379R terrorism blog

Because of my recent bout with mononucleosis, I have had really weird cycles of extreme sleeplessness followed by days of extreme fatigue. Tonight I wasn’t able to sleep so I decided to peruse the news. As I was browsing the international news section of CNN, a news alert flashed across my screen that was pertinent to our class. However, before one reads this latest news article I wanted to sort of chronicle the events that have lead up to this latest attack.

In the past week, renewed tensions between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government have come to a head. The Sri Lankan government officially pulled out of a truce with the LTTE last month; it was a truce which had begun earlier this year. Immediately after withdrawing out of this truce, the Sri Lankan government began shelling suspected militant hideouts. The LTTE said that the targets of the shellings were merely Tamil civilians and that the government was not targeting them (read: the LTTE) but rather they were targeting ethnic Tamils in a bid to try and coerce their people.

In response, the LTTE reinstituted their campaign of terror. Their first act was a suicide attack on a civilian bus that killed 12 and wounded 100. A dozen or more attacks then followed: the LTTE was also implicated in a hand-grenade attack on a local zoo and on the Sri Lankan Independence Day, the LTTE staged a variety of attacks, which killed 13 and wounded even more.

Recently this week, the LTTE ambushed 3 Sri Lankan soldiers and executed them south of their “safe zone of de facto control.” The government responded with aerial bombings of suspected militant strongholds and hideouts.

All of these attacks have been increasing in crescendo. In fact, today, there was another governmental response to the LTTE’s previous attacks: the government killed an estimated 46 rebels and destroyed 5 bunkers in a new offensive aimed at curbing the violence. It seems that the violence is going to continue to escalate, for the LTTE has already vowed to respond to this latest governmental attack.

My question is this: for anyone who is familiar with the LTTE, why did they “mysteriously” agree to a cease fire after September 11, 2001? Why didn’t the government accept their terms of greater autonomy (read: the LTTE dropped their demands for independence)? Why did the cease fire fail? Why did the 2006 ceasefire fail? And furthermore, why did this most recent cease fire fail?

PS Another interesting news article linked to the CNN article that stemmed all of this musing can be found at BBC Sinhala.