The Druze odyssey

Solving the mystery of the Druze – a 2,000-year-old odyssey

by Eran Elhaik

( February 7, 2017, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is in what we now call the Middle East that humans domesticated plants and animals, built the earliest cities, devised the first alphabet, and wrote the first literature. But while many of the mysteries in the region’s history still abound, few have attracted more varied speculation than the origin of the Druze people and their religion. Modern genetics gives us powerful new tools to decipher the origin of the Druze.

Much like the Ashkenazic Jews, the origins of the Druze people and religion have fascinated historians, linguists and geneticists. For nearly a millennium, travellers and their neighbours have wondered and hypothesised about the beginnings of this enduring people, and their exclusive religion in the mountains of Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller who passed through Lebanon in 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. Even then, they were known as mountain-dwellers, and Benjamin described them as fearless warriors who favoured the Jews. But he could not state their origin, and he was not the only one to be mystified. Over the years, people have proposed that the Druze have Arabian, Persian or Near Eastern origins.

Reports from Cairo’s ruler, Al-Hakim (996-1021 CE), give us the first glance into the Druze and Druzism. Al-Hakim had sent missionaries throughout Arabia, to win new believers. His missionaries claimed the Druze had splintered from Isma’ili Islam, a branch of Shia Islam. After Al-Hakim’s sudden disappearance, the new ruler eradicated the faith in Cairo. The Druze who took residence in the mountains of what is now Lebanon, Syria and Israel not only survived, but flourished. Since the 11th-century Crusades, the Druze have played a distinctive role in the region. Also in the 11th century, the Druze closed their faith to new adherents. You cannot become a Druze. This exclusivity also means that modern-day Druze people contain the genetic signature of the their Druze ancestors.

The Geographical Population Structure (GPS) technology, which works in a similar way to the satnav geolocation system, uses DNA instead of satellites to predict the most recent geographical origins of a DNA sample. To infer the origin of Druze ancestors, my lab at the University of Sheffield has applied the GPS technology to the DNA of Israeli Druze.

Most of the Druze, we have found, can be traced to the highest mountains in Turkey, northern Iraq and southern Armenia, and to the Zagros Mountain belt bordering Mount Ararat – very close to ancient Ashkenaz. By comparing the DNA of contemporary Druze to DNA dated 1,000-4,000 years ago from the Levant, Turkey and Armenia, my lab confirmed these findings. This means that, genetically, the Druze really are different from their neighbours. Unlike Palestinians, Bedouins and Syrians who share between 36-70 per cent of ancient Levantine ancestry, the Israeli Druze have only a minor Levantine component of 15 per cent and a significantly higher (80 per cent) ancient Armenian ancestry. Ashkenazic Jews, by contrast, had a major ancient Anatolian ancestry (96 per cent) and a residual Levantine one (0.5 per cent), in support of their non-Levantine origins.

The Druze have long preferred to live among high mountains, which has helped them maintain their close social structure, as well as providing them with protection. Our results indicate that the Druze habitation in high mountains is an ancient practice, one that their ancestors brought with them from what is now Iraq, Armenia and Turkey. But why did they come to the Middle East? Can DNA help us answer that?

Fortunately, since the Druze maintain a close-group social structure, each group preserved a different aspect of the Druze history. Genetic testing is thereby able to determine that the Druze DNA experienced its last major admixture event, where Druze mixed with local Levantines (Syrians), between the early ninth century and the early 12th century. The date overlaps with the expansion of the Seljuk Turkish Empire into the Levant during the 11th century to fight the Crusaders. We know that after pushing away the invaders, the Seljuks settled in Iran, Anatolia and Syria, and that the Druze were first recorded in that region around 150 years later. The genetic similarity between Druze and Armenians supports speculation that they had Seljuk ancestors. Most likely, the Seljuks would have, upon their arrival in the Levant for the Crusades, mixed with the native population. Some of them would have likely adopted the Druze faith. The Druze genome is therefore like a very long museum with separate rooms for Near Eastern and Levant exhibits, and including rooms for mixed inheritances that could not be sorted. Now, we can put together the remaining evidence to reconstruct the Druze’s history.

