Word: tigers
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...northwest coast. His family left their home by boat, only to be intercepted by the Sri Lankan navy and then handed over to the army, which brought them to one of several "welfare centers" set up to house Tamils fleeing the Vanni, the jungle areas at the heart of Tiger territory. "We were told, 'Two or three months, and then you can go,'" he says. "But now it's almost one year." There are about 450 people in this camp, including 39 children under the age of 5. The families live in shelters made of palmyra thatch and corrugated iron...
...Lanka's civil war began in July 1983, when more than 1,000 Tamils were killed in Colombo after a Tiger ambush of 13 army soldiers--though the LTTE's grievances go back much further, to what it says were decades of discrimination against ethnic Tamils, who are mainly Hindu or Christian, by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. Few families in the island nation have been untouched by the violence--more than 70,000 people have died since the war began--yet Sri Lanka has managed to preserve its stunning beaches and lush hills, as well as a cosmopolitan outlook dating...
...detention of civilians serves a strategic purpose for the army as well. In the past, the Tigers were often able to recapture territory by sending guerrilla fighters into the general population. That's still a potent tactic. On Feb. 9, a female suicide bomber killed 28 people, including 20 soldiers, at a screening point for IDPs. This kind of asymmetrical warfare--the LTTE was the global pioneer in the use of suicide bombers--allowed a few thousand fighters to hold their own for decades against the Sri Lankan army's 50,000 soldiers. So the most recent army offensive uses...
Such security measures, like the detention camps, have so far prevented the Tigers from taking back Mannar. But this strategy may not be sustainable throughout the Tamil-majority areas of the north and east. The Sri Lankan government holds up the eastern province of the nation as a model of postconflict governance; the army took control of the area in 2007, and the government held local elections last year. But even in the east, 50 civilians were killed in November alone, according to local media, in violence involving two former Tiger factions as well as military and paramilitary forces. This...
...seen very much as a man of the people." The war has the overwhelming support of Sri Lanka's rural heartland in the south, and Rajapaksa is unlikely to seek a truce when triumph is finally within sight. All that remains is to find Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tiger commander who has outlasted five Sri Lankan Presidents and is wanted for ordering the assassination of an Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi...