The Christian Science Monitor reports that the LTTE Tigers are willing to surrender amid reports that they are down to a 1.2 square mile redoubt and rumors that 300 Tigers had committed suicide after being “zeroed in” by government forces. Al Jazeera video from early this year showed Sri Lankan Army units equipped with artillery systematically reducing the Tiger strongholds.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
But it may be the manner in which Colombo finished the Tigers that is the real news. UN and Western appeals to the Sri Lankan government to halt the fighting were disregarded; it also barred the Western Media from the battlefront and paid scarce attention to ‘international world opinion’. The New York Times reported, almost bitterly that Colombo had the temerity to win in violation of all the rules:
Assertions about fighting and casualties in the Sri Lanka war cannot be verified because the government severely restricts access by independent journalists. Several, including two from The New York Times, have been prohibited from entering the country, and one who flew late Sunday to Colombo, the capital, was ordered to leave on a return flight. … There is no doubt that Mr. Rajapaksa’s government appears poised to achieve what none of his predecessors managed in 25 years: to rout the Tamil Tigers, who controlled nearly a fourth of the island, and destroy their ranks as a conventional army. As the war’s climax approached, both sides had rebuffed repeated calls from the United Nations and several foreign countries to spare civilians caught in the war zone. The United Nations estimates that at least 7,000 have died since January.
But if the Sri Lankans found the West dispensible, they did not win the war without help. Earlier this month the Times Online ascribed the force behind Colombo’s offensive against the Tigers to Chinese money and political clout.
China has cultivated ties with Sri Lanka for decades and became its biggest arms supplier in the 1990s, when India and Western governments refused to sell weapons to Colombo for use in the civil war. Beijing appears to have increased arms sales significantly to Sri Lanka since 2007, when the US suspended military aid over human rights issues….
In April 2007 Sri Lanka signed a classified $37.6 million (£25 million) deal to buy Chinese ammunition and ordnance for its army and navy, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly. China gave Sri Lanka — apparently free of charge — six F7 jet fighters last year … “China’s arms sales have been the decisive factor in ending the military stalemate,” Brahma Chellaney, of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, said. “There seems to have been a deal linked to Hambantota.” [a Chinese naval base now building in Sri Lanka]
Since 2007 China has encouraged Pakistan to sell weapons to Sri Lanka and to train Sri Lankan pilots to fly the Chinese fighters, according to Indian security sources. China has also provided crucial diplomatic support in the UN Security Council, blocking efforts to put Sri Lanka on the agenda. It has also boosted financial aid to Sri Lanka, even as Western countries have reduced their contributions. China’s aid to Sri Lanka jumped from a few million dollars in 2005 to almost $1 billion last year, replacing Japan as the biggest foreign donor. By comparison, the United States gave $7.4 million last year, and Britain just £1.25 million.
“That’s why Sri Lanka has been so dismissive of international criticism,” said B. Raman of the Chennai Centre for China Studies. “It knows it can rely on support from China.”
This raises the question of whether the Western diplomatic model and NGO pressure has not gone down in defeat together with the Tigers in Sri Lanka; whether other countries experiencing problems with insurgents may conclude that they are better served dealing with China than with Washington, Europe and the NGOs. While it doesn’t necessarily follow that Western diplomacy should become as ruthless as China’s it does highlight the problem of “lawfare” which has affected the shape of the West’s response to piracy, the War on Terror and sundry other crises in the Third World. The West has to satisfy a very large and powerful liberal domestic constituency yet come up with realistic solutions to problems for which there may be no ideal solution. That may cause the West to behave erratically or irrationally in the eyes of its Third World allies. Has the West gotten the balance right or has China shown just demonstrated, in the jungles of Sri Lanka, how bankrupt Western “lawfare” has become? Will the issue even be debated in Western intellectual circles?
Update: The BBC reports that European governments have vowed to investigate any war crimes committed during the Sri Lankan civil war. Meanwhile, celebrations have erupted in Colombo as the population celebrates. Video at the link.
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39 Comments
1. John Lynch:Exactly!
Sri Lanka has figured it out. We’re back to Third World states playing off rival power blocs.
And, honestly, given how badly the West did in managing conflicts all over the world, I can’t say I blame them.
We’re really good at prolonging wars by bankrolling boths sides and preventing either from winning.
