Early this year, a new report from the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on conflict-related sexual violence in Sri Lanka, during and after the civil war put the spotlight on one of its most traumatic consequences. Many survivors of the conflict that ended in 2009 continue to suffer “chronic physical injuries, infertility, psychological breakdowns, and suicidal thoughts”, it noted.
Reporting from the island nation has repeatedly taught me that a war cannot be simply put behind us. It lives in the bodies and minds of survivors, and resurfaces in the memories they fight every day while trying hard to heal.
As we struggle to keep up with daily headlines about the U.S. and Israel’s illegal war on Iran, and Iran’s retaliatory strikes, one thing is certain: nearly the entire world is fervently waiting for news of the end of the war.
The stakes are high for so many of us — from migrant workers stuck in the Gulf, to families unable to afford fuel or LPG, to cash-strapped governments abruptly hiking electricity tariffs, everyone is hoping for quick relief from a war launched at the whim of two power-hungry men.
Over a month old now, the ongoing conflict in West Asia which began with the U.S.-Israel combine’s airstrikes on Iran on February 28, 2026, is one of many wars of our times.
Book review | In My Mother’s House:Exodus and eviction in Sri Lanka’s civil war
In February this year, the war in Ukraine, triggered by Russia’s invasion in 2022, entered its fifth year. For more than two years now, Israel has not stopped killing Palestinians in Gaza — the death toll has reportedly crossed 75,000 — while Israeli settlers persist with their violent attacks in West Bank. Additionally, Sudan, over two and a half years into its conflict, is staring at a staggering humanitarian catastrophe, with an estimated 33.7 million people requiring assistance this year.
Updates from a live war naturally draw our attention. They are dramatic and urgent, for they are about life and death. When ruthless leaders mistake their power for a licence to kill, the world becomes a truly dangerous place, forcing even those of us far away to nervously track updates.
The ongoing wars must stop. The urgency is even greater when we recognise that the end of a war on the battlefield is only the beginning of a long, painful, challenging, and often messy, process of recovery. The death tolls, in which real people are reduced to cold numbers, don’t capture the extent of destruction or the lasting impact of the violence.
Next month, Sri Lanka will mark 17 years since its civil war, between the state armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ended.
The island nation endured this war for nearly three decades. The Tamils, who bore the brunt of the war, especially in the island’s north and east, often say that the war may be over, but the conflict is not. It manifests in the grief and trauma that won’t go away, in the struggle to retrieve their lands from the military, in their ongoing search for forcibly disappeared loved ones, the fight for survival in a battered economy, and their fears of facing a future they can’t seem to build on their own terms. In the life of a refugee, rendered stateless and robbed of dignity, war is not an occurrence of the past, it is a running theme of the present. Survivors may be grateful to be alive but must contend with being treated as lesser citizens in their own country, or worse, made to feel like lesser humans.
My predecessors in Colombo started covering Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 1980s. Forty years later, I haven’t stopped covering it.
Suntharam Anojan, an artist from the northern Mullaitivu district of Sri Lanka — the site of the final battle where tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed — said this in a recent interview to The Hindu: “I see my life in two phases — before the war and after the war.”
That is what a war does, it alters life permanently. It leaves a trail of devastation, and the aftermath haunts its survivors for long. War is no video game.
Published – April 03, 2026 01:35 am IST
