home > by publication type > daily analysis > Sri Lankan War Comes Roaring Back
Email
| Prepared by: | Carin Zissis |
|---|
Funeral for a Tamil aid worker. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)
Escalating violence between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger separatist group threatens to end the shaky 2002 cease-fire and spark another round in a brutal civil war that has caused 65,000 deaths. S.P. Tamilselvan, a leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) called the army’s recent occupation of the formerly Tiger-dominated northeastern city of Sampur a violation of the truce, saying the Tamil populations are in “misery” and warned the Sinhala population, who make up three quarters of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people, that they “face the same fate in the future.” (The Hindu). The terrorist organization, which is known for recruiting child soldiers and pioneering the use of suicide bombings as a terror tactic, has proven a resilient foe for the Sri Lankan military over the course of more than two decades, as this new Backgrounder explains. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that the Tigers are weakened by a breakaway faction, waning support from the minority Tamil population, and the recent crackdown on LTTE operatives in the United States.
Another blow to the cease-fire agreement has been the near-disintegration of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), formed in 2002 and made up, until recently, of five Nordic countries. The rebels forced EU member nations to withdraw in retaliation for an EU decision to join the United States, Canada, India, and Australia in listing the rebels as a terrorist group (VOA). Norway and Iceland will remain members of the SLMM, which has also had disagreements with the Sri Lankan government since the monitoring body blamed the military for involvement in the massacre of seventeen Tamil aid workers (Bloomberg) employed by a French humanitarian agency. N. Manoharan, Senior Fellow at New Delhi’s Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies says neither the LTTE nor the Sri Lankan government show any regard for the monitors or the cease-fire agreement.
As the conflict worsens, so does the human rights situation; the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says nearly 215,000 people have been displaced by the conflict and about 11,000 refugees have fled to southern India. The BBC offers eyewitness testimonies of the humanitarian crisis in areas affected by clashes between rebels and the military. The South Asian Terrorism Portal gives a timeline of the escalating violence over the summer and statistics on Sri Lankan conflict-related deaths, which it says more than quadrupled to over 1,000 in August.
In an interview on PBS’ “The World,” former U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Teresita C. Schaeffer says the country has done well in areas such as education and development, but, tragically, "have really made a mess of their politics." In a paper for the South Asia Analysis Group, B. Raman of India’s Institute for Topical Studies gives an overview of the deepening crisis since Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse took office in November 2005. Raman says the conflict is “casting its shadow” over the southern Indian region of Tamil Nadu, where there is growing sympathy for Sri Lanka’s LTTE cause as a result of attacks by the military on Tamil civilians.
A Human Rights Watch report documents how the LTTE raises funds through intimidation of diaspora communities in India, Western Europe, North America, and Australia. The cease-fire agreement and other background materials can be found on the web site for the Sri Lankan government’s Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process.
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR
Complete list of Task Force reports
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
To request permission to reprint or reuse CFR material, please fill out this permissions request form (PDF), referring to the instructions on page 1.
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.