Category Archives: world events & processes

September 18, 2016 · 9:27 am

China and Lanka: Silken Threads Past and Present

Ameen Izzadeen, in Sunday Times, 18 September 2016, where the title is “Sri Lanka a pearl in China’s past, present and future”

What have a 19th generation Chinese descendant of a Sri Lankan prince, an 11th century mariner and three key cities in China got to do with 17 Sri Lankan journalists, who have just returned from a ten-day trip to China, courtesy the Chinese embassy in Colombo? The answer: A fine silk thread connecting the ancient Maritime Silk Road with the new Maritime Silk Road that symbolises China’s rising soft power.

As we visited the three cities in our itinerary – first, the capital Beijing in the North-East, then the port city of Quanzhou (pronounced Chanzhou) in the South-East and Kumming the city of eternal spring in the West – the imaginary silk thread attached to us kept extending, just as the real silk thread extended from the boiled cocoon as the spool turned. The imaginary thread spun a tapestry depicting the places we visited, China’s glorious past and its dream for the future, with Sri Lanka shining like a pearl on the Maritime Silk Road – a key component of China’s ambitious One-Road-One-Belt (OBOR) project.

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September 18, 2016 · 3:19 am

Reading “Road to Nandikadal” –- Lalin Fernando

Retd Major-General Lalin Fernando, in The Island and Asian Tribune … with emphasis ivia highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

“Great Commanders have mostly been dull writers. Rommel was a born writer as well as a born fighter. The impact that he made on the world with the sword will be deepened by his power with the pen”. (The Rommel Papers- Capt Liddell Hart)….. Major General Kamal Gunaratne ‘s ‘Road to Nandikadal’ is the most comprehensive, credible, incisive, riveting and objective book in English on the entire 26 year old conflict in SL. (It is also available thankfully in Sinhalese and a copy in Tamil would be welcome too). It is the inside story of one who fought the war from its inception to the end and gives an impeccable account of the conflict that took 100,000 lives. While the actions are fast moving and his blunt opinions of various people are delightful, it is the thinking side that is the book’s real value. Frank, with no false modesty but with compelling confidence, what impresses is its highly personal tone. It also describes the many lessons learned which almost all SL political leaders have yet to understand or concede. It is a trail blazing contribution to SL’s Military History.

lalin-www-gemunuesra-lkl Lalin—Pic from www.gemunuesra.lk aaa-kgKamal Gunaratna Continue reading →

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September 17, 2016 · 2:23 pm

Afghanistan, India, Taliban

Amitava Mukherjee, courtesy of Eurasia Review, 17 September 2016, where the title reads “India’s Military Engagement In Afghanistan Could Ruffle Many Feathers”

The apprehension has come true. The Taliban has now expressed its displeasure over India’s decision to supply arms to the Afghanistan government. New Delhi has already supplied to Afghanistan three Russian made Mi-25 gunship helicopters and the fourth one is likely to be delivered soon. But Afghanistan has requested for more lethal arms of different kinds. There is a buzz in concerned circles that Afghanistan has requested for supply of Mi-35 attack helicopters also.

aaafghan Pic from www.dw.com

This could be a complete departure from India’s earlier policy on Afghanistan when New Delhi chose to restrict itself to giving economic aid only – up to USD 2 billion till now which has gone towards capacity buildings in the field of infrastructure, education, agriculture etc. This apparent change of attitude on the part of India may have been prompted by a sustained deterioration of Pakistan-Afghanistan bilateral relations and rapid spread of Islamic State(IS) influence in the eastern part of Afghanistan.

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September 17, 2016 · 12:41 am

Sri Lanka Cultivates Kiwi Relations —

Skandakumar, SL High Commissioner for NZ & Australia, emulates the Chappells’ underarm bowling act  at a Maori ceremony, thereby underlining New Zealand’s superior sports ethics vis a vis the Aussies 

aa-ss-gg-govt-nz   aa-ranil-for-nz

“PM to make first official visit to New Zealand” … Daily News headline, 16 September 2016

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September 16, 2016 · 4:28 pm

Celebrating Galle Fort and Its History in You Tube

I. Galle Fort – A Historical Living City … courtesy of  CCF Television … Published on Mar 26, 2014 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHUbnsyQtHI …….with Sanchia Brown as spokesperson

… ALSO SEE https://au.pinterest.com/ccftv/galle-fort-sri-lanka/

galle-fort-dd-1 Pic from Juliette Coombe

II. Galle Fort = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnlYrgDUdNU…

Galle Fort “ගාලු කොටුව” – Infinity Sri Lanka

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September 16, 2016 · 9:58 am

Revelations: History of the Pakistani Passport

Nadeem F. Paracha, courtesy of Dawn, September 2016 …. http://www.dawn.com/news/1283918/history-of-the-pakistani-passport

