Grapesoda

How Sri Lanka won their civil war by killing
"all of them":

In the mid-80s and for nearly 30 years after,


the Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan)

were a superstar terror organization:

they had money, guns, bombs, boats, and a

well fortified headquarters in the north where the

Sri Lanka army couldn?t touch them.

The Tigers were also fashionably oppressed,

romantic heroes of the college-marxists, so that

India, the EU, and the US govts. called for appeasement.


Yet the Tigers were not to be surpassed in horror -

their signature move was stuffing the dress of a

young girl with C4 so she looks pregnant,

then sending her into a crowded market.

So effective were the suicide bombings

(378, the world record) and other bombings and

massacres that the Tigers were able to take over chunks

of the eastern Sri Lanka and were looking invincible.

The spooked voters elected the ?peace candidate?

whose blurb was about ?giving people hope for peace?

through appeasement and besides you-can?t-kill-them-all?

The Tigers endorsed his candidacy by blowing up

the rival presidential candidate and the party?s entire leadership

at a campaign rally.

Peace, however, didn?t last ? the Tigers blew-up two navy

gunboats, and around that time, the government was approached

by ?people,? who said, ?We can show you how to get rid of

the Tigers.? The new president said, ?Do whatever it takes?.

In 2006 defense budget and the number of troops

were doubled. It took about a year to train the soldiers.

The plan was for the SLA to squeeze the Tigers out of their

eastern territories, corner them in their

northern capital at Kilinochchi, then kill them all.

The plan was called ?War for Peace?

(The air power was decisive for Sri Lanka.

No insurgency, no matter how well armed and vicious,

can withstand a modern air force.)

By 2008 the Tigers were in retreat and called a

cease-fire. Sri Lanka ignored it. The ?international

community? stood mute.

Once the SLA captured the Elephant Pass

and opened the northern HQ to a frontal assault,

the Tigers fled to their last jungle base at Mullaitiyu.

In 2006 the Tigers held 15,000 sq. kms of Sri Lanka,

three years later were down to one.

When CNN and other reporters landed at

Colombo airport to cover the SLA final offensive

they were turned around and sent home.

The Tigers, savage and stupid, to the end,

refused to negotiate until their demands about

the ?civilian crisis? were met ? the same civilians

the Tigers shot in the back while trying to escape