AFTER NINE years of see-saw combat, the Sri Lankan military has regained the last remaining strip of rebel-held land on the northern Jaffna peninsula, the symbolic centre of the island’s Tamil community.
Military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara yesterday claimed the army was on the verge of total victory in its quarter-century-long battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had waged war for an independent homeland in the north and east of the island, in which more than 70,000 people had died.
The minority Tamil population claimed they were discriminated against by Sri Lanka’s majority Buddhist Sinhalese community. In its armed struggle, launched in 1983, the Tamil Tigers secured large swathes of territory in the islands north and east.
The organisation controlled those regions for years, running its own administrative, judicial, police and revenue systems before steadily losing them to the government after President Mahinda Rajapakse’s coalition withdrew from the 2002 Norway-brokered ceasefire last January, vowing to militarily crush the rebels.
Brig Nanayakkara said the army yesterday captured a fifth airstrip used by the Tigers’ fledgling air wing, as victorious soldiers engaged the rebels fighting a rearguard action, pushing deeper into their shrinking enclave in the northeast.
The Tigers’ nascent airforce repeatedly embarrassed the government over the last two years, bombing its airport and a power station in the capital, Colombo, and an airbase in the north.
The Tigers’ army has claimed it did not suffer any casualties in the latest action, but independent verification of such claims has been impossible in Sri Lanka as neither journalists nor independent observers are permitted into the conflict areas.
In addition, none of the rebels have been available for comment.
After weeks of fierce ground engagements backed by aerial bombing, the rebels’ rout began with the January 2nd capture of their political headquarters of Kilinochchi, 350km (217 miles) north of Colombo, followed by the capitulation of several small, but strategically vital, surrounding regions.
At present, the rebels are confined to the jungle and lagoon district around Mullaittivu, their principal armoury along the northeastern coast. The Sri Lankan military said it was confident it would “completely” crush them over the next few months.
Meanwhile, human rights groups such as Amnesty International are concerned about the plight of more than 250,000 civilians, mostly Tamils, trapped in the conflict areas between the advancing army and retreating rebels.