May 17, 2009 - 8:12 pm 2. Mark:The Chinese naval base at Hambantota is another link in the supply line from East Africa and the Middle East to China. Hambantota asserts Chinese naval presence out into the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. The Strait of Malacca remains a bottleneck, but that is true for all shipping.
When, not if, China secures Taiwan, China’s lane of projection into the Pacific will be open, allowing China to sit astride sea lanes between points north (Japan and Korea) and south (Philippines). Taiwan at this time resembles, geographically, a cork in a pressurized bottle.
I suspect Obama plans to avoid any confict involving Taiwan. The Chinese perhaps know they can take their sweet time in implementing their plans. I don’t think Taiwan will be the ’six month’ crisis JoeB. predicted.
May 17, 2009 - 8:15 pm 3. whiskey:First, yes the West HAS gotten things wrong. Sherman was right, the best way to avoid the horrors of war is to win quickly and as decisvely as possible. The Western Lawfare way drags out war for generations.
Secondly, there will be no debate in the West over the failure of Lawfare and NGOs, because the Western Lawfare way is meant to empower certain groups: NGO type Yuppies, Lawyers, Women, Gays, etc. at the expense of defense workers and the military.
It’s a class/gender struggle as much as anything else. Tragically hip and trendy guys and gals in Portland want to open Green Art Galleries and sit around in trendy workplaces dreaming up uber-trendy ways to create “Green Energy” or other navel gazing exercises.
All that goes good-bye if there is a serious effort to fight against terror. And guerillas.
Why do you think Obama and Pelosi picked a fight with the CIA and Pentagon? Because THOSE folks are the enemy. Not AQ. Not the Taliban.
Damn. Earthquake.
May 17, 2009 - 8:40 pm 4. Morton Doodslag:In times of true national crisis, as we now find ourselves with global Islamic Jihad, our media has not only failed to inform us of our peril, it has utterly failed to advance our cause, and what is worse, it has often worked in direct opposition to our success and social interests. In an ideal world the betrayal should have real consequences.
In a sense, ignoring the media is one of the best ways to deprive them of their completely undeserved influence. The affect of their corrupting influence reached its zenith in the last election cycle, and the President which they did so much to install may prove their crowning achievement, or more likely, their worst blunder and their undoing.
May 17, 2009 - 8:59 pm 5. wretchard:I don’t think we should go back to the days of Genghis Khan. I think humanitarianism can be a good thing; but my worry is that it has been hijacked, like conservation, to serve political ends that have nothing whatsoever to do with its supposed object. For humanitarianism to work it cannot become a suicide pact.
Any workable system of laws will never unduly penalize people who abide by the rules in favor of those who flaunt them. Just as an immigration system in which the legal immigrant is bypassed by the illegal cannot long remain legitimate, humanitarian regimes which effectively make it it impossible for a nation or a society to exercise legitimate self-defense will eventually be abandoned. It cannot be the case that those who obey so-called humanitarian rules not only lose the war but find themselves prosecuted for war crimes because they have subjected themselves to its strictures while those who ignored them from the beginning not only win the war but become media and marketing stars commemorated Hollywood movies, t-shirt logos and trendy scarves.
The Sri Lankan experience serves notice that this wonderland cannot continue to exist indefinitely. At some point humanitarianism (like environmentalism) has got to purge itself of the hucksters, con-men and demagogues who will eventually be the death of it.
May 17, 2009 - 9:09 pm 6. Elroy Jetson:Whiskey,
May 17, 2009 - 10:07 pm 7. Morton Doodslag:Are you in LA? They just had a 4.7.
The only way to avoid a global war is total victory in the small wars. It is going to be a while until the West “gets it”.
I think your use of the Ghengis Khan analogy is indicative of the harmful success of the campaign by agenda driven actors. They have successfully controlled the debate by defining the terms, or more accurately, bending and robbing the terms of meaning. I reject the idea that ruthless brutality against those who voluntarily blow up buses and target civilians constitutes anything like a “Ghengis Khan” approach. Just because I support ruthlessness against our mortal enemies does not make me the same as my enemy.
This is one of the things which infuriates me about the trumped up outrage over so-called torture against Jihadis. I comprehend the injunctions against becoming like your enemy in your efforts to defeat him, but I have far more confidence in our ability to avoid that fate than our Leftist detractors, and the myriad actors who utilize pretexts like “humanitarianism” to further their subterfuges and agendas.
