The Sri Lankan military's success over the Tamil Tigers caused nearly 7,000 civilian deaths and 13,000 injured in the conflict since January. Approximately 275,000 people have been displaced.
The key to the military successes came by a change in tactics:
--small teams of commandoes were sent behind enemy lines
--destruction of the Tamil Tiger's navy
--an offensive to recapture the rebel strongholds in the north
-- going all out against the rebels if they were not sincere in peace talks
--incresing the number in the armed forces from about 80,000 to more than 160,000
--new weapons: fighter jets, artillery guns and multi-barrel rocket launchers
--new military strategies and tactics were evolved
So can Obama pull a similar reverse of fortunes in Afghanistan?
One of the main reasons for the rebels' eastern debacle was the split in 2004 - when the Tigers' influential eastern commander, Col Karuna, broke away because of differences with the leadership.
"The LTTE could never recover from that. Thousands of fighters went away with Karuna and the LTTE could not recruit fresh cadres from the east, dealing a severe blow to their manpower. They struggled hard to replace fallen cadres in the subsequent northern battle," says Col R Hariharan, former chief of military intelligence of the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990.
It was only a matter of time before the Sri Lankan military launched the second phase of its offensive to recapture the rebel strongholds in the north.
The Tamil Tigers had no answer to the bombing missions by air force jets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8063409.stm
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