Reconciliation Stops Insurgencies

The head of the Tamil Tigers, the only insurgent group I know of that has a nickname, has reportedly been killed, seemingly putting an end to the 25 year-old civil war. However, despite this there is still a Tamil minority and a Sinhalese majority, and if the central Sri Lankan government persists in what the Tamils believe to be repression, some new Velupillai Prabhakaran, a different rebel leader, will rise up in his place, and the guerrilla war will start anew. The Sri Lankans must understand that insurgencies sustain themselves through repression as an instrument of state policy, and to defeat an insurgency you must end the repression. The next few years, with no successor to the Tamil Tiger movement, offers an opportunity.

Matt Yglesias has similar thoughts.

The End Of Conventional Warfare

You may not hear a lot about it, but one of the longest civil wars in world history may come to an end this weekend, as the government of Sri Lanka claims to have defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels on the battlefield. However, the rebel leaders remain at large. The government has control of the coastline, confining the rebels to a small patch of land. The best part of this is that civilians who were caught in the middle of the conflict have poured across the front lines and appear to be out of danger. Small comfort to the 7,000 civilians who have died this year.

It seems like the fatal mistake for the Tamil Tigers came when they engaged the government in conventional warfare. Having lost, they will probably just revert back to the expected guerrilla tactics. The future of modern warfare will go pretty much like this, and I don't know that counter-insurgency has proved so successful that we have figured out a remedy here.