Word: rajapaksa
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...military conflict—but certainly not everyday social conflict or even paramilitary conflict—descends into stasis, it is worth meditating upon what the war has been worth. Amidst all the rhetoric of doubts and redoubts, one practical concern should worry President Rajapaksa in particular: What are the chances of a legitimized nation-state if an entire ethnic group feels that it has, for the last 25 years, been a target for elimination or, as the more impassioned critics claim, genocide...
...Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has staked his political future on achieving a military victory over the Tigers, following the collapse of a 2002 cease-fire. The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 to establish a separate homeland in the island's ethnic Tamil-majority areas, a conflict that has claimed more than 70,000 lives. To capture Prabhakaran - dead or alive - would symbolize the successful conclusion of a military offensive that began late in 2006 but has since dragged, despite the capture of nearly every town under Tiger control. Rajapaksa had one message for the Tiger leadership - above all Prabhakaran...
...Rajapaksa can vanquish Prabhakaran, he will have just one foe left: the economy. The cost of the war may be more than the country can afford, with the defense budget far exceeding the government's revenue after servicing of the national debt. "It just doesn't work," says Harsha da Silva, an economist and consultant to the Asian Development Bank. A victory would reduce that spending but might also bring down with it a rural economy propped up by soldiers' salaries and pensions. In many villages, the army is the main employer, and without it, families will begin to feel...
...Rajapaksa looks like a man vindicated. If the LTTE is indeed defeated, a generation of Sri Lankans--including the children held in the camps of Mannar--will, for the first time, begin to live in a country that...
...Tamils from LTTE territory, Kadirgamar notes, "their sense of citizenship will be determined by how they are treated." They may re-enter Sri Lankan society only to find themselves subject to security measures that fulfill the worst predictions of the Tigers' relentless propaganda about the persecution of Tamils. Rajapaksa's muscular, nationalist ideology appears to be winning the war. But it may be at the cost of the open, outward-looking, multiethnic character of the nation that Sri Lanka once tried...