Punctuated by haphazard attacks, the Sri Lankan war finds its fateful genesis in 1972 when Velupillai Prabhakaran formed the Tamil New Tigers. With a name change to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1976, the militant organization has continued to wage a vicious secessionist campaign that has morphed into the longest-running armed conflict in Asia.
The Tigers are considered to be a terrorist organization by 32 countries. The Sri Lankan military began a serious offensive in January, gaining crucial ground and pushing over major Tiger strongholds. The Tigers’ control over a “shadow state” in the north of the country was ended by the Sri Lankan military, with Kilinochchi falling on January 2, 2009.
After the Sri Lankan capture of Kilinochchi, several foreign governments implored both sides of the conflict to seek a diplomatic solution.
Sadly, the fighting continued and the civilians have been caught in the middle. The government of Sri Lanka continues to press ahead, unyielding in their mission to wipe out the Tigers once and for all. Various groups, such as Amnesty International, have demanded action from the U.N. Security Council, citing “the horrific condition facing civilians” as a grave matter that must be addressed.
U.N. figures show 7,000 Tamil civilians killed between January 20 and May 7. Some health officials estimate that another 1,000 civilians have been killed since then, with combatant casualty figures remaining a mystery.
The death tolls for the Sri Lankan conflict exceed the casualty tolls this year in Gaza, Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. The Red Cross has reported an “unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” while U.S. President Barack Obama has condemned the Sri Lankan government’s “indiscriminate shelling.”
As of yet, however, there have been no significant international efforts to help stop the violence in Sri Lanka. The government has faced threats from Britain and the United States to temporarily delay a much-needed IMF loan worth almost two billion dollars, but the ferocity of the Tigers appears to be affording the Sri Lankan forces some sympathy and, as expected, clemency amid the denunciation.
In terms of the Tamil rebels, there is little that can be done along diplomatic lines.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Jordan,
Thanks for dealing with an issue too many western writers neglect out of the basic racism that makes them view "non-whites" as not worth considering. After, white people are not getting killed, so what's the big deal, right?
2 - Jordan Richardson
Thanks, Ruvy. I figure the most violent conflict on earth deserved at least some half-assed coverage here.
3 - Irene Wagner
Jordan Richardson-- I appreciate this article, too. There's something that's been bothering me, and I'm pretty sure you've done some thinking about it.
When violence gets to the point that it interferes with or precludes administration of humanitarian aid (as it has in Darfur)what's the next wise step? Unfair question, I know...
There's been more than one long drawn-out war that started when compassionate people were encouraged to engage in a "significant effort to help stop the violence."
The suffering of these people is undeniable. If I were one of them, I'd sure want to see a saviour rolling over the horizon in a tank with a big star on the side...but...?
4 - Jordan Richardson
There's clearly no one catch-all answer that comprises the "next wise step," as you know. In fact, I'm not even so sure that the best steps are the wisest ones.
When I look throughout history at those who really changed things, who really made differences, I don't see careful, measured individuals making wise, rational decisions. I see a slew of caution-to-the-wind crazies putting others before themselves. I think that we need to be grounded in that philosophy.
Now you expressed something very important when you empathized with those who are suffering. Organizations like Amnesty International exist to offset the lack of information we receive from regions like Sri Lanka and to provide awareness. That's the basic first step in grasping this conflict. We need to understand it as a global community. With so few people even knowing that it is occurring, it's hard to get a dialogue about anything going as relates to assistance or aid.
So you couple the desire to help, irrational as it sometimes is because it sometimes means you go downtown to work with junkies who might stab you and it sometimes means you go to war-torn countries where you might get your ass shot, with a broader sense of global awareness of these issues and I think the solutions start bubbling to the surface. The more people willing to work on and discuss a problem, the more likely we are to find new solutions to work around the violence (or through it).
In this specific case, I think the answers are pretty certain: the UN Security Council must continue to apply pressure, the loan must be put aside until proper aid and diplomacy can be brought into the region for the civilians, and the fighting must stop. I know that I am simplifying things, of course, but that is the nature of the beast.
One example of new solutions to old problems comes from Africa where aid workers are beginning to get around the concept of warlords interfering with financial and food aid from the West by providing the people with micro-loans to get on their own feet. This is one way to mobilize a culture and start the momentum rolling in the other direction. Sri Lanka's innocents need something similar in order to escape the constant crush of terror and civil war.
5 - Irene Wagner
Thanks for the time you put into your answer, Jordan Richardson.
Putting one's life on the line to deliver humanitarian aid sounds like something someone with a true warrior's heart could get behind, and there'd be plenty of thoughtful pacifists willing to fully support aggressively selfless efforts like this.
6 - Dave Nalle
Why do we have to intervene in every conflict in the world? It's not enough to have ridiculous numbers of troops engaged in Afghanistan? Where does it stop after Sri Lanka? Are we on to Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Venezuela, Burma, etc?
