The Tamil Tigers are facing military defeat, but victory will be pyrrhic unless the Sinhalese rethink their supremacist attitudes. Randeep Ramesh in The Guardian:
The speech by Sri Lanka’s president claiming the extinction of the Tamil Tigers might signal the end of a war, but not of the fighting. What underlies the conflict is the idea that Sri Lanka is not a nation defined by geography, but by competing races.
The Indian Ocean island is home to a bewildering array of subnational and communal identities. There are Sinhalese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus, Tamil Christians, Dutch Burghers and Tamil-speaking Muslims known as Moors.
It now looks like two ancient civilisations – Tamils and Sinhalese – are locked in a Manichean struggle. The leadership of both peoples increasingly see Sri Lanka as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil. As both sides view the other as Satan, they both scorn compromise.
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