The Sri Lankan government declared victory today in their twenty-six year civil war with the LTTE movement. After there had been a bloody fight in the Seventies between the Communists and Sri Lankan forces the Tamil minority in the North of the Island decided they needed to be independent.
The Tamil Tiger revolutionary movement has led the fighting for this. The war lasted a long time as the LTTE had support both from the Tamil expat community across the world as well as the Tamil people in India. In the Nineties Rajiv Ghandi tried to solve the problem with intervention and that failed. The LTTE were especially creative in their tactics using small boats especially to disrupt operations off of the coast.
It will be interesting to see how the Tamils are reintegrated into the country as it is estimated that 70,000 or more people have died. Sri Lanka used to be a peaceful backwater of the British Empire who last saw such excitement during WW II where it was a major British base threatened by the Japanese Empire.
Like many such places decolonization and independence led to conflict among the people living there. Perhaps now the country devastated by the Tsunami a few years ago can finally get on with peaceful growth.
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