Pretty much all over now.

he leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, Velupillai Prabhakaran, has been killed along with his son and other Tiger commanders.

Prabhakaran was ambushed and shot dead while trying to flee government troops as special forces closed in on the last rebel fortifications.

The Sri Lankan army killed a number of other senior Tamil Tiger commanders as fighting continued to rage despite the Tigers' weekend admission of defeat.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman, told The Times that commando units and other crack government troops were trading machine gun fire with “a couple of hundred” of Tiger fighters hunkered down in fortified bunkers, thought to include several senior rebel leaders.

Full story in the Times.

Is it just me, or does the Tamil leader look scarily like SuperMario? See attachment!

So the Tigers are all dead or captured and the Sri Lankan Army can go wherever it wants.

Have they really won? Have they made the desire for a Tamil 'homeland' go away? How many generations before the New Tamil Tigers of Resurrected Tamil Elam start going bang in crowded railway stations?

I hope the Sri Lankans have a good plan for the peace, as well as for the war. Good job we'd never screw up like that, eh?

As to the PLAN, they could not do better than Trincomalee, one of the best sheltered harbours in the entire world. Wonder if our old floating dock is still there.

Originally Posted by angular

So the Tigers are all dead or captured and the Sri Lankan Army can go wherever it wants.

Have they really won? Have they made the desire for a Tamil 'homeland' go away? How many generations before the New Tamil Tigers of Resurrected Tamil Elam start going bang in crowded railway stations?

I hope the Sri Lankans have a good plan for the peace, as well as for the war. Good job we'd never screw up like that, eh?

I was there when it all kicked off. At the time there did not seem to be any significant sectarian issues at all - wherever you went the two main communities were intermingled in jobs, markets, etc. The whole thing started off with some fairly blatant rabble-rousing over in India by Indian politicians, and I gather the Tamil "movement" largely started with Indian investment. At the time I remember the expat community openly speculating that India intended to annex Sri Lanka under the guise of "peace-keeping".

Tough on the Sri Lankan Tamil civvies who have now been bred to see themselves as in need of a "homeland", but actually the main Tamil homeland happens to be in SE Indian mainland - the Tamil community in Sri Lanka has largely grown in the past century out of fishermen and migrant workers.

Originally Posted by seaweed

As to the PLAN, they could not do better than Trincomalee, one of the best sheltered harbours in the entire world. Wonder if our old floating dock is still there.

Well, the Chinese have an advantage when dealing with other nations, they just want cooperation rather then ideological purity...

If I was cynical I might think that the mob in Parliament square had some expectation of this happening and were paving the way for HMG to allow the Tamils asylum in the UK. If so I propose we give them Wales for their homeland.

I expect they'll be coming by the container load. Not the poor civilians but the ex-terrorists trying to escape justice. UK lawyers must think Christmas is coming.

Originally Posted by Ord_Sgt

Originally Posted by Victorian_Major

Interesting exercise in political pragmatism; regardless of the Tamil cause, the world's chosen to allow Sri Lankan forces to achieve what might be a conclusive victory. Fingers crossed - what the country needs is some stability so it therefore benefits from some investment.

So what did the Tamils do wrong?

Too brutal?
Not cuddly enough? No attractive and articulate intelligensia under house arrest.
A bit boring - including outside our Parliament?

A cause for which most of us had no clue and to be honest no interest.

They hen pecked at the government for years and then Colombo said enough is enough and sod the consequences, endex.

The thing is they will probably have far more representation in parliament post LTTE than they ever had the with the tigers doing their thing. The apparent threats of mass suicide is probably the best thing they could do.

Wasnt the the KMS in there training the Special Task Force arm of the Sri Lankan military and was approved by the British government in the 80's.
The British press had reported, though the company denied it, that employees for KMS were quitting their jobs because the Sri Lankan troops were out of control.

I deplore the Tigers for taking up terrorism. But to say that the feelings that drove them on are minimalised cannot be true. No-one loses the feelings of injustice that drove so many to fight a conventional war just because they lost.