At a time when we have serious problems at home, intervening in yet another unresolvable conflict seems insane.
Dave
7 - Bliffle
Sounds like the Tamils are almost finished off.
Why did this separatist movement start in the first place? Was it political opportunism by rebels? Was it (yet another) religious group oppressed by state religion?
8 - Jordan Richardson
Bliffle,
The Tigers claim that they're protecting Sri Lanka's Tamil majority from "discrimination" from Sinhalese governments. They want to secede.
Dave,
Nobody's asking the United States to ride up on their white horse and save the day. Nor is there the suggestion that anyone else gets involved militarily.
Instead, this requires a global peace effort. If the United States continues to claim to be a world leader and wants to "lead by example," surely aid directed towards the most violent conflict on this earth right now would be a good idea.
9 - Dave Nalle
Let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya, then. By all means.
Dave
10 - Cindy
Let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya, then. By all means.
One of your better ideas Dave. Except the part where Kumbaya has the lord in it and all. Good start though.
11 - Jordan Richardson
Dave,
Wasn't it just yesterday that you "admonished" me for not caring about the "cause of liberty" (read: your cause of liberty) while my "belly was full" and while I had "350 channels?"
Are you even aware of your own hypocrisy or does the cause of liberty only matter among your own kind?
Why is it so loathsome to you that there are those among us who choose to care more about whether the world's poor have basic food, water, and shelter than whether the world's wealthy or middle-class have the ability to purchase a second car or bigger TV?
We have different priorities, Dave, and all the shirtless poolside chats in the world can't change that.
12 - zingzing
they gave up.
13 - Ruvy
If the United States continues to claim to be a world leader and wants to "lead by example," surely aid directed towards the most violent conflict on this earth right now would be a good idea.
Jordan has a point, Dave. If the United States stopped intervening in our affairs paying for the Egyptian military machine (and our own) and got the hell out of our lives, then your vaunted State Department could effectively lean on the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to get a "peace process" going. Let them feel the hot breath of Americans intervening in their affairs to "do good". It would be better for me personally.
14 - Ruvy
On an unrelated topic, I'm glad to see this article feature at front and center of the Magazine. It makes BC look good!
15 - RJ
I had 50 bucks on the Tigers at www.betus.com, too ... :-/
16 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
"If the United States stopped intervening in our affairs paying for the Egyptian military machine (and our own) and got the hell out of our lives..."
Sure, then some religious extremist,like yourself, from Darfur,Sri Lanka & every other country that we finally support financially will say that we aren't handling the situation properly or that we are siding with the group(s) that's causing the problem...HA!
Honestly, it sounds like Sri Lanka's Military is doing a damn good job. Let's see if they can finish it...
"At a time when we have serious problems at home, intervening in yet another unresolvable conflict seems insane."
I agree 100%, though, the only time these ideologists speak is when things aren't going right in the part of the world they seem to be focused on. If it took force to solve the problem at hand then 99% of these great humanitarians wouldn't make that ultimate sacrifice. I think it just looks good to be so caring...
Hmmm,I wonder why we don't have anymore articles about the "failure" in Iraq??
17 - Ruvy
Sure, then some religious extremist,like yourself, from Darfur, Sri Lanka & every other country that we finally support financially will say that we aren't handling the situation properly or that we are siding with the group(s) that's causing the problem...HA!
Ain't my problem, Brian. Maybe you guys should support the right people for a change, instead of assholes like the Wahhabi, the Torah-hating Jews in Israel, and all sorts of shithead dictators all over the world. I hate to tell you this, Brian, but America has a pretty rotten rep in the world. I could go on illustrating that for you, but it's hot as hell here and I really don't have the patience - or a fan on.
18 - RJ
Game over.
As usual, the "international community" was too slow to do a damn thing. See also: Rwanda, Sudan, Burma, etc.
19 - Dave Nalle
As of this morning's news it looks like the Tamil Tigers have been wiped out, so the path is now open for humanitarian aid.
Dave
20 - Ruvy
So, the USA can lean on the Sri Lankan government to stop killing civilians with no reason, then. They are a lot nastier than our government, which gets in trouble with the shits in your State Department if a fuckin' rock-throwing Arab gets a stubbed toe from a rifle wound.....
21 - Cindy
The Sri Lankan gov't military is doing a good job...?
If you are happy rooting for racist genocide, 72k people in gov't internment camps, and military rape of civilians and think that is a 'good job', then your 'pick' is winning.