The Near Eastern ancestors of the Druze emerged near the Fertile Crescent, in the region that saw the rise of domestication and agriculture. Unsurprisingly, it was also a major convergence point on the Silk Road, with trade routes leading to Constantinople and Antioch. This is when the Druze likely encountered the Ashkenazic Jews who played a key role in global trade. The genetic similarity between Druze and Ashkenazic Jews is very high, although they emerged from different ancient founding populations (Anatolians and Armenians). However, although they started at the same place, they went their separate ways. By the eighth century, Ashkenazic Jews had abandoned ancient Ashkenaz and moved north to Khazaria and west to Europe. Two centuries later, the Druze ancestors began descending to the Levant to fight in the Crusades.

When the Druze reencountered Ashkenazic Jews in Palestine centuries later, neither population recalled its Near Eastern origins, and both peoples developed a rich heritage based on their experience over the previous millennium. However, as both populations, to a large extent, favoured marriage within the community, each retained Near Eastern relics in its DNA museum, which allowed us to tell the end of this 2,000-years-old odyssey.

Eran Elhaik is a lecturer at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He is interested in population genetics, molecular evolution, paleo-genomics and biogeography. He is also the topics editor for Frontiers in GENETICS. This shirt essay was originally appeared on aeon.co

India fails the leprosy test

Vithal Rajan

January 30, 2017

The World Health Organization [WHO] has reported that in 2015 India accounted for 212,000, or 60%, of all the new cases of leprosy reported world-wide. So, the foolish boast that India has eradicated leprosy is shown to be a falsehood. As the WHO has pointed out, and is well-known to the medical fraternity, medicines and treatments are available to eradicate this ancient dreadful disease, but political will has been lacking for a very long time.

Since the dawn of history, people suffering from leprosy have been shunned, in India as much as in Europe. In medieval Europe they had to wear a mask and toll a bell to warn everyone else. In India, they are evicted from their families and villages, and they form lonely communities of their own, which increases the problem of treatment.

The great Dutch medical scientist Dr. LM Hogerzeil researched this disease at the old Nizamabad centre set up years ago by the Nizam in Telangana. He lived and worked in primitive circumstances, helped by Dutch students, and I remember his telling me about an encounter with a long cobra in his room. Hogerzeil’s work showed that some people are genetically prone to catch the disease through respiratory infection, by a cough or sneeze from a newly infected person. He also found a curious fact, that there were many more cases of people getting infected in the eastern Deccan, while there were relatively few cases in the western half.

Hogerzeil established through his work in India and Nigeria that a heavy dose of Refampicin over just a few days can stop a patient from being infectious, though he or she may carry the disease for a longer time. This finding was corroborated in Hyderabad at that time by the famous Dr. Pearson, who had a long and respected clinical experience in treating the disease. Unfortunately, around forty years ago, when Refampicin came on the market it was a very expensive drug, not affordable by leprosy patients who almost all were the poorest of the poor. Ciba-Geigy which held the patent in those days refused permission to have it manufactured in India, though the profits it earned from the drug was a very small fraction of the total.

In contrast, I must point out the generosity of Irish doctors, who freely gave permission for the formulation in India of Clofazamine, a second-rung drug, developed by Dr. Vincent Berry of the Irish Medical Research Council, at Trinity College, Dublin. Clofazamine was never really popular among patients or doctors because it caused discoloration of the skin.

Dapsone is the first rung drug to treat the disease and is supposedly supplied free to patients. The problem always has been how leprosy patients are treated at government medical facilities, from Primary Health Centres to district hospitals. The poor are always shouted at and many times abused, leprosy patients even more so. So they hesitate to visit hospitals, afraid they may be forcibly incarcerated for treatment. They do not take a Dapsone tablet everyday as they should, and the disease develops resistance to the drug, necessitating a more powerful drug which usually is beyond the reach of the poor. Humane and sympathetic treatment of such patients would enable complete identification of all sufferers and regular treatment, which could eradicate this scourge in short order, but the governmental will to do so is not there.

Sometimes the interests of the powerful can aid the disease rather than block it, as I observed in the following incident. Telangana is a leprosy hot spot, and forty years ago Dr. Jaiphal Christian ran an excellent leprosy treatment centre, at Zaheerabad, Medak District, which had been founded by his father, a pioneer in leprosy treatment.

