The End of the Tamil Tigers

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Even after following the increasingly precarious position of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers for the past few months, it's hard to believe that their civil war is finally over. But apparently it is:

Cornered into a tiny patch of jungle about the size of a football field, the Tamil Tiger rebels — who once operated a shadow state complete with a law school, tax system, navy and even traffic police — vowed Sunday to lay down their weapons for good, in a stunning and unprecedented admission of defeat in Asia's longest-running war.

....In Washington, Sri Lankan ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya credited President Obama's recent public statements with helping to end the crisis. In an e-mailed statement, he said the Tigers "effectively folded shortly after President Barack Obama told the world that the terrorists were holding innocent Tamil civilians as hostages. He was one of the few world leaders to note that fact so forcefully."

And now the hardest part: can the Sinhalese majority bring itself to treat the defeated Tamil minority charitably after a quarter century of brutal war and nearly 100,000 deaths? Stay tuned.

As thousands of members of the Sinhalese majority celebrated in the streets of Colombo after President Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed victory, his government claimed that the "last" of as many as 50,000 civilians had been freed from the territory after the army mounted a successful operation at the weekend which pinned down the rebels in a pincer movement and cut off possible escape from a stretch of beach. However thousands of civilians are believed to have died in recent weeks under heavy shelling.

more details to click here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/srilanka/5340110/Sri-Lankas-Tamil-Tiger-rebels-lay-down-weapons.html

By my count that's one more terrorist organization defeated by Barack Obama in four months than George Bush managed in eight years, and he didn't even have to torture anyone or kill any civilians to do it.

Ah. Of course, it was a triumph of Obama's statesmanship, and not, for example, attributable to the years of bloody conflict that Sri Lanka had already undergone.

The Tigers weren't convinced that the world had turned against their cause, and they didn't lay down their arms; they got whipped in the field, fought well past any point of possible recovery, and were crushed to the very last. Hell, the government of Sri Lanka proceeded with the attack despite calls from the Obama administration to lay off out of concern for civilian casualties (not that I'm saying that such a call was wrong, but it makes it clear that neither side was actually paying attention to anything the US administration was saying.)

The Sri Lankan ambassador can be forgiven for, well, sucking up a little in the aftermath; it doesn't cost him anything now that the fighting is over. But that doesn't oblige everyone else to let a statement like that pass without note.

At least it's good news. Triumph of arms and civilization over a guerrilla army of suicide bombers, and all that. Let's hope that there isn't any further unpleasantness there in the future.

Apparently the leaders of the Tigers are now dead. Is the bloody civil war finally over? really?

I pray for peace. We are afforded blessings here in the U.S. that many people in the world don't realize. I hope that this situation begins to move toward some type of agreement.

Interesting that we are so conditioned that the "War on Terrorism" was solely directed against the enemies of Israel. Saddam's Iraq was vaguely a threat to Israel, but a real stretch regarded as a US enemy, yet Bush and the "neocons" virtually ignored our enemy al-Qaida to concentrate on Iraq. If not bogged down in Iraq, no doubt conquests of Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia would have completed the neocon dream of a "drained swamp."

Sri Lanka? A far greater violence quotient than Israel had, yet I have not been conditioned to slaver at the sound of Sri Lanka.

By my count, Obama is responsible for displacing one million Pakistani refugees last week.

Remarkable! This may be the first report I've seen in my 59 years of life of the defeat of a "liberation" group that doesn't have the left/progressive/liberal world wringing their hands and moaning miserably. Perhaps their are limits to how violent and evil an organization can be and not be admired by the left. Congratulations!

This conflict is ultimately just as intractable as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the ongoing battles in Kashmir. Most Tamils have long since given up any trust in the Sri Lankan government and are convinced it plans to massacre them all. Most Sinhalese are equally convinced that Tamils are troublemakers who need to be ruled with a firm hand. The active conventional war may be over but acts of violence and terrorism, both inside Sri Lanka and outside it, are unlikely to cease.