A RASCIST WAR IN SRILANKA -Arundhati roy
Sri Lanka throws out three Channel 4 journalists
Asia correspondent Nick Paton Walsh deported after report on deaths, food shortages and sexual abuse at refugee camp
A different viewpoint on the history and background:
Sri Lanka's hollow victory: Why hammering the Tamil Tigers will not bring peace
By Mitu Sengupta
May 4, 2009
Getting to the root of the conflict: Tigers are the product, not the cause
Given all of this, it is tempting to assume that Sri Lanka will be infinitely better off without the LTTE, and that its elimination will necessarily steer the country towards order, stability and reconciliation. Sri Lanka’s steely President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his three brothers with ministerial status, are evidently confident that a full purging of the Tigers -- now perhaps only days away -- will have been worth all the carnage and dislocation of the past few months, which have left some 200,000 civilians directly at risk.
This easy conclusion, however, rests on a profoundly wrongheaded view of the Tigers’ role in the conflict. The LTTE is the product, not the cause, of Sri Lanka’s deadly politics.
To begin with, the conflict, if not the war, predates the LTTE by a few generations. Its origins may be traced to the effects of the nefarious “divide and rule” policies devised by British colonial administrators to govern Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The British used the upper caste and upper class among the island’s Tamil minority to keep its Sinhalese majority in check, and in return, gave these Tamils the best government jobs and the benefit of an English education (upper class Sinhalese were also privileged, though Tamils were disproportionately favoured).
This wretched balance changed for the worse with independence in 1948, when Tamils found themselves outnumbered and marginalized inside the new Sri Lanka’s unitary state and majoritarian institutional framework.
With the Tamils rendered politically irrelevant, short-sighted politicians competed with each other for the Sinhalese vote, and soon discovered that the political party with the stronger anti-minority stance was almost always guaranteed electoral success. Such “ethnic outbidding,” as scholars have characterized the dreadful process, led to the rise of a ferocious Sinhala nationalism that demanded revenge for the Tamils’ supremacy during the colonial period, along with a revival of the Sinhala language, culture and religion (Buddhism). It saw Sri Lanka as for the Sinhalese alone, and insisted that the Tamil minority acquiesce to its subservient position or, better still, simply leave.
(snip)
To most governments, the bloodbath in Sri Lanka is the consequence of a sovereign power besieged by a brutal domestic insurgency. In its protracted campaign against the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government has received military assistance or counterinsurgency training from many countries, including India, Pakistan, Israel and the United States. This is to be expected in a world where states are generally considered legitimate, no matter what they do, and those that challenge their authority are instantly viewed as criminal -- a distinction that’s been sharpened, no doubt, by the menacing language around the “war on terror.”
Indeed, following Sri Lanka’s success in having the LTTE proscribed as a terrorist organization in Canada, along with 30 other countries, the sense that the Sri Lankan state is on the right side of history has grown from strength to strength, which might explain the shockingly muted condemnation of its actions in the rapidly unfolding tragedy.
It’s probably too much to expect the Canadian government -- or any other government for that matter -- to accept the argument, however rigorously advanced, that the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE have mirrored each other’s unyielding attitudes and methods, and, that ultimately, the noble sovereign power and the sinister terrorist organization are two sides of the same bloodied coin.
22 - roger nowosielski
Here's one example, Jordan, why the US and what could have been her arm, NATO, has been disabled from effectively intervening in all such conflicts.
It was barely ten years ago when Gen. Wesley Clark spoke with great confidence and optimism of NATO becoming a number one force in the area of diplomacy and resolution of conflicts. But how can we effectively pursue this policy - especially in times of dire need - when the US itself is involved in questionable conflicts all over the world - questionable because the perception lingers that whatever we're doing is in the US interest.
We've got to clean our own act before we could play an effective role whenever the situation calls for it - and have the support of the international community. Not before.
23 - RJ
Yes, Ruvy, the American government is not nearly pro-Israel enough. There is always more we can do other than the billions in annual aid for our closest non-NATO ally who spies on us.
24 - Jordan Richardson
I think that's just more American egotism, Roger. The perception of which you speak will always be present. History marches on while America tries to apply a coat of pain to her reputation and that just doesn't fly when people are suffering.
America can join the global community and help out when others are in obvious need, or they can look the other way and claim to be about the business of reputation repairing. The choice is clear and, luckily, America often comes through.
I guess what you're talking about might look decent on paper, but I think the rest of us would sooner just get the fuck on with it and stop dithering about while America "repairs her street cred."
Honestly. Ego is a killer and the best way to go about actual solutions is to stop looking to America every time out of the gate. It's a big world out there and there will be a post-American age to deal with. The global community has to learn to act without Her looming around every corner and that's basically what this article calls for.
25 - RJ
FWIW, I think the Tamil Tigers had a legitimate beef. I don't support their suicide bombings, but then I don't support turning hospitals full of civilians into charred craters either.
Now that this little mess has passed, however, we can all get back to what's really important: American Idol!
ZOMG Gokey!!!11!!
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