One of the Canadian NGOs that has been involved in Sri Lanka for almost 20 years now is WUSC, World University Service of Canada. They have very technical training programs right in the east. They have been through thick and thin. One of the really noteworthy things about those types of from-the-ground-up projects is that they offer vocational training that gives alternatives to young people there.
I talked earlier about the need to look at our development programming through a peace and conflict lens. If you teach someone how to use concrete cinder blocks because there is a need to build latrines, that's a very useful thing to do. However, that same skill can also build bunkers.
I can tell you, because I've done evaluations in the east and specifically with WUSC on that project, they know exactly who comes into the program and where they go. They are very careful about losing who they're training, so that training doesn't go to the other side. Electronics skills are similarly very portable skills on one side or the other of that barrier. So at a local level, it is possible to create alternatives, but I think you put your finger right on the dilemma, which is how we deal with the broad macro-level structural issues as well as the micro ones. At the moment, we have a completely militarized approach to conflict resolution. Social, political, and economic problems are all defined through the military lens. If you define a problem as a military problem, then the solution is military. How do you break that? I don't know.