Struggling Beside the Shining New Road

Struggling Beside the Shining New Road

                        By Amantha Perera

The war took a terrible toll on those trapped between the fighting parties.  Credit:Amantha Perera/IPS. Buy this picture

COLOMBO, Oct 8, 2011 (IPS) - The sun’s rays bouncing off the A9 highway give it a shining glow. Once known as Sri Lanka’s ‘highway of death’, the road has come a long way from those macabre associations.

It now represents the keen, though uneven, post-war development currently under way in the areas formerly controlled by the recently defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

For 100 kilometres the A9 cuts right through the Northern Vanni region, where, till the end of the civil war in May 2009, some of the country’s bloodiest battles were wage.

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