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HOW SRI LANKA TAMED ITS TIGERS

Ishaan Tharoor

Time, February 3, 2009

The Sri Lankan army has Asia's longest-running insurgency on the ropes: The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) movement, long been considered one of the world's most fearsome guerrilla armies, lost its last stronghold at Mullaittivu on Jan. 25, and government officials are now confident of a decisive victory in the civil war that has claimed some 70,000 lives and displaced over a million people since 1983.

The LTTE is short on supplies and fighters, and has gone to ground in an ever ever-shrinking pocket of jungle in the northeast of the country as government forces advance. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Sunday called for the LTTE's surrender, but there is little chance that a rebel movement whose fighters over the years have chosen suicide over capture will go down quietly.

To understand how far the LTTE has fallen, consider the situation just three years ago, when an internationally brokered ceasefire collapsed: At that point, the rebels controlled around 5,800 square miles (15,000 sq. km.) of territory in a mini-state in the island nation's north and east. They had a navy composed of a flotilla of gunboats and transports, and even launched daring strikes on Colombo with their own makeshift airforce. But a sustained government offensive has inflicted defeat after defeat, and that, in turn, has prompted widespread desertions. Today, just over 1,000 fighters, including the LTTE's shadowy, ruthless leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, have retreated into a wilderness of some 350 sq km, and are hemmed in on all fronts by emboldened government troops.

The government offensive has taken a heavy toll on the Tamil civilian population, leaving as many as 250,000 trapped in the war zone and vulnerable to crossfire. (Colombo insists the figure is closer 120,000). As many as 300 civilians have been killed in the last week of fighting, and human rights groups have accused both sides of abuses. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) claimed on Sunday that artillery shells landed in a makeshift hospital in rebel territory, killing at least 9 people and wounding 20 injured. And ICRC representative Sarasi Wijeratne in Colombo urged both sides "to allow the immediate evacuation of civilians and allow in the flow of essential medical supplies."

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