THE SRI LANKA PEACE PROCESS:

AN INSIDE VIEW

- BY G.L. PEIRIS

The brutal and prolonged ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, which nearly tore apart this otherwise peaceful South Asian island state before it was brought to a bloody but decisive end in 2009, has been the subject of much commentary over the years.

The past decade and a half have seen a particular focus on the so-called Peace Process which preceded the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); experts from academia, the foreign policy establishment, and independent think tanks, both within and outside Sri Lanka, have sought to explain, assess, praise or excoriate the process and the actors involved in it. Against that backdrop comes a seminal book, which has the distinctive merit of being authored by someone who played a central role in piloting the process from the Sri Lankan government's side as its chief negotiator.

It could be argued that any insider's account of an enterprise as complex, controversial and fraught as bringing uncompromising enemies to the negotiating table, let alone persuading them to make the concessions necessary for a durable peace, cannot ever be truly objective. Even with that caveat, this book should be welcomed for at least two reasons: firstly, it is written with a degree of clarity and precision that is not only rare for politicians (especially from the Indian subcontinent) but also unsusceptible to prevarication if challenged on the facts; and, secondly, there is an overall fairness to the narration which adds credibility to the work.

Among other things, Peiris does not flinch from offering critical, but measured, evaluations of some of the leading personalities involved in the peace process, including those with whom he worked closely.