On Remembrance Day I reflect on the waste and stupidity of war.
And the worst war right now, per capita, is in Sri Lanka. When I was there about 10yrs ago I met no one who had not lost a family member.
Recently I watched a short excerpt on PBS FRONTLINE of a full-length documentary called “My Daughter the Terrorist”.
The film introduces Dharshika and Puhalchudar, two 24-year-old women who have been living, training and fighting side-by-side for the past seven years. They are part of the Black Tigers, and are prepared to strap Claymore mines to their chests and blow up themselves and anyone within 100 feet of them to benefit their cause.
“When we have no bullets left and can’t do anything, we have our cyanide capsules,” Dharshika said, revealing the small glass cylinder filled with cyanide that both she and Puhalchudar wear around their necks.
Gradually, the film shares some of Dharshika’s past, and her personal reasons for fighting with the Tamil Tigers. She left home and joined the group before she became a teenager. …
In the West we simplify these civil wars as religious conflicts. Tamil Hindu vs ruling Sinhalese Buddhist, in this case.
But Dharshika is Christian. A girl who wanted to become a nun.
A year after her father was killed (working in a post office) by a Sri Lankan government bomb dropped from the sky on her town, she was recruited by the Tigers.
Make no mistake, the Tigers are as ruthless as anyone, anywhere. Canada was a principle source of funds for them, at least until 2006 when they were named a “terrorist group”. (I don’t know if Canadian dollars supplied to them has decreased since then.)
Considered the most professional guerilla organization in the world and one of the first to employ suicide bombing, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have engaged the Sri Lankan government in a brutal civil war for the past 25 years. It’s one of the longest-running wars in Southeast Asia in which an estimated 70,000 people have lost their lives.
In an effort to create an independent Tamil state in northeastern Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers, as they are also known, have conducted at least 170 suicide-bombing operations since fighting began — by far the most attacks carried out by any guerilla group until the Iraq war in 2003. In recent weeks, government forces have pushed deep into Tamil territory toward the Tigers’ administrative capital of Kilinochchi in an all-out offensive to destroy the organization for good.
… 30 percent of these suicide missions were carried out by women.
You should be able to watch the PBS edit on FRONTLINE.
But here’s a short snippet if that does not work:
I notice that George Bush didn’t send troops to Sri Lanka. Nations like this need mediators, not profiteering war mongers.
Rick McCharles 