Word: sri
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...grapples with insurgencies in Iraq, and internecine fighting rages on in places like Darfur, the renewal of hostilities in Sri Lanka offers some lessons as to why civil wars are so hard to end. Part of the problem is that fratricidal disputes are often personal and heartfelt. "Both sides see themselves as being locked in a fight against evil," Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, wrote in a recent appraisal of his country's war. This fight is part ethnic, part religious and wholly vicious. "It is the belief in the unchanging nature...
...Middle East, Israelis and Palestinians implicitly understand that a solution to their interminable feud requires a framework in which both sides feel secure, yet they remain deadlocked. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, newspaper polls suggest that Tamils as well as Sinhalese grudgingly accept the need for political compromise. The years of fighting, however, have left people bitter and angry and all too ready to seek revenge in a terrible cycle of violence. "There are those who are very war crazy," says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a think tank. "And the rest often go along...
...Among those most hungry for war are the leaders of the L.T.T.E., a group born out of the belief that Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist majority will never treat the country's mostly Hindu Tamil minority as equals or give them the autonomy they long for. Since independence in 1948, "all the agreements we have reached have been torn up and thrown into the dustbin," L.T.T.E. Peace Secretariat secretary-general Pulee Devan told TIME by phone from the Tigers' jungle base in Kilinochchi, in the north. "Fifty years' experience has dictated to us that there is no big difference...
...forced the government to the negotiating table more than once. But there things usually stall, in part because a real settlement would require the Tigers, and in particular longtime leader Prabhakaran, to concede that the group is not the sole representative of the Tamil people. Free elections in Sri Lanka's Tamil region would likely bring moderate Tamil parties to power, threatening the L.T.T.E.'s influence. There is no doubt Prabhakaran is a prophetlike figure for many Tamils, but his power stems as much from his cold-blooded elimination of political rivals and moderate Tamil leaders as from genuine devotion...
...toward the L.T.T.E. Top officials in Colombo oscillate between talking and fighting. "They forget that you can and should deal with the underlying problem with or without the L.T.T.E.," says Dayan Jayatilleka, a senior lecturer in the department of politics at the University of Colombo who was recently named Sri Lanka's ambassador to Switzerland and permanent representative to the U.N. in Geneva. "It's this kind of a trap...