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Insights from SSA Cyclone Ditwah Survey: More State support needed for Malaiyaha communityCentral Province experienced not just flooding but also the most number of landslides in the islandSource: File photo By Shashik Silva Daily Mirror Early warnings hadn’t reached many areas. Some data collectors said they themselves never heard any warnings in estate areas, while others mentioned that early warnings were issued but didn’t reach some segments of the communityWhen climate disasters strike, they don’t affect everyone equally. Marginalised communities typically face worse outcomes, and Cyclone Ditwah is no exception. Especially in a context where normalcy is far from ‘normal’, the idea of returning to normalcy or restoring a life of normalcy makes very little sense. The islandwide survey conducted by the Social Scientists’ Association (SSA), between early to mid-January on Cyclone Ditwah shows stark regional disparities in how satisfied or dissatisfied people were with the Government’s response. While national satisfaction levels were relatively high in most provinces, the Central Province tells a different story. Disaster response can’t be the same for everyone. The Malaiyaha Tamil community has been double marginalised because they were already living with structural inequalities such as poor infrastructure, geographic isolation, and inadequate services which have been exacerbated by Cyclone Ditwah.The Central Province (Sinhala: මධ්යම පළාත, Tamil: மத்திய மாகாணம்) is one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka, covering an area of approximately 5,674 square kilo meters. It is home to a diverse population of around 2.8 million people and includes three main districts: Kandy, Matale, and Nuwara Eliya. The capital city is Kandy.Only 35.2% of Central Province residents reported that they were satisfied with early warning and evacuation measures, compared to 52.2% nationally. The gap continues across every measure just 52.9% were satisfied with immediate rescue and emergency response, compared with the national figure of 74.6%. Satisfaction with relief distribution in the Central Province is 51.9% while the national figure stands at 73.1%. The figures for restoration of water, electricity, and roads are at a low 45.9% in the central province compared to the 70.9% in national figures. Similarly, the satisfaction level for recovery and rebuilding support is 48.7% in the Central Province, while the national figure is 67.0%.A deeper analysis of the SSA data on public perceptions reveals something important: these lower satisfaction rates came primarily from the Malaiyaha Tamil population. Their experience differed not just from other provinces, but also from other ethnic groups living in the Central Province itself.The Malaiyaha Tamil community’s vulnerability didn’t start with the cyclone. Their vulnerability is a historically and structurally pre-determined process of exclusion and marginalisation. Brought to Sri Lanka during British rule to work for the empire’s plantation economies, they have faced long-term economic exploitation and have repeatedly been denied access to state support and social welfare systems. Most estate residents still live in ‘line rooms’ and have no rights to the land they cultivate and live on. The community continues to be governed by an outdated estate management system that acts as a barrier to accessing public and municipal services such as road repair, water, electricity and other basic infrastructures available to other citizens. As far as access to improved water sources is concerned, the Sri Lanka Demographic Health Survey (2016) shows that 57% of estate sector households don’t have access to improved water sources, while more than 90% of households in urban and rural areas do. With regard to the level of poverty, as the Department of Census and Statistics (2019) data reveals, the estate sector where most Malaiyaha Tamils live had a poverty headcount index of 33.8%; more than double the national rate of 14.3%. These statistics highlight key indicators of the systemic discrimination faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community.Some crucial observations from the SSA data collectors who had enumerated responses from estate residents in the survey reveal the specific challenges faced by the Malaiyaha Tamils, particularly in their efforts to seek state support for compensation and reconstruction.First, the Central Province experienced not just flooding but also the most number of landslides in the island. As a result, some residents in the region lost entire homes, access roadways, and other basic infrastructures. The lost of lives, livelihoods and land were at a higher intensity compared to the provinces not located in the hills. Most importantly, the Malaiyaha Tamil community’s pre-existing grievances made them even more vulnerable and the government’s job of reparation and restitution more complex.Early warnings hadn’t reached many areas. Some data collectors said they themselves never heard any warnings in estate areas, while others mentioned that early