strangers night or how to make enemies and offend people.

some people never learn.
new year's eve in colombo was marred by a so called cordon and search operation dubbed strangers night. nor was this the first one, several similar operations were conducted since the recent escalation of violence, both here in colombo and in northeast. after checking on large numbers of residents, police arrested around 1000 people and then released almost all of them. by this morning(2nd) only about dozen people remain in custody.

question is exactly what the authorities aim to accomplish by this mindless use of force.

officially this is an attempt at preventing an imminent attacks by the ltte and generally disrupting tigers' network here. mahinda buffalo himself has reportedly explained that only the 'criminals' have to fear this. that statement betrays not only that he lacks a coherent strategy to deal with the present crisis, but perhaps more importantly his inability to empathize with the minority mindset.

when police knocks on a house of a sinhala buddhist and proceeds to question him, he indeed does not have to fear anything, unless he is a criminal. he can more or less rely on the laws of the country to protect him. however, when police does the same to a tamil, the situation is completely different. long history of racial prejudice and constant equating of all tamils with tigers, means that most police officers almost unconsciously suspect every tamil. that some of them are ill educated and venal only exacerbate this. result is unnecessary humiliation, harassment, and then inevitable alienation, of not only all those tamils who are unfortunate enough to go through this, but almost all tamils.

we, sinhalese in general (not just buffalo) fail to grasp this difference . since most people get released eventually, we tend to dismiss the whole thing as just another wartime inconvenience (even duty) that everybody has to put up with. that is not so. searches and even roadblocks can be terrifying experiences for tamils, while we only suffer from occasional invasion of privacy.

kotakadeniya (recently appointed jhu adviser to defense secretary , whose idea this was probably) and his ilk, will argue that the search is justified since it will prevent attacks in colombo. this is highly doubtful. ltte teams (not just individual suicide bombers) were able to carry out and then hide without a trace, even when similar search operations were carried out earlier (even when kotakadeniya himself was deputy inspector general - colombo). next ltte attack in colombo, now almost certain to happen anyday imo, will prove how wrong these people are. (btw i do not believe that ltte will attack civilians targets this time around, to avoid international condemnation in this era of global war against t terrorism).

only way the government will be able to prevent attacks and disrupt the ltte's colombo agents (other than through pure luck) is through good human intelligence work, not through mass scale arrests. in fact, i am not sure that police can properly investigate all those arrested in an operation like this in any meaningful way, given the numbers involved. same untrained and venal police officers will probably let the real ltte people escape, if they were caught at all. problem is human intelligence takes ages to develop properly.

unofficial cause (partly at least) for this stupid search was, that buffalo and his herd were feeling completely helpless in the face of ltte's provocations. unwilling to admit in public( given all their empty 'patriotic' slogan shouting during th election campaign) that the best method to react is not to be provoked, they felt they must do something to show off they are not impotent. hence this operation.

well, nobody is going to be fooled for long. instead, tamils here will feel more sympathy for a state of their own that does not harass people, tigers will get encouraged to attempt ever more damaging provocations in order to get similar or worse responses from buffalo, and army will have to suffer ever more causalities as a result of bad planning and general playing to the gallery, that seem to be the developing hallmark of buffalo administration. they better wise up quickly and start working on a comprehensive plan on how to deal with the cowardly tigers when they are forced to go to war eventually, otherwise the whole country may collapse, as in 2001.