After the lengthy period of the Norwegian peace process, which informed commentators have termed no war in preference to peace, the return to outright war in Sri Lanka surprised few. Thousands have been killed since the beginning of 2006. In addition, close to 2000 have been disappeared or abducted, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. That the term crisis, then, most readily describes the situation in Sri Lanka today would appear almost intuitively apparent to many, and this is now evident in many analyses, especially those concerned with the work of human-rights advocacy. Indeed, faced by the Rajapakse regime's brand of authoritarianism, as well as its attacks on minority communities, its now favoured modus operandi of censorship and intimidation of dissenting opinion, its disregard for constitutional compunction and its belligerent refusal to address domestic and international advocacy on these issues, these analyses have diagnosed the present situation as one of human-rights crisis, and the situation in Sri Lanka more generally as one of overall crisis.
The current human-rights situation is indeed dire. The sequence of political assassination, displacement, massacre and abduction perpetrated by multiple armed actors, whether the security forces, the LTTE or other armed groups, demands scrutiny, condemnation and action, both within Sri Lanka and beyond. There is also an urgent need for continuous work at the level of civil society to highlight, expose and challenge the regime's abuse of power. However these writers suggest that such work must be supplemented by a strategy of critical political engagement.
The primary concern here will be with the responsibilities of critical thinking in a time of war, its stakes, targets and points of intervention. The analytical and strategic adequacy of the identification of the current political situation as chiefly one of 'crisis' will be questioned. Thereafter, worries will be raised regarding the marginalisation of the 'national question' – a complex debate about the political rights of minorities that has been historically framed as a political problem of Sri Lankan statehood. Finally, Sri Lankan scholarly literature will be drawn upon to provide a more historically grounded understanding of the regime and its relationship to the state than has been evident in current analyses.
'Crisis' and 'war on terror'
In their specific diagnoses of the recent phase of the war as crisis, current analyses fail to recognise the continuity of political developments, both during the Norwegian peace process and during the cycles of war and 'no war' over the last 25 years. The Ceasefire Agreement of 2002 and the Norwegian peace process afforded not only legitimacy to the 'sole-representative' politics of the LTTE, but also refused to confront its abuses, including the recruitment of child soldiers, the assassination of Tamil dissidents and its escalation of the war. This subsequently paved the way for a backlash in the south in support of the Rajapakse regime's war effort.