Download or read book This Divided Island written by Samanth Subramanian and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samanth Subramanian has written about politics, culture, and history for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Now, Subramanian takes on a complex topic that touched millions of lives in This Divided Island. In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to an end the civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere, leaving few places, and fewer people, untouched. What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past, he tells the story of Sri Lanka today. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how the powerful become cruel, and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.
Download or read book Eelam Online written by Maya Ranganathan and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the potential of computer mediated technologies, particularly the internet, in creating and nurturing political and cultural identities among the widely dispersed â oeconflict-generatedâ Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora and traces the engagement of the disapora in Australia with the online media in the struggle for a homeland. Taking the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka as a given, the book explores the way in which new media has added dimensions to the issue. Although the theoretical framework of the book overflows into the areas of political communication, journalism, media theories and studies, nationalism, and social psychology, it draws heavily from the theories of Ellulâ (TM)s â oesocial propagandaâ and Andersonâ (TM)s concept of nation as an â oeimagined community.â Divided into three parts, the first part explores the potential of the internet to lead to the â oeimaginationâ of the nation by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora; the second part traces the online engagement of the diaspora in the making of the homeland; and the third part contrasts it with the experiences and expectations of the homeland of the second generation of migrants in Australia and the Sri Lankan refugees in India. With the focus shifting to the diaspora after the announcement of the decimation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka in May 2009, the book aims to contribute to an understanding of the dynamics to underscore the increasingly significant role that communication technologies play in deciding the weave and warp of the fabric of a nation.
Download or read book The Tamil Eelam Liberation Struggle written by Murugar Gunasingam and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The prime objective of my involvement in this research is to present a clean picture of the immediate and fundamental causes for the launch of the Tamil Eelam freedom struggle by a chronological record of events." ... preface.
Download or read book When Counterinsurgency Wins written by Ahmed S. Hashim and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For twenty-six years, civil war tore Sri Lanka apart. Despite numerous peace talks, cease-fires, and external military and diplomatic pressure, war raged on between the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sinhala-dominated Sri Lankan government. Then, in 2009, the Sri Lankan military defeated the insurgents. The win was unequivocal, but the terms of victory were not. The first successful counterinsurgency campaign of the twenty-first century left the world with many questions. How did Sri Lanka ultimately win this seemingly intractable war? Will other nations facing insurgencies be able to adopt Sri Lanka's methods without encountering accusations of human rights violations? Ahmed S. Hashim—who teaches national security strategy and helped craft the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq—investigates those questions in the first book to analyze the final stage of the Sri Lankan civil war. When Counterinsurgency Wins traces the development of the counterinsurgency campaign in Sri Lanka from the early stages of the war to the later adaptations of the Sri Lankan government, leading up to the final campaign. The campaign itself is analyzed in terms of military strategy but is also given political and historical context—critical to comprehending the conditions that give rise to insurgent violence. The tactics of the Tamil Tigers have been emulated by militant groups in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Whether or not the Sri Lankan counterinsurgency campaign can or should be emulated in kind, the comprehensive, insightful coverage of When Counterinsurgency Wins holds vital lessons for strategists and students of security and defense.
Download or read book Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism written by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The militarisation of the Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka began in the 1970s when attempts to reconcile by peaceful means the Tamils' claim for basic individual and collective rights with the Sinhalese need to allay their chronic sense of insecurity finally failed. Since then the struggle has intensified, erupting successively in the burning of the Jaffna Public Library in 1981, the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983, and the army's assault on Jaffna in 1995. The mainly Hindu Sri Lankan Tamils have always been separated by language, religion, and history from the Buddhist Sinhalese although the minority community in the island vastly outnumbers the Sinhalese when the 40 million Tamils in South India are taken into account. The author's analysis is informed by first-hand knowledge and personal contact with many of the actors involved.
Download or read book TAMIL TIGRESS written by NIROMI DE SOYZA and published by MEHTA PUBLISHING HOUSE. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story of a child soldier in Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades. With her was her lifelong friend, Ajanthi, also aged 17. Leaving behind them their shocked middle-class families, the teenagers had become part of the Tamil Tigers' first female contingent. Equipped with little more than a rifle and a cyanide capsule, Niromi's group managed to survive on their wits in the jungle, facing not only the perils of war but starvation, illness and growing internal tensions among the militant Tigers. And then events erupted in ways that she could no longer bear. How was it that this well-educated, mixed-race, middle-class girl from a respectable family came to be fighting with the Tamil Tigers?
