The Sri Lankan Shuffle

Sometimes there's just nothing a nation can do. The civil war raging in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) has been brutal. Since January alone, 2300 civilians have perished and 6500 others have been seriously injured, according to UN estimates. The two main opposing forces - Government military and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) - the latter group recognized by the EU, the United States and Canada as a terrorist organization - have been battling for years. Things have now reached a climax, with the government forces trapping the Tigers against the sea and about ready to deliver the coup de gras. Sadly, some 300,000 innocent civilians are trapped, with no avenue of escape.Nobody in this conflict can claim the moral high ground. There have been enough atrocities committed on both sides to fill up the International Criminal Court dockets for years.The Foreign Affairs Committee has been hearing expert witnesses on the conflict and the prognosis hasn't been good. We have been fortunate to have Bob Rae on the committee, who has been a past peace envoy to the region. Listening to most of the witnesses was an exercise in frustration. Each side clearly blamed the other and showed little willingness to admit culpability. Naturally, members of the committee from all parties couldn't be expected to comprehend all the nuances of the conflict or life in Sri Lanka, but their attempt to get the two sides to find some kind of accommodation were repeatedly frustrated.Recently, we were visited by two expert witnesses. Bruce Matthews, is the Professor Emeritus for Acadia University and spent much of his life in Sri Lanka doing research. The other was David Cameron, Political Science Professor at the University of Toronto, and a fellow member of Bob Rae's negotiation team for Sri Lanka. With sobering dialogue, both men determined that there was little that could be done by Canada to assist that war-ravaged island half a world away. This wasn't what the committee wanted to hear, yet the witnesses stuck to their assessments. Every one of our questions was rebutted with seasoned answers showing that things were futile. It had been a difficult session, but we all walked out wiser.In these pages we have been dealing with the New Internationalism, and how Canada could step forward to play a more prominent role on the world stage. But there will be those occasions where intervention will prove futile, as in the case of Sri Lanka. Yet such failure perhaps points to the need for all countries to consider the present alignment of nations and how better we can prevent such situations in the future.Above all, I'm a humanitarian. But the assessment of these two experienced witnesses reminded me of the limit of government abilities. Yet some 300,000 trapped civilians are looking to us and the rest of the world to save them. And so we're stuck - we can't walk away and we can't intervene. Sometimes there is no rescue.  Politics is teaching me that. But I'm not yet ready to give up.