Dr. Christian went the extra mile by providing his treated patients with a rural livelihood, rearing goats and growing crops. Despite disfigurement, these former patients were non-infectious and the doctor tried to break fear of the disease in rural communities. I myself used to visit the hospital with my only little daughter, who played with the patients and was carried around by them in complete safety.

Unfortunately, Padmaja Naidu, the daughter of the famous poet, Sarojini Naidu, left a small sum of money for the hospital. Since Mrs. Indira Gandhi was one of her trustees, that trust had immense political authority, and its managers tried to get hold of the hospital, not out of any interest in curing the disease, but possibly to acquire the land of the hospital. After fruitless negotiations, poor Dr. Jaiphal Christian had to close down the hospital which had served leprosy patients for so many decades. If the rulers of India have no interest in eradicating leprosy, they should at least refrain from impeding the treatment of patients.

(The writer is a well-known author, economist, and a renowned rights activist. He is on the jury to select Alternate Nobel Prize)

Lasers help doctors remove brain cancer

DANIEL ORRINGERImage caption-The technology has been pioneered at the University of Michigan

By James Gallagher-6 February 2017

Lasers can help surgeons rapidly analyse brain cancers and decide how much tissue to remove, a study shows.

It is a difficult decision as taking too little leads to the cancer coming back, while too much could lead to disability.

The technique, called SRS microscopy, has been tried on more than 360 patients at the University of Michigan Medical School and Harvard University.

The next stage is for it to be tested in full clinical trials.

"Brain cancer is like a cloud, you can define the centre, but the edges are really hard to discern," says one of the researchers, Dr Daniel Orringer.

In other cancers - such as in the bowel - doctors would just take some of the non-essential surrounding tissue as well.

However, there is no non-essential tissue in the brain.

KAREN WISCHMEYERImage caption-Karen Wischmeyer with her son Luke

Karen Wischmeyer, a pre-school teacher in Michigan, is the type of patient who could have have benefited from the technology.

She needed two operations in quick succession to remove her brain tumour.

Two years ago, she had a massive seizure in the middle of the night and doctors found a growth in her brain.

But while surgeons removed some of the cancer, they did not get it all.

Karen told BBC News: "It would have spared a lot of anxiety and anguish and pain.

"I had two craniotomies [removing part of the skull], weeks of bad headaches, about four months total recovery time and I missed a lot of school."

She still has regular scans to ensure there is no growing tumour left in her brain.

How the technology works

At the moment, sections of brain tissue are taken to a lab to be frozen, stained with dyes and then analysed. The process can take 30-40 minutes.

The technology, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, sits in the operating theatre.

It fires a beam of light at the tissue, and the laser-light's properties are changed depending on what it hits.

The differing chemistry of a cancerous cell and normal brain tissue means the laser help surgeons find the outside edge of a tumour.

No decisions were made with just the laser-technology while it was still being tested.

Dr Orringer said the aim was to give "more efficient, safer and more accurate care".

He told the BBC News website: "It was magical when we made that transition to the operating room.

"It makes a huge difference, the process currently in place dates back to the 1800s, and we have something disruptive, in a good way, and the implications are pretty profound."

He says one of the early lessons is "a lot of the times we think we're done operating we should probably keep going, with the microscope we have the capacity to see that".

However, it is not yet clear whether the technology will increase survival rates. That will not be known until it has been used in long-term clinical trials.

Follow James on Twitter.

Hypocrisy vs denial: Ending enforced disappearances

The solutions proposed are controversial but realistic. Firstly, we need to rethink the current detention framework under Article 10 of the Constitution; we need more flexible detention laws allowing long-term detention of suspects without trial.

by Faisal Siddiqi- Feb 6, 2017

( February 6, 2017, Islamabad, Sri Lanka Guardian) On the issue of enforced disappearances or missing persons, a kind of media civil war is going on, with the human rights lobby and liberals pitted against the military elite and its intelligence agencies. The human rights lobby and liberals accuse the intelligence agencies of engaging in the immoral, illegal and unconstitutional practice of enforced disappearances with ill intention and impunity. For their part, the military elite and its intelligence agencies accuse the human rights lobby and liberals of, at best, not understanding the necessity of this practice to safeguard national security and, at worst, of acting on a foreign agenda. The two groups question each other’s intentions and neither is willing to accept that both may actually be right in part.

