The Crushing Defeat Of The Tamil Tigers Proves You CAN Beat Terror -- A Commentary

Victory among the ashes: A Sri Lankan soldier in the ruins of the rebel war zone

From The Daily Mail:

Sri Lanka is shaped like a teardrop below southern India. People there are weeping at the dramatic events of this week.

But, contrary to what our Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the commentariat of the BBC would have you believe, not all the tears are those of despair.

In Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, fireworks are being let off to celebrate the deaths of the Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, his son and heir Charles Anthony and the rest of the Tiger leadership.

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Guns Fall Silent In Sri Lanka -- An Editorial

This picture received from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence on May 18, is said to be of government soldiers inspecting the area inside the war zone near Mullaittivu. Sri Lanka's president proclaimed victory over the Tamil Tigers on Tuesday after decades of civil war, with state television showing what it said was the corpse of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. (AFP/HO)

From Japan Times:

It's over. Asia's longest running civil war has ended. After a vicious offensive by the Sri Lankan government, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have laid down their weapons. This is a long-sought end to a savage and bloody conflict. The test now is whether the Sri Lankan government will address the grievances that led the Tamils to take up arms. Will this minority be welcomed as an equal member of Sri Lankan society?

Sri Lanka, an island nation located off the southern tip of India, is a divided society. The Sinhalese majority is Buddhist and constitutes nearly three-quarters of the country's 20 million people. Tamils are Hindu and Christian, account for about 15 percent of the population and live in the north and east of the country. The Tamils have long complained of discrimination. Frustrations boiled over in 1983, with the launch of a fight for independence and the establishment of a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka.

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Two Big Victories In South Asia

From IBDeditorials:

Geopolitics: South Asia has hit two milestones bound to change the subcontinent for the better: a huge electoral victory in India and a decisive military victory in Sri Lanka. Both bring clarity, direction — and hope.

It's not often good news comes in such swift sequence. But amid a global financial downturn and the renewed threat of terrorism, two nations in South Asia took major steps to drive through the force of prosperity and peace.

India's 700 million voters came together for the first time in their democratic history to elect the Congress Party to carry on full speed ahead with India's free-market, free-trade opening to the world.

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Sri Lanka: In The Line Of Fire -- A Commentary

From Times Online:

The Sri Lankan editor who foresaw his own assassination died for freedoms that will wither everywhere if taken for granted

On the day of his death Lasantha Wickrematunge's wife begged him not to go to work. No wonder. She had seen motorcycles tailing him that morning, and it was from motorcycles that four men later sprayed his car with machinegun fire at a traffic light in central Colombo.

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Defeating Terrorists -- A Commentary

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. AP

From Wall Street Journal:

Sri Lanka is beating the Tigers through military force, not negotiation.

For all those who argue that there's no military solution for terrorism, we have two words: Sri Lanka.

This week, the Sri Lankan army said it had captured the last piece of the northern Jaffna Peninsula, one of the few remaining strongholds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a terrorist organization that has waged a 26-year civil war that's claimed tens of thousands of lives, including those of a Sri Lankan President and an Indian Prime Minister.

That's a huge turnaround from only three years ago, when the Tigers effectively controlled the bulk of the Northern and Eastern Provinces and were perpetrating suicide bombings in the country's capital, Colombo.

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Sri Lanka's Ignored War -- A Commentary

From International Herald Tribune:

Asia's longest civil war is building to a violent crescendo. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese-majority government should be pressed to accept a cease-fire, to permit a political settlement.

Government forces are besieging the rebel Tamil Tigers in the north. Since abandoning a cease-fire in 2006 and a Norwegian-sponsored peace process earlier this year, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, have been vaunting their intention to crush the Tigers once and for all.

There is little chance the brothers' military campaign will produce anything other than a new phase of protracted guerrilla warfare. Meanwhile, over 200,000 civilians have been uprooted from their homes. On ground flooded by monsoon rains, they struggle to survive in frail lean-tos, dependent on aid agencies that operate under the Sri Lankan Army's severe restrictions.

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