Kilinochchi, the de facto capital of the the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), the ethnic Tamil separatist group that has been waging a brutal war against the Sri Lankan army for decades, has fallen to the Sri Lanka in the on-going six month old offensive. The fall of Kilinochchi sparked celebrations throughout the country that were quickly tempered by a suicide bomber that killed two people in Colombo.
Sri Lanka on Friday announced the capture of the de facto rebel capital, dealing at least a serious symbolic blow to the ethnic Tamil separatists’ ambition to create a homeland of their own. Within hours, in an apparent reprisal, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle bombed the Sri Lankan Air Force headquarters in Colombo, killing two.
The rebel capital, Kilinochchi, lies more than 185 miles north of Colombo and is not a particularly strategic target; the coast and narrow pathways to the Jaffna peninsula to the north are more valuable. But Kilinochchi has tremendous resonance as a headquarters town where for a decade nothing happened outside the gaze of the rebels, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or L.T.T.E.
The group collected taxes from Kilinochchi and ran a parallel system of police and courts. Monuments of dead rebels dotted the town. Journalists were led on tours and put up in guesthouses built and run by the organization.
Because the authorities do not allow journalists to travel freely between government- and rebel-held territory, there was no independent confirmation of the capture of Kilinochchi. The L.T.T.E. did not react, but a pro-rebel news Web site, www.Tamilnet.com, reported that government troops entered a virtual ghost town.
The Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has vowed to crush the guerrillas’ quarter-century campaign, described the town’s capture as “an unparalleled victory.”
“For the last time, I call upon the L.T.T.E. to lay down their arms and surrender,” he said in a nationally televised speech, according to an Associated Press report from Colombo.
Government officials have said they will not return to peace talks until the rebels disarm. That seems unlikely, especially for a group that has perfected the gory practice of suicide bombing.
Shortly after the president’s speech, the suicide bomber detonated a bomb near the Air Force headquarters during the afternoon rush hour.
The government formally annulled a 2002 cease-fire a year ago, and over the last several months, the military has advanced steadily into rebel-held territory, first sweeping the rebels away from the northwestern coast and then pushing them farther into the northeast.
As the fighting has spread, more and more civilians have been displaced from their homes, cornered deeper into rebel-held areas and forced to sleep in temples and schools and some only in makeshift lean-tos in paddies. The United Nations has been allowed to send food rations to what it estimates to be more than 200,000 displaced civilians.
The government’s war effort has been accompanied by a spate of disappearances and abductions, bringing Mr. Rajapaksa’s administration under sustained international criticism.
The test is whether the government, now that it seems to have cornered the rebels, can deliver a political solution acceptable to its Tamil minority. “Most importantly,” asked Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, head of the nonpartisan Center for Policy Alternatives, “will there be a political package or will the regime treat this as a victory for majoritarianism?”
Mr. Rajapaksa’s closest allies, including India and the United States, insist that only a pact that expands political rights for Tamils can end the conflict.