After 26 years of warfare, assasinations and suicide bombings the Sri Lankan Civil War or the Eelam War is over. The Sri Lankan PM (Mr Rajapaska) was so happy, he flew home from a diplo-meeting in Jordan so he could bask in his military genius. What prompted the Sri Lankan to finally win? I think it may boil down to three things.
1) Tamil Tiger hubris by solely relying on convention tactics
2) Tamil civilian fatigue from over a quarter century of warfare
3) The improvement of Sri Lankan army overall
Yes, the Tamil Tigers had grown complacent. Instead of keeping the Tamil Revolution alive in Sri Lanka it became a bureacratic monster. It started acting as if the war had already been won and Tamil Eelam had been created. It had post offices and its own stamps, a form of currency, police officers and it even processed documents. Seriously, what guerrilla army does this. Even Mao had to jettison this during the Long March to save the Chi-Coms. The worst part is that a guerrilla army had become conventional. Sure, it was cool to have your own airforce and navy but Tigers were just getting ahead of themselves. Guerrilla armies can always melt away to fight another day, when conventional armies lose battles they really lose.
Then again, could the Tamils afford to lose land to save lives as Mao's Red Army did. Not really, Sri Lanka is a tear drop shaped island off India in the Indian Ocean. Sure, it can always get money from Tamils in India but there isn't much land to trade for time and men's lives on a tiny island. Even so, the Tamils in India began caring less and less about their tribal brethren in Sri Lanka. When IBM, Intel and other companies began investing in literate Dravidian India those Tamils never looked back after getting a good job with AT&T. These Nouveau riche Tamils evoked the words of Oliver Cromwell and told the Tamil nationalists to "In the Name of God, Go!" or in this case Rama. This sentiment was soon echoed by the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Like all guerilla armies, the LTTE or Tamil Tigers thrives on people. It needs people to build trenches, man positions, make food, carry water, extol the group and just in general support the cause. Even Mao the mass murderer attempted to be a genuine friend of the people while the LTTE led by Generalissimo Prabakharan just wanted to have Tamil slaves. Chai and Punkah-wallahs all around. Having a despot before the guerrilla leader even becomes top dog is unbearable. Soon the Tamil civilians were willing to flee to Sri Lankan territory as the LTTE terrorized its own people. The people it was trying to "defend" or squeeze money out of. The LTTE lacked what a guerrilla army had to do : Be friendly with the villagers and keep guerilla. Once you go conventional, you can be beaten conventionally. Ask any Biafran nostalgic in Nigeria. However, the Nigerian army is a decrepit Hausa-Fulani militia and the Sri Lankan army is less so. Just Sinhalese.
The Sri Lankan army throughout the war began undergoing a learning curve. It established military colleges to train platoon leaders on fighting in the bush, it got help from foreign services like the Israelis to fight Counter Insurgency Warfare and it got bigger using Chinese equipment to get the job done. Considering the fact that it had less than 100,000 troops in the first Eelam war compared to close to 200,000 now it's a major improvement. Tamil numbers and recruits keep going down, even the child soldiers it uses are becoming a rarity. While the Sri Lankan army got smarter, the Tamils got real stupid. That helps of course during a war.
So what will happen to the Tamils? Not genocide as many Tamils screaming in Toronto like to claim. In today's world, killing a mere 200,000 people is called genocide. Ask Bashir of Sudan! Also, it's getting harder to kill millions of people. You need to be bureaucratic machine like Nazi Germany to get that done and Sri Lanka isn't in the country where the printing press came from. Even if it did massacre a few hundred thousand Tamils, how would the 80 million Tamils in Bharat India respond? Not too kindly I suppose. However, the Tamils sealed their fate in India when they killed Rajiv Gandhi - just because he didn't like them.... oh and the Indian invasion of Sri Lanka during the Eelam War. The worse thing that can happen to Sri Lankan Tamils is economic disenfranchisement, a lifetime in refugee camps and land seizures by the Sinhalese. Call it, the Palestinian plan and they should hurry before the WWF complains about the last Tigers of Sri Lanka becoming extinct.
Just looking at the way the outcome is turning out, maybe the Tamils need to study the Palestinian plan. They really need a Hamas right now.
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