Article was first published in the South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR), on My 25, 2009
If such an outcome were to be secured in Iraq or Afghanistan or, now, even in Pakistan, it would be embraced by the West as an unadulterated and righteous triumph. In Sri Lanka, however, it appears to have provoked, across much of Europe and among the most prominent international agencies – including the United Nations (UN) – a seething and barely concealed outrage (Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, made a brief and disapproving visit, demanding "immediate and unimpeded" access to all displacement camps). There is a sense, not of a dreaded terrorist organisation having been defeated and destroyed, but of collaborators, comrades, fellows at arms, lost to the enemy.