And for those past fourteen years, the war has not come anywhere near to being won and peace has remained as stubbornly elusive as ever. Even now there is another offensive in full swing as yet another phase in the 'War for Peace'. The fury unleashed and the frustration engendered over the years may well suggest that there is no easy solution. The conflict has lasted because it is in the nature of such conflicts to last and in doing so, demonstrate their futility. Consequently, deeply ingrained positions can be budged by the passage of time, the spilling of more blood and the expenditure of ill-afforded resources.
Conflict resolution is long and hard and bleak.
It is one thing to identify the solution and it is another to identify how to attain it. I have long believed that there are two aspects to conflict resolution in Sri Lanka that have been insufficiently appreciated in the attempts to resolve the ethnic conflict. A clear acknowledgement of these two aspects will do much to clear the path to peace. The reason why it is important to reiterate that it is an ethnic conflict is because there appears to be a belief that the ethnic dimension of the conflict, which the current government for one conceded in the past, has been laid to rest by its devolution proposals. The key question in our nation and statebuilding process of the relationship between the majority and the minority communities and the sharing of power between them, it is assumed, have been dealt with in the devolution package.