Remove the shades of politics from your eyes

We have been observing some disturbing trends in Sri Lanka, even among Sri Lankans abroad with regard to the ongoing 'Humanitarian Operation' in the North.

Although the present government has made the war its exclusive domain and kept all the achievements made by young men on the battlefield to advance mostly its own political objectives, thus effectively cutting off any sharing of recent successes with opposition parties, the behaviour of certain opposition parties and groups has been pathetic to say the least. In many instances, their actions have had adverse consequences on our men.

A classic case-in-point is the actions of a political party following heavy fighting at Vannerikulam and Nachchikuda where 56 soldiers were killed and another 120 injured. The regional hospital morgues to where the remains of the dead soldiers were to be taken were full due to civilian corpses being kept on court orders for inquests.

SLA Officers in charge of the arrangements made inquiries with other much smaller hospitals in the area to keep the bodies for relatives to see until final arrangements were made. They were subsequently granted permission to keep the mortal remains of the men in the small hospitals due to the availability of space.

However, within hours of this, the officers-in-charge received a barrage of calls from persons identified with various opposition parties asking them to confirm that the Army was moving more corpses to smaller hospital morgues because the main hospital morgue had overflown with dead army corpses.

The callers, some of whom were personal friends of the officers were, by that time, convinced that the booking of additional morgues was due to a large number of casualties in the frontlines. Some had made the inquiry in glee commenting that the 'Government' was finally losing the war.

Several of these officers to whom we spoke to were devastated by this but their responses were amazing. One officer told a leading opposition politician the following;

"Sir, soldiers join the Army to die in the battlefield and not to fall off a coconut tree and die! To us, there's a difference in the way we end our lives and we have chosen the former. Our Army never grumbled about fighting when it lost 1,500 men in one night. We will not grumble now. If 4,000 of us have to die to take Kilinochchi, I am happy to be part of that 4,000 for this is why we are in the Army"

So our appeal to our readers is to take the lead in removing the shades of green, blue, red etc from our societies' mind. Urge your family and friends to have our fighting men in mind when they react to failures or even successes in the battlefield. This will help them look beyond the politics.

War is nasty and should be avoided at all cost. But at times when its necessary, be prepared to face the consequences and share both victory and defeat with others because the men who fight up there are already doing that for you.

Thank you.

A note from the DW Team