For God’s sake, without minimizing the enormity of it, we dropped nukes on Japan, and did not turn into monsters as a result. Once we annihilated their ideology and capacity to wage war, we lifted them (and Germany) up again to become our friends and allies.
Our Leftist detractors (our own useful idiots, and many abroad) along with our other nefarious enemies have successfully made some forget who they are, forget what our legacy truly is. Why are so many of my fellow citizens so poisoned into having so little faith and confidence in our basic goodness? Why are so many among us more inclined to believe the worst about us, and inclined to ignore the mortal threats which confront us?
May 17, 2009 - 10:23 pm 8. Morton Doodslag:Whiskey — I live in the Hollywood Hills – your post rocked the world at 8:40pm!
May 17, 2009 - 10:29 pm 9. Peter Grynch:Good for Sri Lanka! When the terrrorists are at the verge of defeat, the NY Times sends it’s agents in to try to rescue them in order to murder more innocents another day.
Too bad they merely sent the reporters packing.
May 17, 2009 - 10:34 pm 10. wretchard:your post rocked the world at 8:40pm!
Exactly. Or nearly so.
May 17, 2009 - 10:36 pm 11. Pascal:Spheres of influence matter.
Compare the Western response to Sri Lankan decimation of the LTTE and its response when Serbia beat the dickens out of the Kossovans.
And since it is China now and Russia then, do you suppose that matters? Heh!
(In the special category of “we can probably guess”: Had the Chinese backed the tigers, would they have accidentally bombed the US Embassy?)
—————————————————–
May 17, 2009 - 10:56 pm 12. Doug:P.S. I felt the quake as a gradual roller that lasted about 20 seconds. Lennox is about 10 miles away as the crow flies.
La Times Has some interesting links to the Salton Sea, Maps, etc.
Quake near LAX shakes county
The quake hit at 8:39 p.m. and was centered near Lennox, a community between Inglewood and Hawthorne and east of Los Angeles International Airport. Lasting about 15 seconds, the temblor could be felt as far away as the High Desert, Indio, Carpinteria and San Diego County.
The earthquake was “a bit deep,” said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough — originating 8.4 miles below the surface. “That tends to make it less sharp — less of a jerky, abrupt motion,” Hough said.
May 17, 2009 - 11:00 pm 13. Doug:Just so special it deserves the OT treatment:
Hotel made from wine barrels
May 17, 2009 - 11:09 pm 14. Pascal:Hotel de Vrouwe van Stavoren in the Netherlands features four rooms made from giant wine barrels.
OT Doug — By any chance, do you know if they named the group of rooms “The Shire”?
May 17, 2009 - 11:12 pm 15. Scythianeedle:Mark,
Where is the Hambantota Naval Base you reference in your post #2?
Google Earth shows a Hambantota more or less in the center of Sri Lanka… thoroughly landlocked!
May 17, 2009 - 11:29 pm 16. wretchard:The reference to it can be found here:
May 17, 2009 - 11:42 pm 17. Kent Gatewood:Any chance the Indians will put a naval base in Taiwan?
May 17, 2009 - 11:46 pm 18. Doug:This was news to me, Pascal:
May 17, 2009 - 11:51 pm 19. Doug:Tamil Tigers admit defeat at hands of Sri Lankan military
Reporting from New Delhi — The Tamil Tigers admitted defeat Sunday in their quarter-century struggle against Sri Lanka’s government and offered to lay down their weapons to protect the fighters and civilians who remain trapped in a sliver of land along the island’s north coast.
Military officials rejected the offer as a last-minute act of desperation. They said that fighting continued, and that the army was bracing for suicide bombings. They also claimed that all civilians were out of the combat zone.
The battered remnants of the rebel force, which has been fighting for a homeland for Sri Lanka’s marginalized ethnic Tamil minority, are reportedly trapped in about half a square mile of land.
May 17, 2009 - 11:51 pm 20. Scythianeedle:Okay, a little more research and I find another Habantota on the south coast.
The satellite photo of that region sure doesn’t show anything I could identify as a BILLION DOLLAR Port facility…
I’ve searched around the area, and what strikes me is that Sri Lanka has a bunch of lagoons near the coast, but not very many particularly well-protected harbors.
