Let’s not allow the war to obscure everything else

Even if the current conflicts in the Gulf region recedes in a week or two or in a month, it must be taken as an interval in the hell. The risk of Sri Lanka’s main income sources being harmed in whatever scale is thus a virtual ‘Sword of Damocles’

The war in West Asia between the US, Israel and Iran has practically dwarfed everything locally. International and local mainstream media as well as all social media platforms are obsessed with real, fake and AI-generated information on this war in a manner one can hardly understand what is really going on in the region.
We are not going to argue that the obsession is unjustifiable. In the light of the possible repercussions of the war in every country and thereby in lives of every man and woman in the world, the interest among the people is coherent. And the politics, especially the ethnic politics in the war attracts people more towards it. 
This is not Sri Lanka’s war, yet, we are going to be hit hard if it is protracted. it is going to hit the country’s main income sources – remittances, tourism and exports – while it would drain the country’s hard-earned foreign exchange reserves with the possibility of oil price hikes.
Replying to the apprehensions expressed by the Opposition parties on the country’s ability to repay the foreign debts, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had several times shrugged off such misgivings banking on these income sources which are now at stake. Whatever the US has attributed to this war may be, it is the ambition of plundering of the world’s third-largest proven crude oil reserves, estimated at approximately 209 billion barrels as of late 2024-2025, that prompted it to attack Iran. The US sponsored ouster of leaders in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Venezuela in January this year attest to it.
Therefore, even if the current conflicts in the Gulf region recedes in a week or two or in a month, it must be taken as an interval in the hell. The risk of Sri Lanka’s main income sources being harmed in whatever scale is thus a virtual ‘Sword of Damocles’. This demands the leaders of the country to remember not only what we are but also where we were when the war broke out. 
It is not to deny that Sri Lanka has successfully managed so far some of the ramifications of the war, especially the issues stemmed from the two Iranian ships stranded in the Indian Ocean, one of which was destroyed by a US torpedo. The US-Israeli attacks on Iran started at a time when we were in a middle of the process of recovery from a major disaster, the cyclone Ditwah. It is also not to deny that normalcy has returned to the lives of many who were affected by it, yet with temporary measures. 
Thousands of people who lost not only their houses, but also the lands beneath them due to the landslides triggered by the cyclone are still without a permanent shelter which could be called a home. The 160-year-old main railway line across the central hills is still unusable. Many roads have been made motorable on temporary basis, on sand bags. Hundreds of arable lands have been washed away by the floods associated with the cyclone Ditwah.  Busy schedules of the leaders of the government that might be on the cards with the fallout of the US-Israeli war against Iran should not wean off their concerns over these issues.
Despite some allegations of corruption by the Opposition parties, we witness a government which has rid corruption at the political level, in overall. Yet, we are not among saints who are not tempted to be tainted, and what we are witnessing is the grip of a political party over the people who might, at their first available moment could be corrupted. If chaos prevails in the country with the developments of the West Asian region, the grip might relax. 
Similarly, the Government’s drive against the drugs and crimes is also at stake in the light of the fallout of the possible war in the West Asia.

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