Download or read book In My Mother s House written by Sharika Thiranagama and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2009, the Sri Lankan army overwhelmed the last stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—better known as the Tamil Tigers—officially bringing an end to nearly three decades of civil war. Although the war has ended, the place of minorities in Sri Lanka remains uncertain, not least because the lengthy conflict drove entire populations from their homes. The figures are jarring: for example, all of the roughly 80,000 Muslims in northern Sri Lanka were expelled from the Tamil Tiger-controlled north, and nearly half of all Sri Lankan Tamils were displaced during the course of the civil war. Sharika Thiranagama's In My Mother's House provides ethnographic insight into two important groups of internally displaced people: northern Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims. Through detailed engagement with ordinary people struggling to find a home in the world, Thiranagama explores the dynamics within and between these two minority communities, describing how these relations were reshaped by violence, displacement, and authoritarianism. In doing so, she illuminates an often overlooked intraminority relationship and new social forms created through protracted war. In My Mother's House revolves around three major themes: ideas of home in the midst of profound displacement; transformations of familial experience; and the impact of the political violence—carried out by both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state—on ordinary lives and public speech. Her rare focus on the effects and responses to LTTE political regulation and violence demonstrates that envisioning a peaceful future for postconflict Sri Lanka requires taking stock of the new Tamil and Muslim identities forged by the civil war. These identities cannot simply be cast away with the end of the war but must be negotiated anew.
Download or read book Why Allies Rebel written by Barbara Elias and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analysing policy documents from nine counterinsurgency wars, Elias asks why powerful militaries have difficulty managing local partners. Revealing a critical political dynamic in military interventions, this book will appeal to academics and policymakers addressing counterinsurgency issues in foreign policy, security studies and political science.
Download or read book Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE written by K M de Silva and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive and authoritative study of terrorism in Sri Lanka, K.M. de Silva turns the spotlight on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its role in Sri Lanka’s upheavals over the last few decades. While tracing the emergence of this separatist group and the events that led to its recent collapse, de Silva also seeks to explore the complex relationship between the so-called moderates in Sri Lankan Tamil politics and the Tamil terrorist groups. What emerges is a layered portrait of the dynamics of Sri Lanka’s political system. Extensively researched and loaded with perceptive insights, Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE is the most wide-ranging analysis so far on the LTTE and its violent legacy.
Download or read book The Seasons of Trouble written by Rohini Mohan and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three decades, Sri Lanka’s civil war tore communities apart. In 2009, the Sri Lankan army finally defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers guerrillas in a fierce battle that swept up about 300,000 civilians and killed more than 40,000. More than a million had been displaced by the conflict, and the resilient among them still dared to hope. But the next five years changed everything. Rohini Mohan’s searing account of three lives caught up in the devastation looks beyond the heroism of wartime survival to reveal the creeping violence of the everyday. When city-bred Sarva is dragged off the streets by state forces, his middle-aged mother, Indra, searches for him through the labyrinthine Sri Lankan bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Mugil, a former child soldier, deserts the Tigers in the thick of war to protect her family. Having survived, they struggle to live as the Sri Lankan state continues to attack minority Tamils and Muslims, frittering away the era of peace. Sarva flees the country, losing his way – and almost his life – in a bid for asylum. Mugil stays, breaking out of the refugee camp to rebuild her family and an ordinary life in the village she left as a girl. But in her tumultuous world, desires, plans, and people can be snatched away in a moment. The Seasons of Trouble is a startling, brutal, yet beautifully written debut from a prize-winning journalist. It is a classic piece of reportage, five years in the making, and a trenchant, compassionate examination of the corrosive effect of conflict on a people.
Download or read book After the Fall written by Mohan K. Tikku and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'After the Fall' shows how Sri Lankas post-independence exercise in nation formation was beset with using language domination as an instrument of partisan power and racial memories as the way to define nationhood. That resulted in an escalating conflict through half a century of ethnic violence - giving rise to one of the worlds most fearsome militant movements and the cult of the suicide bomber. It analyzes how Eelam war four (20069), which came like a tornado crashing through all the red-lines of a war (even a guerrilla war), succeeded - and at what cost and consequences.
Download or read book Nationalism Development and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka written by Rajesh Venugopal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the relationship between the ethnic conflict and economic development in modern Sri Lanka.
