Reuters

IT IS a staple of television reports on war or famine: a windblown correspondent stands in front of a bedraggled refugee camp. Misery and despair are etched on pinched faces. “And these”, he solemnly intones, “are the lucky ones.” For some 36,000 recent arrivals from Sri Lanka's war zone to camps in the north-east, the cliché holds true. They tell harrowing tales of escape from rebel-held territory, dodging artillery shells and bullets, before being evacuated to government-run camps. The army says it has corralled the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam into a thin coastal strip and is approaching victory.

But the Tigers are not the only ones caught in the trap. The International Committee of the Red Cross believes that up to 150,000 civilians are under fire and in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical care. The normally circumspect organisation is complaining loudly of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Around 2,000 of the worst-injured have been evacuated by ship—after an agonising selection process—but the pace is wretchedly slow. A makeshift hospital in the war zone has just eight doctors and few drugs. Many of the displaced Tamil civilians are huddled on a barren beach, awaiting rescue from what is supposed to be a government-designated “safe zone”. In practice, it has come under fire.

India and other countries are calling for a pause in the fighting so that non-combatants can leave. For their part, the Tigers have proposed a ceasefire as a prelude to peace talks. Sri Lanka's government has rebuffed all such appeals, saying diplomatic pressure should be applied to the murderous Tigers, who are holding refugees as human shields. But on March 5th the government said it would open two “safe routes” to help trapped civilians escape overland. The government still believes that victory is close at hand and that more civilians will soon be scampering to safety.

Many of Sri Lanka's allies, including Western governments with vocal ethnic-Tamil lobbies, are probably praying for a quick rout. One possible deadline for a victory declaration is Sri Lanka's new year in April. But any final push against the Tigers could end in a bloodbath. Some aid workers are highly suspicious of a fudging of civilian numbers. The government says only 70,000 people are at risk; United Nations estimates run to 200,000. Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war is full of missing persons and massacres. Who will count the dead when the guns fall silent?

John Holmes, chief of the UN's humanitarian operations, visited Sri Lanka and briefed the UN Security Council on February 27th about the fate of civilians. He suggested creating a humanitarian corridor and cited “strong evidence” that the Tigers were preventing people from leaving. Russia and Vietnam had at first objected to the discussion, arguing that it was a sovereign matter. No action was taken by the council. This frustrated some UN staffers in Sri Lanka, who gripe that such meekness plays into the hands of Sri Lanka's bullying leaders. International aid groups have also mostly stayed silent for fear of being branded as troublemakers and cut out of post-conflict reconstruction.

Those who do reach Vavuniya's teeming refugee camps are in for the long haul. The aid workers' unvoiced fear is that these sites will become internment camps. A showcase facility shown to reporters on an army-escorted visit had schools, health clinics, banks and a post office, as well as rows of barrack-style family housing for 2,800 people. Many more displaced families have been crammed into squalid public buildings. Officials say those in makeshift camps will soon be moved to “welfare villages” on a 1,000-acre site under construction. But, free of the hellish war zone, refugees are now in limbo, unable to go home until the army decides it is safe to do so. No visitors are allowed, and soldiers patrol the dusty lanes, eyeing potential Tiger infiltrators. “We should be given more freedom,” says Linga Devan, 54, a farmer. “We're in a terrible state.”

Naturally, the foreign governments biting their tongues on the war are expected to pay for the camps and rebuilding the war-torn north. Sri Lanka's foreign reserves are running dangerously low, and an IMF bail-out is under discussion. Donors might be expected to use their influence to insist on a pause in fighting and a stepped-up evacuation plan. For trapped civilians, time is fast running out.