Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war

THE civil war fought in Sri Lanka between the brutal Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam and the government ground on for quarter of a century, claiming perhaps 130,000 lives. In early 2008 the government launched an all-out assault on the Tamil Tigers, with the aim of their unconditional surrender. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were caught up in this final offensive, trapped in a war zone that got smaller and smaller until it consisted of a narrow strip of beach between two warring sides. The UN estimates that 40,000 civilians alone died in the five months before the war’s end in May 2009, when the Tigers surrendered. Our interview here is with Frances Harrison, a former BBC correspondent who has written a powerful book about the war’s final months, “Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War”, from the accounts of Tamils who lived through the hell.

At the war’s end the Sri Lankan government was jubilant, and much of the world relieved that the long conflict was over. At the time, the scale of civilian suffering was not appreciated. Not least, the UN had abandoned its mission in Tamil-controlled territory on the eve of the final onslaught. It has since struggled to come to terms with how it handled matters in Sri Lanka, leaving Tamils to their fate and failing to publicise the fact that the government was deliberately shelling civilians.

On November 15th the UN published an internal review, concluding that a “grave failure” had taken place in Sri Lanka—a systemic breakdown that led to the UN failing in its responsibility to protect civilians. The report fingers various UN agencies, from the Security Council down. The secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, says it will have profound implications for the institution. The case of Sri Lanka underscores how the UN struggles to learn from humanitarian tragedies. The hope is that it will do better this time.