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...coffee prices compiled by London's International Coffee Organization (ICO) to its highest level since September on Wednesday, just as futures prices for Arabica beans - which make up the bulk of the world's supply - topped $1.35 per lb. in New York, the highest since October. Recent droughts from Sri Lanka to Kenya, meanwhile, have constrained tea production, forcing up crop prices at auction...
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...
Brute Force Works Modern military wisdom says sheer force doesn't quell insurgencies, and that in the long run political and economic power-sharing along with social reconciliation are the only ways to end the fighting. But the Sri Lankan army eventually broke down the Tigers in an unrelenting military campaign, the final phase of which lasted more than two years. That sort of sustained offensive hasn't been tried anywhere, in decades...
Collateral Damage Is Acceptable In the final months of fighting, the Sri Lankan military offensive hardly differentiated between civilian and 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...
Critics Should Shut Up - Or Else For a democracy, Sri Lanka's recent record on press freedom is an embarrassment. Journalists who dared question the government (and not just over the military campaign) have been threatened, roughed up, or worse. The Jan. 8 murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge, a crusading editor - and TIME contributor - was an especially low point. In recent months, as the fighting intensified, journalists and international observers were kept well away, ensuring very little reporting on the military's harsh tactics and the civilian casualties...