Word: rajapaksas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that the Tigers have been defeated, governments and security forces around the world may try to learn from the success of the Sri Lanka government. President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his army have turned the conventional wisdom on fighting insurgencies on its head, adopting strategies and tactics long discredited, both in the battlefield and in the military classroom. Since they appear to have worked against the Tigers, other countries wracked by insurgencies - from Pakistan to Sudan to Algeria - may be tempted to follow suit. But Rajapaksa's triumph has come at a high cost in civilian lives and a sharp decline...
...Rajapaksa's campaign has a bit in common with the one General David Petraeus deployed so successfully in Iraq, and is rolling out in Afghanistan. Just as the American general was able to use Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, Sri Lanka's President turned a splinter group of Tigers into allies. Colombo and Washington (and other Western capitals) also cooperated in cutting off funding to the Tigers from a global network of sympathizers. Beyond that, however, the Rajapaksa counterinsurgency doctrine seems ripped from a bygone era. The main principles...
Negotiations Don't After numerous attempts at mediation - most notably by Norway - led to nothing, Rajapaksa basically abandoned the pursuit of a negotiated solution. Once the military had the upper hand, there was little effort to treaty with the Tigers...
...Tiger targets. Refugees fleeing the fighting said thousands of innocents were being killed in the army's bombardments. Modern militaries typically halt hostilities when large numbers of civilians are killed. The Sri Lankan army barely paused. Reva Bhalla, director of analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence firm, says Rajapaksa's "disregard for civilian casualties" was a key to the success of the military operation...
Lack of accurate reporting from the war front was one reason why the international outcry against the military's heavy-handedness was so muted - especially in the U.S. Rajapaksa also benefited from the post-9/11 global consensus that insurgent groups using terror tactics "can no longer call themselves freedom fighters," according to Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The Tigers didn't understand this, and paid a significant price...