Sri Lanka: January 15, 2005

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Tamils are getting restless over LTTE strategy, and strong arm methods. 

The LTTE was hurt pretty badly by the December tidal waves. This comes on the heels of a reduction in money from overseas supporters, because of the LTTE being tagged an international terrorist organization. Thus the LTTE depends more on taxes it collects from the population it controls. But this population has now been devastated by the tidal waves, killing about 30,000 and injuring, physically or financially, ten times that many.  Many of the Tamils (whose ancestors came over from southern India to work on plantations generations ago), do not trust the native Sinhalese and are wary of government disaster aid. This will slow down the recovery process, and further weaken the LTTE. Over a decade of fighting has already killed about 60,000 people, at least half of them Tamils. But in one day, the death toll about doubled because of the tidal waves. Tamils are getting tired of all the death and destruction, and the splits within the Tamil community before the tidal waves, are getting wider. The hard core LTTE leadership wants to hang on, no matter the cost, until the island is partitioned and the Tamils have their own nation. The Sinhalese say they will never let that happen, and the tidal wave has convinced many Tamils that its time to make a deal. The Sinhalese

 

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