Broken pieces

摘要

Like bystanders at a car crash, Sri Lanka's friends seem powerless to stop its screech towards renewed and full-blooded civil war. This week, for the first time since December 2001, government soldiers were engaged in a murderous land battle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This intensified what was already, in effect, a seven-month-old undeclared war that mocks a ceasefire signed in 2002 and still, technically, in force.