All I can see in the area is beaches, cultivated citrus groves, neighborhoods of modest bungaloes, a few commercial buildings.
Does anyone know of a way to glean information from Google Earth about the dates or provenance of the satellite images? There are obvious differences in resolution, spectrum sensitivity, angle, etc.
There must be agreements (or intimidation) to account for some details being blocked — I’ve found some regions where I expected to find military installations obscured by black rectangles. But then I find major U.S. military installations where you can almost read the hash marks on the crew chief’s flight jacket in the group crossing the tarmac to the chopper.
(Thanks, Wretchard. I looked at the Wiki article, and I’ll do some more research. Just disappointed that I can’t SEE anything from Google Earth images I would interpret as a BILLION DOLLAR naval port…)
May 17, 2009 - 11:54 pm 21. ledger:@4.Morton Doodslag
“In a sense, ignoring the media is one of the best ways to deprive them of their completely undeserved influence. The affect of their corrupting influence reached its zenith in the last election cycle, and the President which they did so much to install may prove their crowning achievement, or more likely, their worst blunder and their undoing.”
Exactly, the MSM has been converted into a propaganda tool for the left.
My TV went into the dumpster four years ago. I and my family are happier and more productive. We use the internet exclusively. Now, my father has done the same thing and he is happier. He called it the Boob Tube or Idiot Box. He said the Idiot Box just insulted his intelligence with transparent partisan politics and useless TV sitcoms.
If enough people dump their Boob Tube there will a squeeze on the MSM’s advertising revenue (less eyeballs to view ads). This could really hurt them.
If you want to wage war against the left the first place to start is denying their cronies in the MSM ad revenue. Hit them where it hurts the worst – in the wallet.
May 18, 2009 - 12:27 am 22. cellec:Well I hope you’ll forgive an obtuse referrence here, but I just got back from seeing the new Star Trek movie.
With Trek on the brain, this discussion reminded me of an old episode from the original series that seems to keep resurfacing in my mind as I witness any of the various prolonged, apparently-unsolvable conflicts our World has to endure, year after year, decade after decade.
Briefly, the episode involves two planets that have been at war for 500 years, and over the centuries they’ve resolved, not to end the war, but to civilize it, to accomodate their own lives to it, to the point where people voluntarily allow themselves to be euthanized if a computer declares them to to be casualties in a theoretical attack.
A hokey old show perhaps, but if you have an extra 50 minutes to spare, take a quick sojourn into geek-dom and see if this ancient teleplay from the mid-sixties doesn’t ring at least a bit true, as we prepare to watch the Great Powers of today go yet again through the pantomime of a “Peace Process” regarding Israel.
May 18, 2009 - 12:28 am 23. Molon Labe:Latest from BNO http://twitter.com/BreakingNews
Within the last hour, AFP and Reuters are reporting the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran. A official anouncement is expected soon.
BULLETIN — REUTERS: TAMIL TIGER LEADER DEAD, DEFENCE OFFICIALS CONFIRMS
Prabhakaran tried to flee the area in an ambulance along with two close aides, but was ambushed and killed; official anouncement in hours.
May 18, 2009 - 12:43 am 24. Fred2:The Tamil Tigers are world-famous for having invented the suicide belt. From our point of view, it is good that the inventors of the suicide belt cannot be shown to have won because of it.
May 18, 2009 - 12:53 am 25. starling:Wretchard, one of the best books I’ve ever read on any subject, fiction or non-fiction, is Jack Weatherford’s “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.” http://tinyurl.com/Genghis-Khan-Modern
The first book review on the Amazon page (by Jeffrey Steele) says better than I can everything that I liked about the book. If reading the book did nothing else, book it certainly made me understand Kerry’s now-infamous Genghis Khan slander against his fellow Viet Nam veterans.
May 18, 2009 - 1:46 am 26. buddy larsen:…he didn’t mean THAT one, Starling –he meant “Jenjus” Kahn, a Jewish mobster out of Beantown.
May 18, 2009 - 3:09 am 27. buddy larsen:“Western diplomacy” –buy on the rheumatism, Ceylon the news.
May 18, 2009 - 3:24 am 28. starling:…made me understand Kerry’s slander… in a new light.
May 18, 2009 - 3:36 am 29. buddy larsen:…well, try to keep learning, Starling –otherwise you might end up in the senate –
May 18, 2009 - 4:28 am 30. Doug:Like Jenjiz Kahn.
