Prabhakaran dead, civil war ends

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... ROiXpyqkbQ

Just saw the video on TV myself. Indian news channel.

How long until another Tamil (or however you guys spell that in english...) rises up and takes up the flag?

I don't know. I don't live in Sri Lanka. As for the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, there are no separatist movements, although there are strong Maoist movements and separatist movements in Kashmir and the North-East.

The escalation was pretty tragic., though Prabhakaran was a nasty piece work admittedly. A total opportunist out for himself, reminiscent in some ways to Savimbi in the Angolan civil war. Both highly intelligent.

LITE tactics were copied by Al qaeda, and Taliban. Such as various method of suicide attack, converting munitions to make bombs, road side bombs, etc. Various terrorist groups and criminal gangs have copied their techniques of piracy and also kidnap and extorting money with relatives of those that have immigrated to another country.

I assumed riots would occur in Tamil Nadu following the LTTE's defeat. It appears only a single riot occured in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Looks like Eelam will disappear into history.

www.army.lk has pictures of the dead Prabhakaran, for those interested.

Quite a while, I suspect. Just a feeling.

I doubt it will occur again. Sri Lanka has developed drastically since the civil war began, and the government just announced development packages for the North. There wasn't much development in the LTTE areas due to the proscription of the group as a terrorist outfit, inhibiting development. As long as the political system will cease to give dominance to a certain ethnic group, there will be a lot of change.

That is because LITE wasn't really about giving a voice to Hindus. They ran a piracy racket and exploited their own people.

LITE arose from other Hindu/nationalist causes and kind of took over.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. However I would hesitate to pronounce the Tamils dead and buried just now. A suicidal mindset is a mad meme and it takes a long time to get rid of it.

ruveyn

It is true that a suicidal mindset is associated with total marginalised people. It remains to be seen if the Sri Lankan can improve the satiation in the north.

I actually think at the minute that Christian evangelists may be a more likely cause at tension right now. Sri Lanka has plenty of religion, christians have been one of the more violent.

What is interesting about Sri Lankan conflict is that some Buddhist monks formed guerrilla movement, and even were prepared to do suicide bombings, etc.

Are you serious? Can you provide a link? Never heard of the monks... And I've been paying close attention to the conflict.

It seems that the LTTE movement came about because the Sinhala were exploiting the Tamil, passing exclusionary laws meant to marginalize the Tamil, etc. I really doubt the Sinhala will make that mistake again. Prabhakaran really hated the Sinhala, and he was smart as a whip. He and Arafat invented modern terrorism out of nothing. And Arafat generally copied much of what Prabhakaran did.

Prabhakaran refused to surrender, even at the end when there was nowhere left to run he charged a roadblock evidently in a me-or-them mentality. The war dragged on for at least a decade longer than it should have, because Prabhakaran refused to surrender, even after everybody else quit he said that he would die first. Some reports said that he carried cyanide capsules with him in case the worst happened. If true, it is a mystery why he did not use them.

What really broke LTTE was the Christmas tsunami in 2004. It wiped out much of Sri Lanka's east coast, which was the bulk of Tiger ruled territory. After that, most of the guerrilla leaders quit, apparently interpreting the tsunami as God's wrath. From there, Prabhakaran and the Tigers were on the run, steadily losing territory. The Tamil apparently saw the tsunami as divine judgment as well, for most Tiger support vanished afterward.

So basically the Tamil lost their war because of what Americans would call an Act of God, ie an unforeseen event that changes the playing field and society. The Act of God is a longstanding legal principle in the US, saying that a contract can be broken if unforeseeable circumstances arise. The elimination of the American national passenger train service was junked due to 9-11, for example, although a Republican ruled Congress didn't want to but couldn't ignore Americans taking trains instead of flying out of fear.

Well, they called Prabhakaran the "cat with 9 lives". He was as slippery as an eel, he always managed to get away. Perhaps he assumed that lady luck would appear again, so that one day he may fight again.

Muslims in Sri Lanka also assumed that the tsunami is God's wrath targeted towards them as they're not helping their mujahideen 'brothers' in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, etc.

I still won't be going on vacation to Sri Lanka anytime soon.

Truthfully the tamils should have been given an independant state a long time ago. They've been marginalised and discriminated against for a long time. Smacking down the "rebellion" will only work in the short-term, and i can see a lot more trouble in the upcoming years.