Editorial

Better late than never, though some might say what’s the point of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Events seem to have overtaken the Government’s feet-dragging decision-making process to clamp a lockdown of the country as the COVID-19 virus began galloping. The people seem to have decided, before the Government did, to lock themselves in. Town after town began putting up their shutters as the Government agonised over what to do.

The Cabinet of Ministers is said to have deliberated at length as Sri Lanka’s fatality figures shot up to unacceptable levels. Eventually, it was the hierarchy of the Buddhist Clergy that had called for the closure for “a week or so”, something the medical fraternity had asked for long earlier, and then the political parties within and outside the Government.

The Government, no doubt, was mindful of the small enterprises, the traders and the daily wage earners and their families numbering in their millions. A minister related how a small-time yoghurt manufacturer in the Hambantota district was forced to close down his little factory because the shops had voluntarily closed down. This has a knock-on effect on his workers whom he had to retrench and the farmer from whom he had to stop purchasing the milk. Yet, the weight of evidence was heavily stacked on switching off the economy for the greater good.

Already, the Government’s contradictory statistics on the virus and its casualties has resulted in the further erosion of the public’s confidence. The Health Ministry is strenuously denying the data is fiddled, an accusation made from within the coalition Government’s own ranks, while admitting the data could be jumbled due to bona fide reasons.

The hospitals spilling over and the health frontliners now succumbing themselves to the virus can no longer be ignored. The Friday night clampdown may not be enough given the fact that a minimum of two weeks is required for the incubation period of the virus at least to bring down the fatalities. Mathematical calculations which the Government disregarded say the worst is yet to come. But at least, they have, eventually moved in the right direction at this late stage.

Protecting Buddhist artefacts in Afghanistan

One month ago (July 18), we wrote of the “return of the Taliban”. Throughout history, the people of Afghanistan have paid dearly for the misfortune due to its strategic geographical location between Europe and Asia. The British, the Russians and the Americans wanted a piece of it, and eventually had to leave with a bloodied nose, humiliated and financially drained.

It was America’s turn this time. There were certain advances in bringing Afghanistan from the medieval rule imposed by the Taliban to a more modern world, but US Forces and their indiscriminate bombings did not earn the hearts and minds of the locals. To many, the ‘Ugly American’ was not welcome. The ordinary folk were trapped between the “terrorists” (as the Americans called the Taliban) and the “infidels” (as the Taliban called the Americans). No peoples like foreign boots in their country.

The US has paid a very high price for its incursion into Afghanistan, none greater than to its image as a thoroughly unreliable ally leaving those who backed it in the lurch. Soon after World War II, the Americans were the great defenders of Europe through NATO and uplifted many South East Asian countries from poverty to prosperity through ASEAN. However, their more recent military interventions — Vietnam, Latin America, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan — have been disasters for themselves and the countries they ‘invaded’.

But leave it to the Americans to work out a strategy and come out of this hellhole they created for themselves. They are already working backdoors using third parties to attract the Taliban (carrots) while imposing economic sanctions (sticks) to rein in the Taliban, which has displayed a keenness not to be isolationist. They want to be a part of the international comity of nations. It took the Americans only two decades after their military defeat to become the biggest financial investors in Communist Vietnam. Before long, Afghanistan may well see more big-power tug-of-war, but then it would be economic, for its mineral resources.

Closer home, what is Sri Lanka’s stand on these developments among one of the members of the South Asian group, SAARC. Will the new regime in Kabul dump SAARC as a good-for-nothing club and turn northwards towards the Gulf states, like Qatar, for its future? Or will Pakistan, which has some influence over the Afghan Taliban right now, want it to remain in SAARC for its own leverage within the group?

The victorious Taliban has been labouring to tell the world that it is a reformist Taliban that is in power in Afghanistan. Well and good, if such claims are not limited to the cameras. For how can anybody forget the dynamiting of the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues and the barbaric executions of its own people when they ruled in the past.

Last month, we urged the Government to ensure the protection of Buddhist sites of pre-Islamic Afghanistan. A Letter we publish today from a reader refers to some 2,500 Buddhist artefacts at the National Museum in Kabul. He suggests that Sri Lanka even ask for those artefacts if the Taliban does not want them.

Sri Lanka has a duty to play a proactive role in not only protecting Buddhism within its shores, but overseas as well. The Buddhist heritage of Afghanistan is part of the world’s heritage and Sri Lanka must not shy away from mustering the support of Pakistan and the United Nations towards this task.