What if the military and intelligence elites are right that detention without trial for a reasonably longer time period is essential in the fight against militancy and foreign espionage and that such detention is not possible within the current legal framework? And, what if the disclosure of the truth by the intelligence agencies about missing persons is not possible without legal and constitutional immunity? 

On the other hand, what if the human rights lobby is also right that enforced disappearances is a destructive practice, not only for a modern constitutional state but also for the national and international reputation and morale of the military elite and intelligence agencies?

Can these opposite positions be reconciled?

Hypocrisy vs denial: With the exception of the principled position taken against all enforced disappearances by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there is a general hypocrisy pervading liberal sections of Pakistani society on this issue. How many liberals have condemned or protested or written about the enforced disappearances of Islamic militants and their sympathisers by the same intelligence agencies? Are they willing to recognise that the overall majority of the disappeared are Islamist militants and their sympathisers and not Baloch activists or liberal bloggers?

What if the military and intelligence agencies are right about detention without trial?

How many liberals are willing to accept that the allegations of Baloch activists that there are 12,000 to 14,000 Baloch missing persons is political propaganda because according to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (as on December 2015) a total of 3,012 cases were filed, out of which 1,449 have been traced, and even out of 1,390 pending cases, only 125 relate to Balochistan? Even if these figures about Balochistan are underestimated, there is no data showing that the number of Baloch enforced disappearances is more than a couple of hundred. Such hypocrisy is an obstacle to recognising that actually there is societal consensus, among liberals and Islamists, to end all enforced disappearances.

As for the intelligence agencies, can they deny that they have engaged in enforced disappearances in view of the following facts? Firstly, two official Commissions of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, in which both the ISI and MI participated, recognised enforced disappearances. Secondly, the report of a Federal Task Force on Missing Persons, of which both agencies were a part, also recognised enforced disappearances. Thirdly, the Supreme Court judgements in the ‘Muhabat Shah’ case and ‘Law and Order Case on Balochistan’ recognised enforced disappearances. Fourthly, an official ISI statement, attached as Appendix I to the book The ISI of Pakistan by Hein G. Kiessling, recognises the practice of enforced disappearances and details efforts made to solve it. Therefore, denial of enforced disappearances by the security apparatus in 2017 is like living in an alternative Trumpian world of invented but fictional ‘facts’.

Ambiguity leads to impunity: Whether it is the operations in the tribal areas or in Karachi or elsewhere, is it not an open secret that one of the key anti-militant strategies adopted by the intelligence agencies is enforced disappearances? There is universal praise by the liberals for Operation Zarb-i-Azb even though it is well documented that this ‘war on terror’ has also involved large-scale unjustified arrests, torture, enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings. It is this ambiguity of response in not condemning the enforced disappearances of Islamic militants or lukewarm condemnations of the enforced disappearances of MQM militants that both confuses, and provides justification, leading to the rigid approach of the intelligences agencies to continue these practices with impunity.

Towards a compromise: Does our political elite or the parliamentarians know that there are consensus recommendations (ie consented to by both the civilian and military establishment) of the Federal Task Force on Missing Persons gathering dust in the interior ministry? And that there is a draft law on enforced disappearances lying with Nacta based on these consensus recommendations?

The solutions proposed are controversial but realistic. Firstly, we need to rethink the current detention framework under Article 10 of the Constitution; we need more flexible detention laws allowing long-term detention of suspects without trial. Yes, this is not ideal but this will radically diminish illegal detentions/enforced disappearances, torture and at times, extrajudicial killings as a consequence of such enforced disappearances. Without such flexible detention laws, intelligence agencies will not end enforced disappearances.

Secondly, once flexible detentions laws are in force, criminal prosecutions should immediately follow any future cases of enforced disappearances.

Thirdly, there should be legal immunity for intelligence agency officials and other state officials for making full disclosures about missing persons, especially people missing for many years. Moreover, compensation should be paid to the victims of enforced disappearances.

Fourthly, an independent tribunal is needed for deciding enforced disappearances cases with powers to take action against any state official engaged in the practice and with power to award compensation to the victims.

