The Resplendent Isle!

This is coolbert:

From the Chicago Tribune yesterday:

This is really big?

"NATION & WORLD"

"Sri Lanka civil war ends after 25 years"

"After several escapes, Tamil leader is killed"

The Sri Lankan based insurrectionist army of Eelam, the Tamil Tigers, has been defeated?

A guerrilla army of some ability and success, fighting a war that has lasted since 1983, has met their match, been defeated on the battlefield, the order now having been given to lay down their arms. The military dimension to the conflict between the Tamil and the Sinhalese majority of Sri Lanka has come to a close.

The final and deciding factor was the death of the Tiger commander and his son, the last bastion of Tiger-held territory being seized by the army of the central government in Colombo?

INSURRECTIONIST, GUERRILLA REBELLIONS OF THIS TYPE RARELY END IN THIS MANNER!! THE STRONG HAS IN THIS CASE OVERPOWERED AND DEFEATED THE WEAK!! A MILITARY SOLUTION WAS FOUND - - CONTRARY TO THE EXPECTATION OF THE “EXPERTS”!

As to the enemy commander - - Velupillai Prabhakaran:

“focused and innovative . . . [he] built the Tigers in his image. The group grew from little more than a street gang into one of the world’s most successful militant operations.”

Innovations to include:

* The suicide bomber.

* Cyanide capsules worn about the neck of Tamil fighters. Suicide was the option to capture?

Velupillai was a founding member of the Eelam movement? If so, began his career at the age of twenty! For thirty four years, was a mainstay of the struggle. When a man at that age gives himself, mind, body, soul to a movement such as the Tamil Tigers, what does that say??!!

“At its peak, the Tigers controlled one-third of Sri Lanka’s territory and had their own sizable army and navy, a nascent air force, courts, tax collectors, hospitals, global smuggling operations and liaison offices in 54 countries.”

The military wing of Eelam was down and out for the count on a number of occasions, but always managed to survive, rebound, and thrive. IT IS ALL OVER NOW?? Time will tell!

The conflict between the Tamil and the Sinhalese has been an on-going struggle for one thousand years now? Since the time of the Tamil King Rajaraja? I would not expect the Tamils to go quietly into the night!

The Eelam Tiger homepage is down! Off the Internet for good now? Here is another Tiger web site that is still active. Admits defeat [?] and now pleads the humanitarian crisis as faced by the Tamil people of Sri Lanka!

coolbert.