Can Sri Lanka win over poverty? Let us all help.
By Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque Ph.D

With Philip Shaw M.Sc.
On the 27th June 2009, I landed at the Bandarnayake International Airport in Colombo.  It was about noon, and for the first time I landed in Colombo in broad daylight.  I looked around – a beautiful airport with greenery all around.  The airport is relatively new – possibly built within the past 5-6 years – very clean, neatly organized with signs to direct visitors to the immigration counters.  Just before the immigration desk, I saw a thermal camera, taking the temperature of our body (to check if anyone had flu or flu like syndrome).  I was impressed!
At the meeting point, I saw a taxi driver waiting with a signboard with my name printed on it.  This is Sri Lanka, where the literacy rate is above 90% and it was possible for the organizer to simply give my name and asked them to pick me up from the airport, something very difficult to arrange in any other Asian country.  We started moving to the Club Hotel Dolphin where SANDEE is supposed to organize the biannual research and training workshop for researchers.
As we were moving, I started the conversation with the driver – here is Sri Lanka, English is OK and most people can speak to you at ease in English.   How is the business (for taxi drivers)? He replied to me that it is not good.  I was surprised!  Sri Lanka has just won a 30-year-old war with Tamils, who are only about 10% of the population!  He corrected me pretty quickly. It was great thing for Sri Lanka but tourists have not come back yet.  Clearly, he was happy with the fact that the civil war is over but he was referring to the fact that tourists are still hesitant to come and so his business is down!  Recession I guess
I asked his name, he was Faruk.  I could quickly guess that he is a Muslim and in Sri Lanka about 8% of the population are Muslims.  On inquiry I also found out that he did not like the Tamil’s war because to him, they are very few (but quite large in some of the north and eastern provinces) and so there is no logical point for them to fight the war.  He considered them to be “terrorists” who were trying to destroy the country.
However, on my way I also realized the security is not down yet.  Every few kilometers there were police and also army barricades or checks points.  But people seemed to be happy to continue to work.  Faruk had never been to a Tamil place yet and he cannot think that he will need to go there very soon.
Over the next one week I had tried to gauge the opinion about the victory against LTTE by the Sri Lankan Army.  It was clear that most people are happy with it.  However, it was also clear that they want a solution to the problem.  This is to me the beauty of Sri Lankans.  They were jubilant but not celebrating it.   With an educated citizenry Sri Lanka seemed to be much more mature in terms of dealing with it.  They are positive and want to recognize that Tamils like other minority groups in Sri Lanka need some protection and some autonomy to run their own affairs in provinces where they are majority and Sri Lanka is for all, not just for Sinhalese who are 74 percent of the population.
At the club Dolphin Hotel, I also realized that tourists are everywhere.  Never before I had seen this hotel so full!  Tourists are coming to Sri Lanka.  Most of them are from Europe – Germans, Austrians and also British.  Sri Lanka needs them to rebuild its economy and to fight poverty.  With a much higher rate of literacy, I strongly believe that Sri Lanka will be one of first few countries in South Asia, which can win over poverty very soon.  However, it needs support both at home and abroad.  I hope all peace loving country extend their hand and help them win this curse of the 21st century.

Putting It In the Rear View Mirror: In Sri Lanka It Seems Over
By Philip Shaw M.Sc.

I found Enamul’s account of his time in Sri Lanka to be truly fascinating.  In fact we communicated with each other while he was in Sri Lanka.  I reminded him that I wanted him to collect as much information as he could regarding the recent civil war.  He assured me that he was doing.

This is the one great advantage Enamul has over myself. I like to think of myself as quite a world traveler.  However, when it comes to business travel and frequency of travel my friend Enamul seems to fly all the time.  I don’t know how many times East West has been written in Bangkok, Beijing or Colombo?  I’m sure it’s been more than once in any one of those cities. Seeing and hearing about Sri Lanka’s civil war from somebody on the ground there was truly fascinating.

I also thought it interesting that Enamul tied the end of the Civil War in Sri Lanka to that country’s fight against poverty.  I had no idea that the literacy rate in Sri Lanka was 90%.  For those of you that don’t know that’s fairly high for South Asia and the example Enamul gave you about being picked up at the airport with somebody holding a sign is very telling.  Having been to South Asia many times that would be a stretch in the Dhaka airport.  Eliminating poverty in South Asia is usually job one of any government.  Some Western academics refer to South Asia in general as a poverty theme park. That description I have always found quite distasteful.

The difference in Sri Lanka seems to be tourism.  For instance you don’t hear much about tourism in places like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Bhutan.  Sure, you hear a lot about tourism in India but that is a very big place and the tourist’s dollars can get buried underneath many other things.  In Sri Lanka like Nepal, tourism would be a major source of foreign exchange and employment.  Emamul’s driver Faruk was certainly hurting by the lack of tourist dollars coming back to Sri Lanka since the end of the Civil War.

The difficult part for Sri Lanka will be putting the pieces all back together from the Civil War. My buddy Enamul has the same, “it’s all based on history “.  That was the answer he gave me to almost every question I would ask him regarding why some nationalities didn’t like other nationalities or why some groups didn’t like other groups.  He would always go on to explain that something happened in history that nobody forgot.  In other words I paraphrased it to me your grandfather didn’t like my grandfather and it goes on and on.  Sri Lanka will surely have that problem.  For instance you cannot expect to have the grievances of the world’s Tamils to simply go away because the war is over.

In last month’s East West Enamul referred to the way Canada embraces Québec separatist within our federal parliament.  He has made that analogy more than once that he thinks it’s a wonderful quality of being Canadian that we can actually do that.  He made that analogy hoping I believe that our Sri Lankan friends might be able to do the same thing. I don’t know if that is possible but I would remind my friend Enamul that it is not the easiest thing for Canadians to do either.

In Canada three ethnic groups plot at war over this country, the French, English and native Canadians. However, that war was 300 years ago this year and still there is antagonism in Québec over what happened.  This summer a reenactment of the famous English conquest of Quebec had to be canceled because of radical Quebec separatists threatening to disrupt the reenactment. So still waters run deep even after 300 years.

So in Sri Lanka it’s been about six weeks since the fighting stopped. I can imagine that people in Colombo are happy but not necessarily jubilant. On the other hand people in Jaffna in the Northeast might not feel the same way.  The point being it will be hard for Sri Lanka to put this in the rearview mirror. It’s still very raw to many people.  Despite Faruk’s hope for the future from my vantage point here, I’m not so sure. Sometimes it’s hard to put things back together again.   For Sri Lanka’s sake and is people, I hope they get there.