On 31st December, the LTTE Terrorists destroyed the water tank that supplied water to the whole Kilinochchi area, thus depriving people of the area their basic right to water, an already scarce commodity in the region.

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Courtesy: Defence.lk

Vankalai declared a sanctuary

By Lankika de Livera  

Vankalai, in the Mannar district, with its numerous bird species, has been declared a sanctuary by the Department of Wild Life Conservation (DWLC), a first in the area since the armed conflict erupted in the north several decades ago. 

This sanctuary, partly a Wetland, comprises Puliyantivu island, Tiruketiswaram, Pallimunai, Vankalai and the strips of land on either side of the causeway connecting the island of Mannar to the mainland. Covering about 4,800 hectares, it consists of arid-zone thorn scrubland and pastures, waterholes and tanks, sand dunes, mangroves, salt marshes, lagoons and sea-grass beds and maritime grasslands.

National Post    

On Friday, Sri Lanka's army captured Kilinochchi, the de facto capital of the Tamil Tigers. This marks a crippling blow for the Tigers, a rebel militia and terrorist group that first took up arms more than a quarter-century ago. It also poses an indirect security risk for Canada: As the Tigers are routed from the battlefield, Ottawa must guard against fleeing Tiger leaders seeking sanctuary among this country's large Ontario-based community of expatriate Tamils.

B. Muralidhar Reddy 

Kilinochchi: To describe Kilinochchi, the administrative and political headquarters of the LTTE which fell into the hands of the Sri Lankan military on Friday, as a “ghost town” is an understatement. 

It is a town without a soul, roofs, windows and any conceivable civil and administrative infrastructure. For a bustling town that is home to an estimated 1,00,000 people, the destruction left behind presumably by the fleeing Tiger cadre as the military advanced is to be seen to be believe.

By A Selvaraj, TNN  

CHENNAI: The ‘Q’ branch police on Tuesday arrested a 23-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil for helping the LTTE smuggle goods from the state. Dileepan, a native of Jaffna, was arrested from Red Hills and three satellite phones which he had brought from Switzerland were recovered from him. He landed in the police net after sleuths traced the calls he made to an LTTE organiser, Antony, who was under police detention.

On November 27, 2008, Velupillai Prabhakaran, supremo of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, proclaimed in his annual Heroes’ Day message that the Sinhala state was “living in a dreamland of military victory.” He promised that it was “a dream from which it will awake.” A month earlier he had declared the capture of Kilinochchi — the LTTE’s administrative hub and de facto ‘capital’ following the loss of Jaffna in 1995 — to be “a day dream of Rajapaksa.” The realisation of this dream in the New Year is a body blow from which there can be no recovery as far as anyone knows. This is true in a political as much as military sense. Militarily, the LTTE has taken a continuous battering over the past two years. President Mahinda Rajapaksa did give it a window of opportunity to return to the peace talks. But after the success of the Mavil Aru operation — provoked by the Tigers’ foolish act of blocking the sluice gates — there was no stopping the Sri Lankan armed forces. In 2007 they rapidly evicted the LTTE, which had been fractured and weakened by the Karuna revolt, from the province. More surprisingly, over the past year the Sri Lankan army, backed effectively by the air force and navy, has made dramatic inroads into LTTE-held territory in the Northern Province. The capture of Kilinochchi was delayed owing to the presence of a large number of civilians, torrential rains, and the government’s determination to avert collateral damage. President Rajapaksa has done well to emphasise that the military achievement was not a victory of “one community over another” or a “defeat of the North by the South” but “a decisive victory over savage terrorism.”

by Dayan Jayatilleka

"Hasta la Victoria Siempre!" ("Ever Onward to Victory!")   

- Che Guevara 

"One thing is now required—to deal the death-blow to the fascist beast…The last storming of the Hitlerite lair is on…give them no respite until they cease resistance."

- Stalin, Order of the Day, May 1, 1945 

With the liberation of Paranthan and Kilinochchi, the war has pivoted decisively in favor of the Sri Lankan armed forces and against the LTTE. We are winning a ground war, not against sporadic suicide bombers or home made rockets causing single digit casualties over long years, but against a ferocious insurgent foe fielding large formations, armed with heavy artillery, fast boats and light aircraft. We are doing so not with open ended foreign patronage, not while imposing collective punishment and inflicting civilian casualties which are almost a fifth of armed enemy casualties, but with minimum collateral damage despite the use of human shields by the enemy. If in the eyes of some, colossally disproportionate force is perfectly ok as a "defensive "measure to protect one’s citizens against the dangers and disruptions of sporadic rocket attacks, how much greater the existential danger to the Sri Lankan state and how much more justified Sri Lanka’s offensive against an enemy who has murdered many of our leaders, stultified our economic development for decades and secretly built six airstrips capable of deploying aircraft to bomb targets anywhere on this small island?

N. Ram

‘Our armed forces are making rapid progress’

Chennai: Post-Kilinochchi, President Mahinda Rajapaksa expects the Sri Lankan armed forces to make rapid advances and capture Elephant Pass, which controls access to the Jaffna Peninsula, and other key targets in a short while. He is confident that, in the near future, the fighting cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will have nowhere to go outside the jungles of Mullaithivu district in northern Sri Lanka.

Speaking to me over the telephone from Colombo on Sunday evening, Mr. Rajapaksa expressed satisfaction that his ‘Zero Civilian Casualty Policy’ was implemented perfectly by the armed forces during the operations to liberate Kilinochchi, the administrative hub and de facto ’capital’ of the LTTE. They would continue to implement this policy in all their operations.

Jan 2 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's military on Friday said it had seized Kilinochchi, which the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had claimed as capital of the nation they want to create for Sri Lankan Tamils.   

With that, the military has struck a strategic and symbolic blow that shows it has made the most battlefield progress at any time since the war began in 1983. That has analysts asking if the ground war could soon be over.   

Here are some scenarios of what could happen next:

The recently concluded Future Minds exhibition in Jaffna was a huge success. It drew thronging crowds for several days. The youth were ebullient and children frolicking. Enthusiasm that people evinced in that fun filled educational and industrial event bore testimony to the fact that the Taliban culture the LTTE imposed on Jaffna has given way to a democratic way of life. The exhibition had been preceded by a couple of mass protests against the LTTE in Jaffna. 

This kind of public response is indicative of the fact that the army has won over the northern populace and the northerners are thirsting for democracy and a better life which they richly deserve. It has also given the lie to the claim that the LTTE still enjoys popular support and people are awaiting its return. Those who support terrorism from a safe distance and expect the LTTE to make a comeback and turn that part of the country into a hellhole are only hoping against hope.