May 18, 2009 - 6:45 am 31. Doug:Jenjiz John
May 18, 2009 - 7:02 am 32. whiskey:(the honorable)
Yes, I’m in LA.
What’s weird is how different the West has been since WWI. I think it’s not due to the death tolls, heck a third of German speakers perished in the Thirty Years War, Westerners have always been willing to slaughter each other and/or peoples living elsewhere, rather it’s whose ox gets gored.
Fighting, particularly in WWI, drew power away from the Intelligentsia, the organizers, the elite, the beautiful people, the various aristocracies (old and new), and so represented a threat.
If you look at what the elites in the West have done, it’s to ally with strategic partners domestically and abroad to fight politically their main power rivals, the ordinary (White) guy. Tommy or GI Joe or Sergeant Rock, same difference.
OF COURSE the Elites must have a low-level war going on forever, to win it decisively would be proof that conflicts can be won, and thus cause a massive mobilization inevitably that would diminish, permanently, their power.
Look at who wielded power BEFORE WWI: artists, writers, newspaper people, the intelligentsia, the suffragettes, and so on. All of whom experienced a catastrophic loss of power during 1914-18 when the entire world was focused on war mobilization. They said, “never again” and thus the Western Pacifism was born. Not out horror due to the losses in the trenches (when has killing EVER upset the West, really?) But their own loss of political, social, and economic power.
May 18, 2009 - 11:00 am 33. Peter Grynch:Cellec put his finger on it when he described that old Star Trek episode. “Briefly, the episode involves two planets that have been at war for 500 years, and over the centuries they’ve resolved, not to end the war, but to civilize it, to accomodate their own lives to it, to the point where people voluntarily allow themselves to be euthanized if a computer declares them to to be casualties in a theoretical attack.”
The UN thinks the way to ensure world peace is to make wars more “civilized”. They created a crazy doctrine called “proportional response” and always look for “cease fires” which inevitably lead to additional future warfare. Of course, the bad actors of the world are guarenteed that they will never pay the ultimate price for their evil if they merely appeal to the UN and say “I’m sorry”. And if they win, the UN let’s them keep the spoils!
May 18, 2009 - 12:37 pm 34. Mark:Wrichard writes: “I think humanitarianism can be a good thing; but my worry is that it has been hijacked, like conservation, to serve political ends that have nothing whatsoever to do with its supposed object. For humanitarianism to work it cannot become a suicide pact.”
Yes, this is precisely the point that Rene Girard makes (e.g. in his books ‘Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World,’ ‘I See Satan Fall Like Lightning,” etc.)
Christianity has been unique in establishing concern for genuine victims (e.g. widows, orphans) as a central teaching, overcoming human (anthropologically-determined) establishment of civilizations on victimization and violence. But once ‘victims’ learn how to game the system, using Christian values against the religion, the integrity of the Christian vision weakens. Political correctness understands the Christian imperative (concern for victims) and Alinsky-like holds (confused) Christians hostage to their Christian ideals.
May 18, 2009 - 12:43 pm 35. Marie Claude:in a word the Shri-Lankeses tell us “mind your own business”
http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/17668
and it’s right that the Chineses are building a hudge harbour there, kind of a base for patrolling the Indian ocean
May 18, 2009 - 1:07 pm 36. Derek:Sri Lanka’s military forces won with Chinese support.
The LTTE was able to maintain their power with Canadian and other support.
Very strange world we live in.
Somehow I think we will pay for it.
Derek
May 18, 2009 - 7:12 pm 37. Ned:@20 Scythianeedle,
If you look in the lower RH corner of the latest version of Googleearth it gives the date of the image.
Ned
May 18, 2009 - 9:41 pm 38. Ned:Dyslexia: lower lefthand corner. Mea culpa.
Ned
May 18, 2009 - 9:51 pm 39. RAH:I believe that Tamil were brought to Ceylon from India because the British thought hey were more docile workers.
Tamil Tigers were supported by the India Tamil region and China supported Ceylon against the Tamil Tigers.Another example of China going against interest of China.
Now I am happy the LTTE got defeated.
But this was part of China’s Great Game against India ands and shows the west is impotent.
This lesson that China is more to be feared and appreciated will be noticed in the East.
This will have other geopolitical consequences.
May 19, 2009 - 1:24 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.