Anti-War

-- Ahilan Kadirgamar

 

 

The four years of ceasefire did not cease the guns from firing.  Hundreds have been killed and thousands abducted.  The signing of the Ceasefire Agreement in February 2002 began a wave of child recruitment; it was preparation for war.  The LTTE’s withdrawal from talks in April 2003 saw the beginning of a dirty war of political killings and political cleansing.  The Karuna split a year later saw an internecine war; the massacre of hundreds of dissident cadres.  The internecine war in 2004, transformed after the tsunami into a dirty war between the LTTE, the Karuna Faction and Military Intelligence.  Lanka after the Ceasefire Agreement was not at war, nor at peace, but in a state of no-war.  And then in November 2005 it became an undeclared war.  Thus Lanka faced all kinds of wars during its four-year ceasefire; it faced no-war, preparations for war, dirty war, internecine war and undeclared war.  With all these “wars” in a time of “peace”, the need of the hour is indeed an anti-war movement.

 

But what should that anti-war movement be anti to?  It should of course be against war, against systematic violence and destruction as a means of achieving ends.  And it should be against preparations for war, militarization, recruitment and armament.  It should instead promote demilitarization, democratization and participation.  And it should promote the rebuilding of civil society and democratic structures as anti-violent and anti-destructive foundations to achieve ends.  It should be against the parasitic war economy that feeds off destruction, and should promote participatory development as means to rebuild society.  It should be against cultural nationalism and a culture of violence, and embrace cultural pluralism through progressive art. 

 

It should be against the warring ideologies that produce and reproduce wars.  The anti-war movement then would not only have to be against the physical state of war, but also the ideological roots of war, the ideologies that propel militarization, exclusion and violence.  It should be against Sinhala chauvinism and extreme Tamil nationalism.  It should be against martyrdom and majoritarianism.  It should be against sovereignty, territorial integrity and traditional homeland.  It is in opposing the ideological roots of war that the ideological roots of peace can be found.

 

Our ideological blunder was not that we did not embrace peace but that we did not oppose war.  And that we were tempted to embrace no-war along with those who determine no-war.  That we relied on those who ran the war-machines, whether they be the local war-machines or international war-machines, to maintain a state of no-war.  Rather, we should have opposed all the “wars”; the undeclared war, the internecine war, the dirty war, the preparations for war and the no-war.  And that should be our anti-war movement now.  The independence and courage to oppose no-war and those who determine no-war.  To defiantly oppose the war-machines and the ideologies that reproduce the war-machines.  In anti-war more than in war, there can be no negotiations and no compromises, only a resounding opposition to all “wars”.