To call Sri Lanka at peace in the last ten years would
be an overstatement. There were many hangovers from two decades of civil war
before that, including the basic question of how to bring back the Tamils into
the mainstream. There were other questions, about war crimes allegedly committed
by the military in the internal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam, and the rehabilitation of large numbers of displaced persons in the
north and east of the island.
At the same time it