SINGAPORE — Sri Lanka's government says its armed forces are in the final stage of a campaign to annihilate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebel group that has been fighting for 25 years to carve out a homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east of the island-state.
Some hardliners in the Sinhalese-dominated government and military claim that the LTTE rebels will be wiped out by yearend.
In the history of modern counterinsurgency, this would be a rare armed victory over a potent uprising — one that would stand in stark contrast to the failure of U.S., NATO, Australian and New Zealand forces in Afghanistan, with offshore support from Japan, to crush a resurgent Taliban.