Download or read book War Journey written by Malarvan and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The child you threatened once, the young shoot you stepped on, the Tamil you teased, is standing with a gun in front of you.’ This short diary was recovered from Malaravan’s kit after he was killed in action in 1992, when barely twenty. In it, he recounts his unit’s journey to Maankulam, the island’s granary, to fight a critical battle where they routed the Lankan military. The LTTE’s planning and tactics, the fervour and camaraderie of the young Tigers, and the actual combat are minutely chronicled. As a foil to the violence, Malaravan brings out the beauty of the Tamil forest and countryside and the humanity and support of the common people for them, despite their suffering under army rule. Bittersweet, fresh and lyrical at times, War Journey is a testament to the Tamil longing for a homeland and the wider conflict that once engulfed the island.
Download or read book Funding the final War written by Jo Becker and published by Human Rights Watch. This book was released on 2006 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And recommendations. Methodology - Recommendations. -- Background. War in Sri Lanka - The Tamil diaspora and support for the LTTE. -- A culture of fear: LTTE intimidation, threats, and violence. -- LTTE control of Hindu temples in the West. -- Paying for "the final war": LTTE fundraising and extortion within the Tamil diaspora in late 2005 and early 2006. Pressures to give money - Attempts to refuse and resist - Fundraising versus extortion - Response from the World Tamil Movement. -- Extortion of Tamil expatriates visiting Sri Lanka. Priya's story - Common extortion methods. -- Response of the U.K. and Canadian authorities. -- Conclusion. -- Acknowledgements.
Download or read book The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka written by Asoka Bandarage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a detailed historically-based analysis of the origin, evolution and potential resolution of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka over the struggle to establish a separate state in its Northern and Eastern provinces. This conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is one of the world’s most intractable contemporary armed struggles. The internationally banned LTTE is considered the prototype of modern terrorism. It is known to have introduced suicide bombing to the world, and recently became the first terrorist organization ever to acquire an air force. The ‘iron law of ethnicity’ – the assumption that cultural difference inevitably leads to conflict – has been reinforced by the 9/11 attacks and conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka. However, the connections among ethnic difference, conflict, and terrorism are not automatic. This book broadens the discourse on the separatist conflict in Sri Lanka by moving beyond the familiar bipolar Sinhala versus Tamil ethnic antagonism to show how the form and content of ethnicity are shaped by historical social forces. It develops a multipolar analysis which takes into account diverse ethnic groups, intra-ethnic, social class, caste and other variables at the local, regional and international levels. Overall, this book presents a conceptual framework useful for comparative global conflict analysis and resolution, shedding light on a host of complex issues such as terrorism, civil society, diasporas, international intervention and secessionism.
Download or read book Still Counting the Dead written by Frances Harrison and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An extraordinary book. This dignified, just and unbearable account of the dark heart of Sri Lanka needs to be read by everyone." — Roma Tearne, author of Mosquito The tropical island of Sri Lanka is a paradise for tourists, but in 2009 it became a hell for its Tamil minority, as decades of civil war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax. Caught in the crossfire were hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns, and other civilians. And the government ensured through a strict media blackout that the world was unaware of their suffering. Now, a UN enquiry has called for war crimes investigation, and Frances Harrison, a BBC correspondent for Sri Lanka during the conflict, recounts those crimes for the first time in sobering, shattering detail.
Download or read book The Cage written by Gordon Weiss and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Cage is a tightly written and clear-eyed narrative about one of the most disturbing human dramas of recent years. . . . A riveting, cautionary tale about the consequences of unchecked political power in a country at war. A must-read." —Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker staff writer and author of The Fall of Baghdad In the closing days of the thirty-year Sri Lankan civil war, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, according to United Nations estimates, as government forces hemmed in the last remaining Tamil Tiger rebels on a tiny sand spit, dubbed "The Cage." Gordon Weiss, a journalist and UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war, pulls back the curtain of government misinformation to tell the full story for the first time. Tracing the role of foreign influence as it converged with a history of radical Buddhism and ethnic conflict, The Cage is a harrowing portrait of an island paradise torn apart by war and the root causes and catastrophic consequences of a revolutionary uprising caught in the crossfire of international power jockeying. Gordon Weiss has lived in New York and worked in numerous conflict and natural disaster zones including the Congo, Uganda, Darfur, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Syria, and Haiti. Employed by the United Nations for over two decades, he continues to consult on war, extremism, peace building, and human rights.
