Notes on peace from northern Sri Lanka

This year, I spent International Day of Peace in Jaffna and Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka. We drove up and down A9, a road I have always associated with military operations during the war, although its history precedes the conflict. Between Elephant Pass and Kilinochchi, war memorials line the highway, underscoring this association. At the southern end, at the entrance stands a concrete sign bearing the words, “Kilinochchi, the heart of hope and peace.” At the northern end, the sign reads “Kilinochchi: The rising city with peace, hope and harmony.”

Peace is here
“Now, there is peace.” What does peace mean? 
It means that after decades of shunting between two warring parties, trying not to be either recruited or shot, people can breathe and think about other kinds of survival. Peace means the prospect of loans and of phones, of travel and of opportunity. Peace is the proliferation of banks and small hotels—the appearance of a small town on global travel websites. Peace is school-children riding bicycles on the road alongside military and tourist vehicles. 
Peace is silky-smooth highways that link one rural road to another. It is the military-looking men— some police, some army, some navy—that desolately punctuate the highways, holding their rifles. It is the mammoth war memorials everywhere—as if those who suffered, and everyone suffered, can ever forget. Peace is the bus-loads of tourists who come to see the sites of war and enemy bunkers and it is also the military-run holiday beach resorts. Peace is driving down a long road with no check-points, but thinking as one sees a place-name, “Is this where...?” 
Peace is a strange thing, but we are told, it is here. 

The traces of war
The shiny and new, the run-down and the utterly ruined sit cheek by jowl as we drive these roads. There are abandoned houses everywhere. Some sit alone in the middle of fields. Some are on arterial roads we pass all the time. I cannot tell what they are and who they belong to. Some must have been mansions that belonged to wealthy families. I try to imagine the car that stood in their driveway or the cows tethered to a shed in the backyard. Some must have been family homes that saw a dozen grandchildren run up and down and sit down to eat together. Some stand forgotten, some have contesting claims. 
Run-down shacks stand by the sea. Small temples, actually brick or cement boxes, with just a picture of some deity, remain here and there. The coast is full of shrines. God, in every form, is mute witness to everything that has happened, as are the sea, the sky and the trees that survived. The clouds, like people, have to move on.
Infrastructure development has clearly been a post-war priority because the main roads are surely the envy of this neighbourhood, but it is patchy enough that the new simply stands awkwardly next to the old and run-down. Banks, ATMs, supermarkets and boutiques have emerged but few large, local enterprises able to hire the thousands of young people in this area. Everything is here but still it’s a little bit like a world left behind. 
War lingers in the silences. Every topic, every reason, every explanation is fair game. But in this time of peace, let us not mention war at all. 

Shifting fields of battle
The war is over but the habit of violence and the instinct of insecurity remain. 
Everyone talks about safety. Women are not safe now. They were once safe in these very parts. Harassment, molestation and rape were summarily punished, by death even. There were no long drawn-out trials that went nowhere. There was no scope for slipping someone a little money or other inducement in exchange for getting off the hook. No one says, “Those were good times,” but the words hang in the air.
What makes it unsafe, I wonder. There is clarity on that. Outsiders have introduced a new culture. Smart phones have taught young people to be amoral. Drugs are sold freely and consumed even by school-children. There is cultural decline.
In such a climate, girls cannot possibly travel long distances, live unsupervised and unprotected in hostels, seek jobs in workplaces that might be mixed, and be trusted to remain chaste. No one puts it all together like that, but that is what it is. 
The battleground has shifted. It is now morality and it is fought over the protection of women’s bodies. 

The things you cannot say, the questions I cannot ask
Peace seems almost to depend on silence. For some, it is denial; for others, survival. 
I will not ask you where you have lived in your short life (or your longer one). I will not ask you about that mark on your hand. I will not ask you how you spent your teens. You tell me you were here and then you went away and then came back; I will not ask you about the day you decided to leave. 
I will not ask why there is so much sadness in your eyes. I will not ask you why you do not tell me about what and who you have lost. I will not ask why you are afraid to be parted from your children. I will not ask you about your attachment to your homestead. I will not explore why your language is your fortress. 
I grieve that you do not dream; I dare not ask why, because I have already strayed too far into forbidden territory. If I grazed a wound only half-healed by asking about dreams, I am sorry. I cannot think what it means to have become a people with fear and without dreams. I will not probe the lack of trust. After all, it is not that I cannot guess. 
I can imagine your exhaustion with such conversations and how futile they must seem. There are more urgent matters at hand, such as making sure your children are safe and settled with livelihoods and families they can be sure of. Life is too uncertain to leave anything more to chance. You know that better than I do. 
As long as I do not ask and you do not share, peace will be fragile. But just for today, I will let that be. 

