Sri Lankans Celebrate End of Conflict

Waving flags and amid the deafening din of exploding firecrackers, Sri Lankans poured on to the streets of the capital, Colombo, today to celebrate what many believed was the end of the near three-decade war against the Tamil Tigers.

As state television broadcast pictures of the body of the Tigers' chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and the victorious president Mahinda Rajapaksa declared the country "liberated" from terrorism, those who had known nothing but war had no doubt that however it had been achieved, it was a victory worth having.

Fazim Raufdeen was not even born when the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam started, but the 23-year-old Muslim was outside his office, in shirt and tie, brandishing a large national flag above his head.

"This has come from inside, from our hearts," he said. "As a Sri Lankan, we never thought we would win this war, no one thought this war would one day be finished. But today, as a Muslim and as a Sri Lankan, I am really proud to say that we are now one nation together."

Raufdeen had good reason to celebrate: last year, he said, eight of his former schoolmates from DS Senanayake college were killed by an LTTE bomb at the Fort railway station. He went to the hospital to see the bodies.

"This was a good war," he said. "This is the first country that totally took on the terrorists. It is an example to the world."

Around the city, there were similar scenes of spontaneous celebration. Flags were taped to car wing mirrors, convoys weaving through the traffic, pillion passengers on motorbikes clutching flags that streamed out behind them.

On state television, pictures of Prabhakaran's body, lying on a stretcher, played over and over again. A pair of hands lifted his large head, with its distinctive bushy moustache, turning it this way and that, his eyes wide open. A large wound could be seen above his left eye, the top of his head covered in a blue and white cloth. The camera showed other hands displaying an identity card, apparently that of the vanquished leader.

Only a couple of hours earlier, the voice of his nemesis, Rajapaksa, was booming out of television and radio sets across the capital, proclaiming the war over, victory secured.

He didn't even bother to mention Prabhakaran by name: this was a victory speech and one he was clearly relishing. For the first time in almost 30 years, the country was unified under its elected government, he told parliament.

He could even find time to be magnanimous in victory. "Our intention was to save the Tamil people from the cruel grip of the LTTE. We all must now live as equals in this free country," he said.

"We must find a homegrown solution to this conflict. That solution should be acceptable to all the communities. We have to find a solution based on the philosophy of Buddhism."

Somewhere to the north, behind the rolls of razor wire that ring the internment camps and in conditions that even government officials admit are "difficult", a quarter of a million people driven from their homes by the recent fighting can only have hoped that he meant what he said.