warnings were issued but didn’t reach some segments of the community. According to the resident data collectors, the police announcements reached only as far as the sections they were able to drive their vehicles, and there were many estate roads that were not suitable for vehicles. When warnings did filter through to remote locations, they often came by word of mouth and information was distorted along the way. Once the disaster hit, things got worse: roads were blocked, electricity went out, mobile networks failed and people were cut off completely.Emergency response was slow. Blocked roads meant people could not get to hospitals when they needed urgent care, including pregnant mothers. The difficult terrain and poor road conditions meant rescue teams took much longer to reach affected areas than in other regions.Relief supplies didn’t reach everyone. The Grama Niladhari divisions in these areas are huge and hard to navigate, making it difficult for Grama Niladharis to reach all places as urgently as needed. Relief workers distributed supplies where vehicles could go, which meant accessible areas got help while remote communities were left out.Some people didn’t even try to go to safety centres or evacuation shelters set up in local schools because the facilities there were already so poor. The perceptions of people who did go to safety centres, as shown in the provincial data, reveal that satisfaction was low compared to other affected regions of the country. Less than half were satisfied with space and facilities (42.1%) or security and protection (45.0%). Satisfaction was even lower for assistance with lost or damaged documentation (17.9%) and information and support for compensation applications (28.2%). Only 22.5% were satisfied with medical care and health services below most other affected regions.Restoring services proved nearly impossible in some areas. Road access was the biggest problem. The condition of the roads was already poor even before the cyclone, and some still haven’t been cleared. Recovery is especially difficult because there’s no decent baseline infrastructure to restore, hence you can’t bring roads and other public facilities back to a ‘good’ condition when they were never good, even before the disaster.Water systems faced their own complications. Many households get water from natural sources or small community projects, and not the centralised state system. These sources are often in the middle of the disaster zone and therefore got contaminated during the floods and landslides.Long-term recovery remains stalled. Without basic infrastructure, areas that are still hard to reach keep struggling to get the support they need for rebuilding.Taken together, what do these testaments mean? Disaster response can’t be the same for everyone. The Malaiyaha Tamil community has been double marginalised because they were already living with structural inequalities such as poor infrastructure, geographic isolation, and inadequate services which have been exacerbated by Cyclone Ditwah. An effective and fair disaster response needs to account for these underlying vulnerabilities. It requires interventions tailored to the historical, economic, and infrastructural realities that marginalised communities face every day. On top of that, it highlights the importance of dealing with climate disasters, given the fact that vulnerable communities could face more devastating impacts compared to others.(The article is based on a survey conducted by the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka in early to mid-January 2026. The writer is the Chief Operating Officer and a researcher of the association)
Trump's world order hangs over Europe on eve of key defence conferenceTrump's world order hangs over Europe on eve of key defence conferenceFrank Gardner Security correspondent Published BBC 10 February 2026It is one year since US Vice-President JD Vance delivered a bombshell speech at the Munich Security Conference, castigating Europe for its policies on migration and free speech, and claiming the greatest threat the continent faces comes from within.The audience were visibly stunned. Since then, the Trump White House has tipped the world order upside down.Allies and foes alike have been slapped with punitive tariffs, there was the extraordinarily brazen raid on Venezuela, Washington's uneven pursuit of peace in Ukraine on terms favourable to Moscow and a bizarre demand that Canada should become the "51st state" of the US.This year, the conference - which begins later this week - once again looks set to be decisive. US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio leads the US delegation, while more than 50 other world leaders have been invited. It comes as the security of Europe looks increasingly precarious.The latest US National Security Strategy (NSS), published late last year, external, called on Europe to "stand on its own feet" and take "primary responsibility for its own defence," adding to fears that the US is increasingly unwilling to underpin Europe's defence.But it is the crisis over Greenland that has really tugged at the fabric of the entire