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Ever since the Gulf War, I have had the nagging feeling that recent Western military efforts may be doing more harm than good. I am certainly not a political analyst, but I thought it would help Western Christians to know what many of their brothers and sisters on the other side of the world go through when the West engages in military offensives.

The so-called (Orthodox) Christian Serbs have treated the Muslim ethnic Albanians terribly. I was relieved that for once "Christian" powers were fighting to protect a group of Muslims. I believe we are called to "love the Muslims into the kingdom," but so often we see them as enemies. Nevertheless, I kept wondering whether this bombing, with so much loss of life and suffering, is the answer to this problem.

It would be naive to draw a direct connection between the war in Yugoslavia and the shooting in Littleton, Colorado. But the tragedy resurfaced in me the feeling that the use of force—outside the laws of a given country or state—to fight "wrong" can establish serious precedents and dangerous attitudes that in turn prompt the use of force in a terrible way, as happened in Littleton. When people we consider bad are indiscriminately bumped off outside the legal procedures of the land, it fosters a vigilante culture. This unfortunately is what we are seeing in Sri Lanka, my country. Some years ago we saw state-sponsored bumping off of the "wicked" outside the law. Now we have given birth to a culture that looks to the gun to get all sorts of agendas fulfilled.

On the other hand, I remember that so many on the outside were silent when the Nazis were exterminating Jews and when the Khmer Rouge were exterminating millions in Cambodia. So I see the dilemma and the potential for complicity. Certainly the situations in Iraq and Yugoslavia call for a response from the international community. Yet let me give some perspectives of one who is trying to proclaim the gospel in a poor, Third World country.

The Western face of Christianity
In Sri Lanka, we get our news about these wars from the Western news media. We know that a lot of attention is given the moment a Western soldier is captured or injured or killed. This is inevitable as media personnel will always think first of their own. But when I, who am not from a Western country, think of the suffering and loss of life on the other side, which is not as well covered by the media, I wonder. I wonder whether we, as Christians who are called to love all people, should be focusing on what the media are ignoring. After all, the civilians in Iraq or Yugoslavia who suffer from these military offensives are not to blame for the actions of their despotic rulers.

My feelings about these wars were influenced by the fact that there are many poor Sri Lankans working in the Middle East. Most are women working as housemaids. This work force is, I believe, Sri Lanka's biggest earner of foreign currency. However, many of these workers, especially women, suffer much from wicked employers who treat them as slaves. We considered Kuwait as having the most brutal record in this regard. In fact, today's news highlighted the return to Sri Lanka of about 20 women who had been ill treated in Kuwait. There are several more waiting in the Sri Lankan embassy for their trip back home. Sri Lankans working in Iraq were, we thought, generally treated with more kindness. Then the powerful Western world at tacked "kind" Iraq to protect "unkind" Kuwait.

Christians in many Muslim countries were treated severely during the Gulf War. In one country, some Christians were killed just because "Christians were attacking Muslims in the Gulf."

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June 14 1999, Vol. 43, No. 7