Sri Lanka’s “political trauma” driven by both internal and external factors – Indian FM

Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says the political trauma Sri Lanka had to experience two years ago was a result of both internal and external factors.

Addressing a discussion organised by the U.S. think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Indian External Affairs Minister said conflicts in a specific region can have serious impacts on other regions of the world, especially the global south.

“The international economy today is fragile. I have travelled to various parts of the world which has had a very hard time for the last five years, where people have seen a visible sort of drop in the quality of life. I may mention Sri Lanka. I’ve been in that country, I’ve been going there from time to time. I think part of what explains political shifts there was actually the trauma that they underwent as a result of some sort of factors within their control, but some of it was not”, he said.

Furthermore, Dr. Jaishankar added: “Now, what the lessons of tensions of conflicts… what we saw in Ukraine, what we see in the Middle East…that in a globalized world, conflicts and tensions anyway are going to cause problems everywhere. It’s not regional. It is going to come at everybody in some form or other.”

“The global south is extremely concerned about new factors of stress, tensions, anxiety, more pressures on the system because they are at the bottom of the change. We feel the pain. Today, people want reassurance, they want stability. Nobody wants more anxiety”, he signed off.