I am hoping the death of their leader today http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/18/sri-lanka-rebel-chief-has-been-killed/ will bring an end to the conflict in the region once and for all

The military defeat of the Tigers became much more likely after the US and Great Britain agreed they were "terrorists" under Bush & Tony Blair. India, too!! And the UN!!

When Great Britain exited the colony of Ceylon, they arranged for a Parliamentary Government. Although the predominantly Hindu Sinhalese & likewise Buddhist Tamils had not gotten along well for several thousand years, they were to have one state, governed by the majority party or a coalition, which (surprise, surprise) turned out to be Sinhalese controlled, time after time, year after year, election after election.

Both peoples are expressive and intelligent as decades & decades of political and philosophic dialogue attest.

However, when political scientists of the 21st century write of the "tyranny of the majority", they will almost certainly use post-colonial Sri Lanka as the archetypal modern example.

It all seemed innocent enough when it started--I mean, if the majority government passes a law that you can't get a government job unless you speak and write Sinhalese, and the (Sinhalese) courts uphold it--well, how can you get more legal, legitimate, and righteous than that? How could that be unfair if it applies to all equally?

Things went downhill from there: step by step, issue by issue, day by day, and year by year. Many if not most of the Tamils and similarly the Sinhalese, as far as I can tell, really wanted to have a functional modern democracy with personal freedoms and autonomous, self-realizing citizens who practiced mutual respect.

It was not to be. The deck seemed stacked against the Tamils who, after many years, became more and more militant and finally, militarily so. They began the fight to free themselves from the perceived oppression of the Sinhalese majority and to establish a separate Tamil state.

They fought as if their future and their very existence depended on the outcome.

These two peoples have been dancing the deadly dances of assassinations, massacres, child recruitment, disappearances, suicide bombings, and international intrigues.

The Sea Tigers fought the Sri Lankan Navy with fishing boats and Zodiaks. The Tiger Air Wing smuggled in parts to build (probably) three single engine piper cub type or even ultralight aircraft. The Sri Lankan Air force has helicopters and Israeli jets with machine guns, rockets and bombs--even cluster bombs, if we are to believe the Tamil Tigers.

The history of this conflict is still being written, but the watershed event seems to me to have been Bush & Blair deciding, post 9/11 and post Iraq invasion, that the Tamil Tigers were "terrorists". India, itself with a significant Tamil population and subculture, agreed.

Since Bush & Blair were waging the War on Terror, the Government of Sri Lanka (GSL) took the cue to win their "war on terror". THEN: about two years ago, the President of Sri Lanka came to the US, spoke at the United Nations, and spent some time in DC and NYC. When he returned home, the Tamils were no longer rebels, they were "terrorists". PLUS, the GSL's military planning and operations were somehow almost magically transformed from a combination of Wiley Coyote and the Keystone Cops to: (surprise, surprise)--Rambo!!!

Personally, I don't think the US military itself could have done a better job in defeating those terrible Tamil Terrorists!!! AND, the polls show super high approval for the GSL!!!

Oh--did I mention that the President of Sri Lanka holds a US Green Card and his brother, in charge of the Armed Forces, is a US Citizen (dual)?

I think that I also forgot to mention that both of these gentlemen are, thus and therefore, subject to US Jurisdiction and that there have been recent filings in the courts and with the new US Attorney General alleging that these two top Sri Lankan officials have committed acts which should be prosecuted by the US Government and Courts as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Of course, "real" international observers (like faiimuden, above) will probably conclude that these charges are just part of the left/progressive/liberal world wringing their hands and moaning miserably at the defeat of a "liberation" group.

What shall these "real" observers conclude when they learn that these same charges have been aired since, oh--at least 1965 or so? Not only that, but that is precisely why the Tamils claim they went military in the first place and fought like crazed banshees as if their future and their very existence depended on the outcome.

At least that's my take and I've been following the conflict quite closely since my daughter went there to help with the suffering caused by the tsunami which somehow failed to differentiate these folks either ethno-racially or by religion.

I wonder what Hilary and Barack's takes are. And the Attorney General's.

This conflict is ultimately just as intractable as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the ongoing battles in Kashmir.

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