The issue of enforced disappearances is a difficult moral and political one, and we should have the courage to recognise that there are no choices between good and bad solutions in such difficult issues. Rather, the choices are between bad and worse solutions. Therefore, we must make these tough choices.

The writer is a Karachi-based lawyer and columnist with Dawn,  one of largest circulated newspapers in Pakistan, where this piece first appeared. He did a BSC in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Law from the University of Cambridge.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR VICTIMS IN SRI LANKA, IC SHOULD INTERVENE SAYS TCHR.

In Sri Lanka families of the disappeared is still waiting for justice. Image courtesy of AI.

05/02/2017

In a letter to the The President, and Members and Delegates to the upcoming  34th Session of the  UN Human Rights Council  to  S. V. Kirubaharan, General Secretary of the Tamil Centre for Human Rights – TCHR,  says that It is imperative that the International Community continue its scrutiny of Sri Lanka’s human rights record and indeed intensify and sharpen its efforts. Further the letter says that  the time is running out for war victims to get justice.

In the letter, TCHR, requests the members of the Human Rights Council to be prudent during the present scrutiny of human rights in Sri Lanka.  “Sri Lanka excels in delivering sweet words but when it comes to action, it is empty-handed!  We are pleading on behalf of the victims, with all those who respect human rights, justice and reconciliation, to ensure that Sri Lanka fulfils the commitments it has agreed to.” the letter.

The full text of the letter is here.

un_forms_and_information.pdf by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Mullaitivu businesses shut in boycott of Sri Lankan Independence Day

05 Feb  2017

Tamil businesses in Mullaitivu shut their shopfronts on Saturday, in boycott of Sri Lankan Independence Day celebrations taking place in the town.

Locals noted that the military, and citizens summoned, paraded past beaches which were the locations of atrocities in 2009.

The Way Forward For Genuine Peace & Reconciliation In Sri Lanka

By V. Thirunavukkarasu –February 6, 2017

V. Thirunavukkarasu

While the processes of making a new Constitution are under way, there are conflicting signals emanating from the ranks of the Cabinet Ministers themselves, of the first ever UNP-SLFP National Unity Government as to the duration of this exercise, as well as its final outcome. It has been generally expected that the new Constitution will be promulgated before the end of this year. However, some Ministers, particularly from the SLFP, who entered Parliament through the National List after being defeated at the August 2015 Parliamentary election, are vociferously expressing contradictory positions. For instance, Minister S.B. Dissanayake has bluntly asserted that the new Constitution will only see the light of day by 2020. Moreover, while the Presidential election pledge was to abolish the Executive Presidential system by 2020, it is being maintained in SLFP circles that such is not the case, and that the incumbent President Mathripala Sirisena will be the Presidential candidate in 2020 as well, contrary to his own avowed public pledge made in 2015 that he would not contest the Presidential election again.

The extant public perception, increasing by the day, is that the National Unity Government of Good Governance is fast becoming devoid of these concepts. Firstly, in the matter of combating the twin evil of bribery and corruption, the pace of investigations and of bringing suspects to justice is markedly slow. Secondly, indirect interventions at the highest levels to protect highly placed suspects for offences allegedly committed during the last regime, are in place. Thirdly, there are emerging suspicions involving certain officials of the incumbent Government as well.

It goes without saying that the UNP and the SLFP, well-known traditional arch rivals which had held power alternately in alliance with their respective allies of all hues, had egregiously failed to resolve the burning politico-economic problems. Such failures, especially with regard to the checkered Tamil national question is really what led to episodic violence, intermittent anti-Tamil racial riots, and eventually the 26-year long war following the worst such riots in 1983. (Black July). And so, as if to atone for their collective sins of omission and commission, both major ruling parties came together in 2015 to form a consensual national unity Government following the election of President Maithripala Sirisena on January 8, 2015, followed by the August 17 Parliamentary elections. And both parties extended the original 2- year agreement to a full 5- year period to hold power together, but had vowed to part ways, come 2020. Meantime, certain conflicts which have arisen, based on party rivalries, have of course not been unexpected, but nevertheless the caravan should move on till 2020, giving the lie to the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led JO’s wishful bid to topple the Government this year.

