Abstract
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which waged a fierce war for a separate state of Tamil Eelam in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka since the 1980s, has been crushed. Its top political and military leadership, including its near legendary leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, has been virtually wiped out; most of its fighting cadre have been killed, others have surrendered, and the remnants are scattered or are on the run. Before Eelam War IV, which proved to be its Waterloo, the LITE controlled or at least had significant presence in over 15,000 square kilometres or one-quarter of the territory and two-thirds of the coastline of the Sri Lankan island. For Sri Lanka, it was a hard-earned victory that cost the island over 100,000 lives, besides huge social, economic, and military losses. The victory has certainly removed a big hurdle in the way of a political solution of the ethnic separatist conflict in Sri Lanka.
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Notes
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© 2010 Shaheen Akhtar
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Akhtar, S. (2010). Sri Lanka. In: Wirsing, R.G., Ahrari, E. (eds) Fixing Fractured Nations. Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281271_8
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