yer yer… well let the Sri Lankans have full domicile rights in Tamil Nadu with full voting rights as a sweetner then!!!!

It’s ironic that in a piece about double standards in respect to another unnamed ethnic conflict, nobody can stomach to cede this basic point of fact.

God willingly, the post-war policy Sri Lanka’s President Rajapakse and his government will follow and the people of Sri Lanka will support will be along these lines:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Abraham Lincoln, Second Innagural Address
Washington, March 4, 1865

Yeah, but are you glad that the Tamil terrorists were defeated? And is Sri Lanka better off now that they are dead?

Sadly, once conflicts simmer beneath the surface, once there is a deep sense of grievance and once an ethnic minority has an overarching feeling that they have no stake in the wider polity, it is always easy to find extremists, terrorists and deluded young men (they are mostly men) willing to blow themselves up in crowded markets. You kill them and others appear after a while.

Which is not an argument not to fight terrorism. But you cannot overcome terrorism just by killing terrorists, rather than dealing with the grievances underlying them, any more than you can overcome mosquito infestation by swatting the beasties one by one. (And before anybody manages to misunderstand me, I said “dealing with the grievances”, not “surrendering to the demands”.)

the point, surely, is that they are defeated in a military operation in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger diaspora wasn’t. So unless a political solution is found, then another lot could arise and return to Sri Lanka to take their place, but in a different way

In ethnic conflicts you can’t win the war – all you can is either to win a battle or solve the conflict in a manner acceptable to both sides. If you win a battle, you might enjoy a big celebration, perhaps few years of quiet – but sooner or later another generation of embittered enemies, who have even less to lose, will emerge.

That’s why anybody who genuinely wishes well to both ethnic groups in Sri Lanka must hope that the Rajpaksa government will be intelligent and foresighted enough to use this moment of victory and the demise of particularly vicious and extremist group, to forge a long term future for both Sinhalese and Tamils.

There is still a political and ethnic dispute on that island, and until that it resolved in a political fashion then there is always the possibility (and I”d say, probably) of a return to some form of violence.

Obviously it wouldn’t be in the same way as before, but outside of Sri Lanka there seems to be more then sufficient funding for another armed conflict, in one shape or form.

Dare I say it, unless the root causes of this ethno-political dispute are unscrambled then nothing has really been achieved, maybe a lull, a few years and then a new group starts up with the violent attacks again, Tigers Mk II, etc

PS: good to see muffin postings.

Yes, that would be the end of Harry’s Place.