A FRESH PLAQUE at St. ANTHONY’S CHURCH in Kochchikade, Colombo marking the passage to THE VALES BEYOND of those who died on 21st April 2019
Studies of the LTTE Defeat and the Significance of the Rajapaksa Regime’s Measures
Daniel Alphonsus** ….. A review of Peter Stafford Roberts’ “The Sri Lankan Insurgency: Rebalancing the Orthodox Position” and Stephen Battle’s “Lessons In Legitimacy: The LTTE End-Game Of 2007–2009” … with highlights being the impositions of The Editor, Thuppahi
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in May 2009 the Government of Sri Lanka won the war. This extraordinary turn of events, we are told, resulted from the political carte blanche granted to the Gotabaya, Fonseka and Karanagoda troika. License from on high, the story goes, unshackled their hitherto caged military nous and single-minded, perhaps even bloody-minded, focus on military victory.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, communal relations, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, Rajapaksa regime, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, transport and communications, war reportage, world events & processes
Causes for the Failure of the LTTE Insurgency: A Capsule Statement
Peter S. Roberts: Abstract of Dissertation “The Sri Lankan Insurgency: A Rebalancing of the Orthodox Position” … being a D. Phil Thesis Brunel University April 2016 …. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/13366
The insurgency in Sri Lanka between the early 1980s and 2009 is the topic of this study, one that is of great interest to scholars studying war in the modern era. It is an example of a revolutionary war in which the total defeat of the insurgents was a decisive conclusion, achieved without allowing them any form of political access to governance over the disputed territory after the conflict. Current literature on the conflict examines it from a single (government) viewpoint – deriving false conclusions as a result. This research integrates exciting new evidence from the Tamil (insurgent) side and as such is the first balanced, comprehensive account of the conflict. The resultant history allows readers to reframe the key variables that determined the outcome, concluding that the leadership and decision-making dynamic within the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had far greater impact than has previously been allowed for. The new evidence takes the form of interviews with participants from both sides of the conflict, Sri Lankan military documentation, foreign intelligence assessments and diplomatic communiqués between governments, referencing these against the current literature on counter-insurgency, notably the social-institutional study of insurgencies by Paul Staniland. It concludes that orthodox views of the conflict need to be reshaped into a new methodology that focuses on leadership performance and away from a timeline based on periods of major combat.
SOME PERTINENT STUDIES
Ask these questions: have Peter Roberts, Stephen Battle and Daniel Alphonsus taken in most of these studies? Allowing for the difficulty of covering every essay, what are the implications arising from the lot missed?
IDAG [i.e. Citizen Silva] 2013 “The Numbers Game: Politics of Retributive Justice,” http://www.scribd.com/doc/132499266/The-Numbers-Game-Politics-of-Retributive-Justice OR http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/shrilanka/document/TheNG.pdf.
De Silva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2009b “The Battle for the Vanni Pocket,” Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, March 2009, Vol. 35/2, pp. 17-19.http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/aulimp/citations/gsa/ 2009157395/156554.html
De Silva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2010b “Downfall of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” South Asia Defence and Strategic Review, May-June 2010, pp. 10-15.
Roberts, Michael 2013 “BBC-Blind: Misreading the Tamil Tiger Strategy of International Blackmail, 2008-13,” 8 December 2013, https://thuppahis.com/2013/12/08/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13/#more-1122
Jeyaraj, DBS 2011 “KP” speaks out. An Interview with Former Tiger Chief, Vavuniya: NERDO.
Roberts, Michael 2013 “Introducing “Numbers Game” – A Detailed Study of the Last Stages of Eelam War IV,” 30 April 2013, https://thuppahis.com/2013/04/30/introducing-numbers-game-a-detailed-study-of-the-last-stages-of-eelam-war-iv/
Roberts, Michael 2013 “Towards Citizenship in Thamiilam: The Tamil People of the North, 1983-2010,” South Asia Research vol. 33: 57-75.
Roberts, Michael 2014 Tamil Person and State. Essays, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.
Roberts, Michael 2014 Tamil Person and State. Pictorial, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.
Roberts, Michael 2014 “Generating Calamity, 2008-2014: An Overview of Tamil Nationalist Operations and Their Marvels,” 10 April 2014, http://groundviews.org/2014/04/10/generating-calamity-2008-2014-an-overview-of-tamil-nationalist-operations-and-their-marvels/
Roberts, Michael 2010d “Self-Annihilation for Political Cause: Cultural Premises in Tamil Tiger Selflessness,” in Roberts, Fire and Storm. Essays in Sri Lankan Politics, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, pp. 161-201.
Roberts, Michael 2012a “Inspirations: Hero Figures and Hitler in Young Pirapāharan’s Thinking,” Colombo Telegraph, 12 February 2012, http://thuppahi. wordpress.com/2012/11/26/velupillai-pirapaharan-veera-maranam/… rep. in TPS: Essays, 2014: 69-89.