Abandoned homes
The only sign of life around those abandoned houses are the plants that grow wild. In this season, there are pink and white flowers everywhere. Even ruins look pretty. Nature abhors a vacuum, they say, and there is a huge vacuum where lives have been left summarily to be restarted elsewhere, without roots. The roots survive and flower, but the people are gone. There is no one to bring life to the space within these broken walls. What has been lost is an open secret, like these homes now. 
The displaced move back but find their homes destroyed or occupied. The diaspora drifts back on nostalgia for a lost heritage and to reclaim contested property titles. The development of land acquisition, big apartment complexes, malls and hotels has not yet reached the North and that may be a good thing for those who abhor that brand of change. What will happen to these homes no one has come back to reclaim and repair when it does? What will happen to those already displaced, and not just once?
Those who maintain the peace—the ubiquitous military and police—are stationed on land abandoned and/or taken over from locals who have moved mostly to camps for the internally displaced. For outsiders, it is easy to assume they were displaced mainly during the conflict. The reality is that many are now displaced by projects that are meant to be developing the region. 

The elephants in the room
There are many elephants that sit with us in this room. We talk about this and that. But we do not talk about war. And we do not talk about peace. You sometimes allude to those who made war. But you rarely mention the bases that dot A9 and other arterial roads in the North and East. We do not talk about those who left and haven’t come back. We do not talk about those who left and came back to find a different reality or the lucky ones who could at least rebuild and pretend to go on. We do not talk about those who managed to stay. We do not talk about those who left home and did not return or those who were called somewhere and disappeared or those who lost their limbs on a mundane errand. We do not talk about children whose motor-skills were developed by bomb-making. No, no, no, we don’t.
Death, destruction, displacement, depression, insecurity and loss sit with us, but do try those biscuits. Won’t you have some tea? 

The tedium of suffering
It is not just fear that limits what we can talk about. To be fair, no one is listening that closely anymore. But one senses that people are tired of talking about miserable times. They have lost a great deal but will talking bring any of it back? Will it serve any purpose other than assuaging the guilt of the listener who has not suffered as much? 
There are many, many stories whose end will never be known. Talking about missing people has created an Office of Missing Persons, but people are still missing and likely to remain so. As long as people are missing, other lives are in limbo. Perhaps they are abroad, hiding, safe. Perhaps they are dead. Sometimes the search continues. Sometimes life just pulls you in a different direction and you move on. 
Young people in their late teens and early twenties have seen and must remember the worst moments of war vividly. But they have a long life to anticipate and plan for and responsibilities that await them. To talk about the past and to grieve over trauma is neither here nor there. Pushed, they sound exasperated and say, “We’re tired of talking about this. What is the point? Nothing has changed. Nothing will.” Fair enough. 
Peace is a mixed bag—hope and despair, tedium and anticipation, fear and freedom. 

The dangers of nostalgia
We long for peace and it almost never fails to disappoint. When the war ends, there will be no more violence. When the crisis ends, there will be abundance. When the security situation improves, we will be free to move and to do what we like. When we are free, our region will prosper. With peace, will come equality. In times of trouble—and perhaps they are always times of trouble—peace is such a distant prospect that it is safe to invest all our hopes and dreams in it. 
When war ends and we are told the crisis is over, nothing feels perfect. Our homes have to be rebuilt. Our families have to be found and reunited. We have to remember, even as we forget. There is the humdrum and inescapable reality of buying food and paying for a little light. Education has been disrupted and so finding a job is not easy. In the transition between the state of war and a state of peace, order has broken down and although bombs and guns have largely been withdrawn, there is a pervasive sense of insecurity. “Do not stray too far from the homestead, it is not safe.” People still seem to feel risk everywhere. 
Perhaps it is natural for those who have suffered so much to huddle together in spaces that seem safe. Stick together, where everyone is visible and a cry for help can be heard and understood. Stick together, because those who have lost so much cannot afford to lose anymore. 
Perhaps it is natural to long for the safety of times when you knew for sure that you were in danger. The certainty of the arbitrary gun may be more comforting than a justice that may or may not serve your need. Democracy and patriarchy foster impunity and make people nostalgic for the absolute morality and unforgiving discipline of another time.
Ever-fragile, peace is most threatened by disappointment. A peace that does not deliver safety, guarantee justice and build a road to everyday well-being is a peace likely moving in reverse mode.  

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist by training