The Pakistani passport has been a mirror of the persistent existentialist tussle in the country itself. The evolution of its look and contents have reflected (or, rather, have been made to reflect), what Pakistan as a polity and a nation stands for. The country came into being in August 1947, mainly through the efforts of a sharp lawyer and Muslim modernist, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Jinnah explained the new country as a modern Muslim-majority state where ‘Muslim culture’ would dominate the society but the state itself would have nothing to do with matters of faith. According to the founder, religion was an individual’s private matter.
aajinnah-17-august-1947 Pic dated 17 August 1947 from www.bbc.com = The search for Jinnah’s vision of PakistanJinnah passed away just a year after Pakistan’s creation. And ever since his death, the country’s state, various governments, and the moderate, liberal, and conservative intelligentsia have been locked in continuous battle over the question of the country’s raison d’être and ideological composition. According to moderates and liberals, Jinnah envisioned Pakistan as a project to conceive and initiate an entirely modernistic, flexible and pluralistic strand of Islam, which could then go on to inspire the rest of the Muslim world. On the other hand, conservative and religious intelligentsia insists that Pakistan was created as a jumping pad to launch a theological state. They maintain that this was to be done through legislation from above and evangelical activity from below, which would then shape a ‘unique’ Islamic state for the Muslim Ummah.

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September 15, 2016 · 3:06 am

Thoughts on de Silva-Ranasinghe’s Concise Delineation of the LTTE Defeat in Eelam War IV

Michael Roberts … with highlighting in blue being that imposed in 2016 wheraas THAT in red has been done today 17th March 2023

This month of September 2016 I stumbled across an essay from 2009 that I had not seen before. I was puzzled because it is a splendid summary of the political and military factors that enabled the Government of Sri Lanka to overwhelm the LTTE in the course of Eelam War IV (2006-09), a force considered invincible by so many – including the Norwegian diplomatic ‘whiz-kid’ Eric Solhiem who told President Mahinda Rajapaksa in late March 2006 that Pirapaharan was “a military genius” (my interview with Lalith Weeratunga,14 June 2016). The puzzle arose from the absence of authorship in the version I came across – seemingly a foreign Australian agency and author.

serge-111Since few foreign reports had revealed any discerning understandings of the war,[1] I was stunned because this summary was as thorough a job as anyone could produce in a short essay. On reflection I decided that it must be Sergei de Silva Ranasinghe’s work because he had produced detailed accounts of the ongoing war while it was in progress (see incomplete list in separate Thuppahi item). He confirmed this by sending me the source, the Asia Pacific Defence Reporter issue dated September 2009 – a journal where he had also presented articles as the war unfolded. Continue reading →

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September 14, 2016 · 12:50 am

After Nandikadal: A Deteriorating Road towards Creeping Federalism

Dayan Jayatilleka, whose preferred choice of title is “The Road from Nandikadal: A New Revivalism”  ... likely to draw interesting comments in Colombo Telegraph when it appears

The TNA-Tamil Diaspora-UNP project is a frail, minimalist State with a weak centre. Would India have allowed Ban Ki moon to travel to Kashmir and have a political dialogue with strident Kashmiri nationalists?  The Sri Lankan Government permitted and facilitated a meeting between the UNSG with the Northern Provincial Council and its Chief Minister. Every parent knows that you do not reward bad behaviour with a gift. Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran presented the infamous Genocide Resolution to the Northern Provincial Council and then handed it over to a visiting senior UN political official. He was rewarded for that move with the kind of meeting that no Sovereign State arranges between the UN Secretary General and the Chief Minister of a restive border province, in which a truculent separatist psyche is far from dead.

img_3846 image001

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September 13, 2016 · 4:52 am

Weak-Kneed GSL Response to UNHCR Moves at Geneva in September

Sanja de Silva Jayatilleka,  whose preferred title is ” September in Geneva: Sri Lanka at UNHRC” … The highlights are my imposition, Michael Roberts

mangalaat-unhrc-2015

The September session of the United Nations Human Rights Council will start on the 13th of this month. There is a report on Sri Lanka due to be presented there. It is the Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on its mission to Sri Lanka. I am no lawyer or any kind of expert but as I have closely observed the Council from a ringside seat (in the years 2007-2009) and am familiar with it, I checked it out. Even someone like me can see when a report is making a wildly expansive claim. At first glance it seemed to me that the members of the Working Group were making lurid allegations against the Sri Lankan state. Then I wondered if they were making them against the LTTE, which would certainly fit. It quickly dawned on me that they meant the State after all, since they refer to “counter-terrorist activities” – and that could only be the State. Continue reading →

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September 12, 2016 · 2:10 pm

Reflections on Sri Lanka’s Suicide Rate

Tom Widger

widger-22ABSTRACT of Article entitled ” Reading Sri Lanka’s Suicide Rate” in Modern Asian Studies 48/3 pp. 791-825. : By the final decade of the twentieth century, rates of suicide in Sri Lanka ranked among the highest in the world. However, in 1996 the suicide rate began to fall and was soon at its lowest level in almost 30 years. This decline poses problems for classic sociological theories of suicide and forces us to question some fundamental assumptions underlying social scientific approaches to the suicide rate. Drawing from sociological, medical epidemiological, historical, and anthropological secondary sources as well as 21 months of original ethnographic research into suicide in Sri Lanka, I argue that there are four possible readings of the country’s suicide rate. While the first three readings provide windows onto parts of the story, the fourth—a composite view—provides a new way of thinking about suicide, not just in Sri Lanka but also cross-culturally. In so doing the paper poses questions for how the relationship between suicide and society might be imagined. Continue reading →

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