Filed under centre-periphery relations, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, Rajapaksa regime, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, war reportage, world events & processes
Remembering SBD de Silva: A Scholar in Every Fibre
Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, in Sunday Island, 16 June 2019, where the title reads “One Thing Leads to Another – Memories of a Great Guru”
SBD de Silva, at 92, acted like he would live forever. To the very end, he kept drafting in almost imperceptible scribble – with pen or pencil, whatever being handy, glasses falling off his nose, peering over some text or daily/weekly newspaper – filling an A4 until no blank space was left, and then, so as not to break his concentration or the sentence, without looking, reach for another blank…
Like Scheherazade of the 1001 Nights who had to keep narrating to save her life until each dawn, so did SB, by day and by night, keep writing as if fresh insights, expressed in perfect words, would make him immortal. Yet, ambushed he was by impermanence. But such dedication to his craft and to the country was sheer dream to witness, let alone to hope to emulate, yet must be upheld as a beacon of scholarship for future generations.
SBD de Silva (1926-2018) at a diplomatic reception in the 1950s. His classic, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, tracks our own economic history midst that of the world.
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Our Well of Tears for Kieran de Zoysa: Killed on Easter Sunday, 21st April
Kieran Alexander Shafritz de Zoysa, August 7, 2007-April 21, 2019
Kieran was born in New York City, raised in Washington, D.C., and spent summers in Southern California. He schooled at Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school from age five to 10 and looked forward to returning to Sidwell Friends School in September 2019, following 18 months of living in Colombo and attending Elizabeth Moir School.Kieran was a gifted student with a photographic memory, the diligence to natural grasp of maths and science. Teachers in Washington and Colombo loved his enthusiasm for learning and his drive to do his best always.
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Sri Lanka in Limbo … A Tortoise on a Fence Post
Citizen Silva, in Sunday Times, 16 June 2019, where the title is “The Tortoise on the Fence Post”
While indulging in my usual musings this weekend, pondering over the happenings in our land over the past few weeks, I was reminded about the story told to me by one of my friends a few months ago.
“I say Silva” he began “do you know that our president’s position these days is just like that of the famous tortoise on the fence post?”
I looked at him quizzically. “What tortoise? I cannot remember you telling me that particular story of yours. Remind me – I am all ears.”
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LMD brightens Lanka’s Cricketing History via LIONS OF LANKA
LIONS OF LANKA. Cricket –An Island’s Passion
Vijaya Malalasekera, Chandra Schaffter & Kumar Boralessa, the three sagacious heads who selected Sri Lanka’s Best Cricketers between 1932 and 2019
Dynamite! 9/11 as Dynamite. Friends at War
Michael Roberts
When Islamic zealots within Sri Lanka reaped havoc on people going about their normal practices on Easter Sunday this year 2019 via coordinated suicide attacks that generated carnage and death, I sent A NOTE (see below) around as part of a wider corpus of material on the event. To my amazement, three friends from disparate backgrounds, French, Canadian and Sri Lankan Australian respectively, expressed strong dissent about the Islamic hand behind the 9//11 carnage in USA — firmly asserting that it was an US government plot.
All four Pics from https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/9-11-iconic-images-idUSRTS20CLO
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Okkama Boru or Hocus Pocus in Sri Lanka — say Rajeewa and Gus
ONE: Rajeewa Jayaweera in Lanka: “Blackmail,” in Sunday Island, 9 June 2019
The death fast by a relatively insignificant nationalist Buddhist monk turned politician Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thero MP, of the Jathika Hela Urumaya and UNP National List MP ended on the fourth day. The monk was demanding the resignation or removal of Rishard Bathiudeen MP, and Minister for Industry & Commerce, Resettlement of Protracted Displaced Persons, Co-operative Development, Vocational Training & Skills Development. He is also the leader of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC). Others in the monk’s list were Western Province Governor Azath Salley and Easter Province Governor MLMA Hizbullah.Rathana Thero alleged that all three Muslim politicians had links to the now banned Jihadi terrorist group National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ). 
Badiuddin
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SOFA — American Boots in Sri Lanka in ‘Soft Power’ Insertion
Daya Gamage, in Asian Tribune, 6 June 2018, with this title “U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy Report 2019: Military presence to secure ‘Homeland’.”
Coinciding the Asia Security Summit – the Shangri-la Dialogue – in Singapore in which US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan was the major participant, on June 1 Washington released the 2019 the Trump-Defense Department-designed Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, labeling Asia the ‘priority Theater’, and explicitly declaring, the U.S. enhanced military presence in the region is to “protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life”.U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan speaks at the IISS Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, June 1, 2019 – All about Military and Defense issues..
Similarly, the first sentence of the report itself (“The Indo-Pacific is the single most consequential region for America’s future.”) could not be more explicit.
Filed under american imperialism, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, economic processes, Indian Ocean politics, legal issues, military strategy, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes
