තෝරා ගැනීමට තිබෙන එකම මාවත යුද්ධය ද?
The outward shape of the ethnic crisis is changing again. The validity of the ceasefire agreement is dissolving, and after the attack aimed at the defence secretary the need to revive the suppression of terrorism and to ban the LTTE again is being discussed. Before going to a place where war is made, Ivan writes, it is worth looking calmly at whether there are other roads to a peaceful settlement.
විදේශ ආධාර හා දේශපාලන යථාර්ථය ()
The prime minister says the government will not demean itself for foreign aid, days after Germany suspends new assistance and France does the same. Ivan’s answer is that we should object to conditions that harm the country and accept those that help it, and that pressure to observe human rights in wartime is what restrains the naked use of power.
යුද්ධයේ අනාගතය ()
The government is still managing to run the war to its own advantage, and whether the LTTE’s retreat is temporary or permanent will be decided soon. Ivan puts the movement’s political immaturity at the centre of its decline — it should either not have destroyed Ranil Wickremesinghe, or, having done so, should have consolidated peace and pressed for a settlement instead of returning to claymore attacks.
එල්ටීටීඊයේ ගුවන් බලය
The security establishment had long known the LTTE had an airstrip, and the ceasefire monitors’ head said he had seen it. An Indian analyst puts the light aircraft at nine years old; in 1998 one of them dropped flowers over a Heroes’ Day cemetery. They waited until the necessary moment to play the card. Ivan’s conclusion is for both sides: a policy resting on war alone is destructive.
එල්ටීටීඊ ගුවන් ප්රහාරය
What does the raid on Katunayake signal? Ivan puts the LTTE’s light aircraft at five on Iqbal Athas’s count, notes that two flew from the Wanni, bombed the base and returned untouched, and reaches for the IRA’s mortar attack on Heathrow as the comparison — an attack that did no damage and changed how London’s business community understood its own risk. His conclusion is that this is a moment to act together rather than to score off each other.
ගුවන් ප්රහාර හා දේශපාලන ප්රතිසංස්කරණ
While the country was watching the World Cup final, the LTTE bombed two places in Colombo from the air for the second time. The damage was small and the disorder it caused enormous — the air force could neither stop the flight nor hit the aircraft — and Ivan turns from that to the political reform the government keeps postponing.
රටට අවශ්යව ඇත්තේ ආවේගනො ව, සන්සුන්කම හා බුද්ධියයි
In the name of defending Sri Lanka’s honour, every politician is pushing the country towards ruin. Ivan says the shouting against a debate in the British parliament is shouting without having understood the debate, and that outside interference grows precisely when we fail to settle our own problems — like a row of houses where the people in the burning one will not put the fire out.
මුහුණ සමග තරහට නහය කපා ගැනීම
The donor countries may reduce their dealings with Sri Lanka or drop them altogether, and nothing about that would be good for the country. Ivan understands why a guerrilla movement wants the state destabilised; what he cannot understand is southern parties working, knowingly or not, to the same end — the protest marches against foreign countries included.
අතුරුදහන්වීම් හා වාර්ගික අර්බුදය
The abduction and killing of two Red Cross volunteers has drawn attention at home and abroad; the opposition blames the government and the government says it was staged to discredit it before a European Union discussion. Whoever did it, Ivan writes, the conditions were made by the war — and a war fought without a settlement looks, to Tamils, like a war against Tamils.
මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ හා වේලුපිල්ලේ ප්රහාකරන්
The country is being pushed to a place where accounts are settled by war and not by talk, which is the government’s official view and has always been the LTTE’s only one — the difference being that the LTTE has now met an opponent who thinks exactly as it does. Ivan argues that the LTTE’s aims were never practical, that Prabhakaran has been an unsuccessful leader, and that the war can end only if he can be brought to accept a settlement.