As regards the vexed Tamil National question, it was pledged during the January and August 2015 elections campaigns that a durable solution would be incorporated into the a new Constitution, and that was all the more reason why the Tamils and the Muslims as well, extended their overwhelming support particularly for President Sirisena’s victory to be vouchsafed. It is clear already that there will be no change in the Unitary State system as well as the foremost place given to Buddhism in the new Constitution. Such a paradigm alone will satisfy the Sinhala majority constituency even though all communities or groups of people are equally sovereign entities as entrenched in any Constitution. Accommodation of the TNA’s demand, as per the mandate they received in August 2015, for a federal system is out of the question. And so is the demand for a merged North – East Province as had obtained for 18 years, albeit as an interim measure pending a referendum in terms of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, which was never held, but the demerger sought by the JVP was granted by the then Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva notwithstanding the bilateral dimension of the aforesaid Accord.

What then is going to be the Constitutional solution to the Tamil National question, having regard especially to the overwhelming support given by the Tamils in particular for President Sirisena’s victory on January 8, 2015? The principles encompassing this question are found, by and large, in the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that had been appointed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa under the Chairmanship of a former Attorney General, the late C.R. de Silva. Here are some of the observations/ recommendations made by the LLRC in chapter 8 of the report:

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The Good Governance Government should not ignore Sri Lanka’s slipping down on the World Rule of Law Index 

Monday, 6 February 2017

King Elara’s observance of the Rule of Law to the letter 

According to a story in Sri Lanka’s great chronicle, Mahavansa, a Tamil usurper named Elara of the Uju tribe had invaded Lanka in the 2nd century BCE and ruled the northern part of the country from his seat at Anuradhapura for 44 years. He had administered, says Mahavansa, “justice with impartiality to friends and to foes”. 

The Good Governance Government should not ignore Sri Lanka.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

SRI LANKA: THE GAZETTED RTI ACT IN FULL & HOW TO OBTAIN INFORMATION.

05/02/2017

Requests for Information should be made to an Information Officer by completing and handing over a request preferably in the manner prescribed in the Form  RTI ,  although this is not mandatory.

01. Upon making the request for information either in verbal or written form obtain the written acknowledgment from the Information Officer.

02. The decision whether to grant the information or not shall be given as expeditiously as possible and in any case within 14 days.

03. If a decision is made to provide the information, the information officer will inform the citizen making the request that the information will be provided on the payment of a fee in accordance with the Fee Schedule prescribed by the Right to Information Commission. If the information is subject to payment of fee, the information shall be provided within 14 days of the payment. Information will be provided within 14 days of the decision if there is no requirement to pay a fee.

04. If, after payment of fees the information cannot be provided within 14 days, the person making the request will be informed that there will be a further extension period – up to a maximum of 21 days – to provide the information and given reasons for the extension.

05. When the request relates to the life and personal liberty of a citizen the information officer shall provide a response to the request within 48 hours.

06. An appeal may be made in situations where,

i.The Information Officer refuses a request made for information
ii.The Information Officer refuses access to the information on the ground that such information is exempted from being granted under Section 5
iii. Non -compliance with time frames specified in the Act
iv. The Information Officer granted incomplete, misleading or false information
v. The Information Officer charged excessive fees
vi. The Information Officer refused to provide information in the form requested
vii. The citizen making the request had reasonable grounds to believe that information has been deformed, destroyed or misplaced to prevent him/her from having access to the information

An appeal to the Designated Officer is to be made within 14 days.

Read the full text of the act as  PDF: RTI offcial act, Sri Lanka

RTI-offcial-act-Sri-Lanka.pdf by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Ethnic violence and antagonism are deeply rooted in Sri Lanka!

Gandhi’s attempt in Direct Military Intervention Against Sri Lanka 

(February 7, 2017, Boston — Hong Kong SAR, Sri Lanka Guardian) “Ethnic violence and antagonism are deeply rooted in Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese and Tamils each think of themselves as a minority community”, a declassified CIA paper in which the department has attempted to understand the causes of the ethnically-based violence, noted.

