Word: tamils
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Just when Sri Lankans thought they had seen the end of it, war returned last week with blistering force. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a guerrilla group fighting for an independent ethnic Tamil homeland, attacked several police stations in Sri Lanka's northeastern province. At least 300 people are believed to have died in the first days of fighting; some reports said at least 100 of them were policemen executed by the rebels. The government dispatched an additional 4,200 troops to the region (the total now: 15,000) and began using helicopter gunships, artillery and aerial bombardment...
...final exit of the Indian forces has defused one of Sri Lanka's most combustible issues. But the pullout also created a power vacuum in the island's north and east that was quickly filled by the militants the Indians had been fighting, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who have yet to renounce their goal of a separate state for the country's minority Tamils. For now, the separatists and the central government in Colombo are working in concert for peace, but their alliance is anything but stable...
Meanwhile, Indian military leaders were pondering why things had gone so wrong in their rough equivalent of America's debacle in Viet Nam. Invited into Sri Lanka by then President J.R. Jayewardene, the Indian army's original mission was to collect arms from Tamil militants, who had been trained and equipped by India in the first place. In exchange, Jayewardene promised that the 2 million Tamils, who have suffered discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese (11.8 million), would be given more autonomy over a newly created Northeastern province, where they predominate. But when the Tigers refused to give...
...writers have made better use of their estrangement than Naipaul. He recently returned to India to gather material for his third book on the subcontinent, and things could be going more smoothly. A recent election in the southern state of Tamil Nadu has been disruptive. Madras' main streets are filled with festive tides of celebrators waving the red-and-black banners of the victorious Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Party. Naipaul is trying to sort out the issues, which include the historic antagonism of South Indians toward traditional Brahman power. Eventually, he will decipher the complexities of culture and politics on paper...
...sorting out takes time and patience. An interview with a local bureaucrat seems to support Naipaul's contention that "everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two." After much difficulty, he has arranged a chat with two Tamil radicals. The pair are escorted to the writer's hotel room by two plainclothesmen. The luxurious Taj Coromandel is overrun by an international gathering of leather-goods manufacturers, and for all anyone can tell, Naipaul and his group could have just concluded an agreement to turn sacred cows into discount luggage. His reaction to the interview...