transatlantic alliance between the US and Europe. Donald Trump has said on numerous occasions that he "needs to own" Greenland for the sake of US and global security, and for a while he did not rule out the use of force.Greenland is a self-governing territory belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark, so it was hardly surprising when Denmark's prime minister said that a hostile US military takeover would spell the end of the Nato alliance that has underpinned Europe's security for the past 77 years.The Greenland crisis has been averted for now – the White House has been distracted by other priorities – but it leaves an uncomfortable question hanging over the Munich Security Conference: Are Europe-US security ties damaged beyond repair?They have changed, there's no question about that, but they have not disintegrated.Sir Alex Younger, who was chief of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, from 2014-2020, tells the BBC that while the transatlantic alliance is not going to go back to the way it was, it isn't broken."We still benefit enormously from our security and military and intelligence relationship with America," he says. He also believes, as many do, that Trump was right to make Europe shoulder more of the burden for its own defence."You've got a continent of 500 million [Europe], asking a continent of 300 million [US] to deal with a continent of 140 million [Russia]. It's the wrong way around. So I believe that Europe should take more responsibility for its own defence," Sir Alex said.This imbalance, whereby the US taxpayer has been effectively subsidising Europe's defence needs for decades, has underpinned much of the Trump White House's resentment of Europe.But the splits in the transatlantic alliance go well beyond troop numbers and irritation at those Nato countries, such as Spain, that have been failing to meet even the minimum 2% of GDP on defence (Russia currently spends more than 7% on defence while Britain is just under 2.5%).On trade, migration and free speech Team Trump have sharp differences with Europe. Meanwhile, democratically elected European governments have been alarmed by Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin and his propensity for blaming Ukraine for getting invaded by Russia.The Munich Security Conference organisers have published a report ahead of the event in which Tobias Bunde, the director of research & policy, says there has now been a fundamental break with US post-WW2 strategy.This strategy, he argues, broadly rested on three pillars: a belief in the benefit of multilateral institutions, economic integration and a belief that democracy and human rights are not just values, but strategic assets."Under the Trump administration," says Bunde, "all three of these pillars have been weakened or openly questioned".'A shocking wake-up call for Europe'Much of the Trump White House's thinking can be found in the US National Security Strategy. The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) describes the document as "a real, painful, shocking wake-up call for Europe", and "a moment of cavernous divergence between Europe's view of itself and Trump's vision for Europe".The Narva testBut the ultimate question in all of this is "does Article 5 still work?".Article 5 is the part of Nato's charter that stipulates that an attack on one country shall be deemed an attack on all. From 1949 until a year ago it was taken as read that should the Soviet Union, or more latterly Russia, invade a Nato state such as Lithuania then the full force of the alliance, backed by US military might, would come to its aid.Although Nato officials have insisted that Article 5 is still very much alive and well, Trump's unpredictability coupled with the disdain his administration has for Europe inevitably calls it into question.This is what I call "the Narva Test". Narva is a majority Russian-speaking town in Estonia that sits on the River Narva, right on the border with Russia. If, hypothetically, Russia were to make a grab for it under the pretext, say, of "coming to the help of its fellow Russians", would this US administration ride to the rescue of Estonia?The same question can equally be applied to a future, and still hypothetical, Russian move on the Suwalki Gap which separates Belarus from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic. Or, for that matter, the Norwegian-administered Arctic archipelago of Svalbard where Russia already has a colony at Barentsburg.Given President Trump's recent territorial ambitions to seize Greenland from fellow Nato member Denmark, no one can predict for certain how President Trump would react. And that, in a time when Russia is waging a full-scale war against a European country in Ukraine, can lead to dangerous miscalculations.This week's Munich Security Conference should provide some answers on where the transatlantic alliance is heading. They just may not necessarily be what Europe wants to hear.
போலிச் சுதந்திரம் பொசுங்கட்டும்!விடுதலை, தேசிய சுயநிர்ணயம் ஓங்கட்டும்!நாடாளமன்றவாதம் ஒழியட்டும்!ஈழவாக்கெடுப்புக்குப் போராடுவோம்!புதிய ஈழப் புரட்சியாளர்- Eelam New BolsheviksENB
