11/22/2010
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Wall Street Journal
A year and a half after Colombo finally won its battle against Tamil insurgents, Sri Lankans are starting to ask when the promised "peace dividend" will materialize. Yesterday's budget offers hope—modest hope—that President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his administration are headed in the right direction.
05/05/2010
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The Economist
TRAMPLING weeds underfoot, a group of people bound excitedly into an abandoned cemetery for Tamil Tiger rebels, hack bricks off the once pristine tombs and throw them into a waiting van. They are, sighs a local Tamil autorickshaw driver resignedly, “Sinhala tourists”—members of Sri Lanka’s ethnic majority, collecting souvenirs to take back home in the south. Since the main north-south highway reopened to civilian traffic in December 2009, thousands of such visitors have been streaming to Sri Lanka’s northern peninsula, eager to make up for lost time. Alas, reconstruction and ethnic reconciliation are not following in their wake as quickly as people had hoped.