inevitably leads to suspicions that there is something to hide. In the Sri Lankan conflict the government has (with much credibility) consistently claimed to be the force for good, as against the wicked terrorists whom we all unequivocally condemn as the forces of evil. It is the terrorists who use innocent civilians as human shields and shoot down those who try to escape to safe zones. It is the terrorists who employ child soldiers and are in one way or another responsible for the manifold miseries of civilians in their areas. It is the terrorists who hijack the food and drugs meant for the civilians for their own use. It is the terrorists who are waging a diabolical campaign of disinformation to mislead the international community.

By contrast the government has consistently claimed that it was waging a righteous war with disciplined military intervention to liberate a besieged people from the tyranny of ruthless terrorists. It would like the international community to believe that it is at every turn acting out of humanitarian concern for the civilian populations in the war torn areas, who see the advancing forces as their saviours. Consequently, it is difficult to understand why the State which occupies the moral high ground in this instance and makes such extravagant claims, does not seize the golden opportunity of promoting its image abroad by allowing international journalists to freely visit the war zone and graphically confirm the authenticity of its claims to a skeptical international community. The objection that such a policy would compromise military strategy is not convincing. War correspondents are never made privy to battle strategies and tactics that may be adopted in the future.

They only report on how things are now, based on what has happened in the past – and that perhaps is something the general public are entitled to know in a democratic country. Shouldn’t a government, whose hands are clean, be exploiting the international media to give global publicity to its own claims rather than denying them admission?