Word: sri
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...Years before the world heard of Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, the Tigers were pioneering a new method of guerrilla warfare in their fight against Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese for a tiny separate state in the north of the small Indian Ocean island. The first Tiger killed himself attacking the Sri Lankan army in 1987. Hundreds followed, and when they signed a cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government in February 2002, the Tigers accounted for around a third of all suicide attacks in the world. A Western diplomat based in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo describes...
...international community has tried for years to persuade the two sides of Sri Lanka's conflict, which has taken close to 65,000 lives, to talk peace. Those efforts have largely failed, and despite the 2002 cease-fire, this year the island has appeared poised to return to war as a new wave of violence has swept over it. Around 200 people have been killed in the last month alone. After the latest attack, the Sri Lankan government launched air strikes on Tiger territory for the second time this year...
...invent modern suicide bombing - the first such attack was against the American embassy in Beirut in 1983. They did however turn it into a vicious art form. Tigers adapted explosives so that they could be used on land, sea and air - thanks to the purchase of what Sri Lankan intelligence services say is a small squadron of microlight aircraft. Bombs were disguised to fit around, and even inside, the body. Among Tiger victims: a president, the head of the Sri Lankan air force, a minister of national security, an opposition leader and a former prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi...
...real genius was to build a culture of sacrifice and martyrdom around his guerrilla force, with himself as demi-god leader - an almost exact forerunner of jihadi terrorism. In July 2002 TIME spent a few days with a female Tamil Tiger suicide squad at their base in northern Sri Lanka, and got a firsthand understanding of how he has been so successful...
...about as far removed from traditional teenage preoccupations as an 18-year-old could get. She didn't care about clothes, music or parties. She couldn't remember the last time she had to study for a test. And as for boys, she dismissed all the men in Sri Lanka with a fierce frown and sharp shake of the head...