Ethnic violence and antagonism are deeply rooted in Sri Lanka.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

 Click here to read the complete paper 

Maithripala Sirisena And Sri Lanka's False Dawn

Sri Lankan military personnel take part in an Independence Day parade rehearsal in Colombo on February 2, 2017.Sri Lanka is preparing to mark the 69th anniversary of independence from Britain on February 4. / AFP / LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI (Photo credit should read LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images)

Taylor Dibbert-FEB 3, 2017

During a time when we’ve seen democratic backsliding across the globe, Sri Lanka was a purported political success story. A pair of elections in 2015, including the surprising ascension of Maithripala Sirisena as president, were supposed to put the country on a positive course and roll back a decade of increasingly authoritarian, nepotistic rule by strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sirisena was sworn into office on January 9, 2015. Two years on, now is an auspicious time to evaluate Colombo’s record and what one could expect in the coming years.

The chance that far-reaching reform will occur during Sirisena’s tenure looks ever more unlikely. The new government came into office with an ambitious agenda, but after two difficult years, a sober assessment of Colombo’s progress reveals that incremental change, stagnation and false promises have been the order of the day.

There’s been virtually no progress dealing with high-level corruption from the Rajapaksa era and the current administration has yet to address its own corruption scandals. Colombo has invested the most time and resources in its constitution-building project. However, creating a new, improved constitution is far from a foregone conclusion – not least because that would require a two-thirds majority in parliament and then approval through a country-wide referendum, tough hurdles for a government that’s become increasingly dysfunctional and unpopular. It’s also quite uncertain that such a document would even include a power-sharing arrangement that satisfies the aspirations of the country’s Tamil community.

Sri Lanka is a complicated, post-war society. A civil war raged from 1983 until May 2009, when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers, a ruthless insurgency that fought for a separate Tamil state in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

Transitional justice – another major component of the reform agenda – is a tricky, politically difficult issue. Nevertheless, given the lack of progress thus far, one could reasonably conclude that the Sinhala-dominated government is not serious about healing the wounds of war. The transitional justice process has been marred by opacity, an absence of leadership, a lack of inclusivity and a reneging of previous commitments pertaining to robust international participation.

International involvement, an essential element of a credible transitional justice process, has been quite limited and Sirisena himself has indicated that “war heroes” will be protected (from criminal prosecution over allegations of wartime atrocities). In short, truth, justice and a durable peace may remain illusory for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, the nation’s Tamil-majority north and east are still troubled by wide-ranging difficulties, including sustained militarization, displacement and persistently high unemployment. 

To make matters worse, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention – widespread problems when Rajapaksa ruled – have continued under the new administration. And these egregious human rights violations are exacerbated by institutionalized impunity and the consistent failure to hold perpetrators accountable.

Ineffectual leadership from Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has revealed that, even under ostensibly promising circumstances, the road to deeper reform is going to be a long, slow process. Rajapaksa’s electoral defeat in January 2015 didn’t lead to a radically new era for Sri Lankan politics (as some had hoped). Rather, it’s resulted in another version of the flawed, majoritarian governance that the island nation has known for far too long.

Ultimately, Sirisena’s greatest political accomplishments may have already occurred during these past two years. He put the brakes on Rajapaksa’s increasingly authoritarian reign. He helped pass the 19th amendment to the constitution which trimmed presidential powers, sought to strengthen a range of institutions and reinstituted term limits. And, while far from a real democrat, there’s clearly a greater tolerance for dissent. Nevertheless, the hopes for Sirisena’s presidency vastly exceeded these achievements.

Assuming the coalition government (an awkward power-sharing arrangement based upon a pair of Sinhala-Buddhist political parties – the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the United National Party – which are longstanding rivals) manages to stay together, the remainder of its tenure will likely be characterized by an unwillingness to deal with many of the problems the Rajapaksa administration also failed to address: persistent corruption; a lack of accountability for alleged wartime abuses; an inability or unwillingness to find a durable political solution to the country’s longstanding ethnic conflict. 

Sri Lanka has always been, to varying degrees, a troubled democracy – where the rights of numerical minorities, especially ethnic Tamils, have consistently been undermined. It’s hard to predict when the island’s political leadership will more fully embrace pluralistic values or when the wounds of war will begin to heal. But we shouldn’t expect either of those things to happen during the current government’s tenure.