tagged w/ Suicide Bombings
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[caption id="attachment_29" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="The body identified as Tamil Tiger leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, being carried through Sri Lankan troops."][/caption]
When Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller and I set out a few weeks ago to cover what appeared to be the waning days of the 25-year conflict in Sri Lanka, we knew that the fighting could come to an end before we ever got our piece to air.
And so it did. On Tuesday, Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the LTTE, a militant group that has been fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority for nearly three decades.
Over the years, the war in Sri Lanka has received little attention in the US. It was a local conflict, and the US never really had a dog in the fight. That’s how it appears on the surface anyway. But dig a little deeper and you see that the war in Sri Lanka has had repercussions that extend far beyond the small island nation’s shores.
The LTTE are in many ways the original gangsters of modern day terror. They have been one of the most cutting-edge insurgencies the world has ever seen, and their tactics have served as a model and inspiration for terrorist organizations around the globe. Today, the Tiger’s influence can be seen from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the streets of an increasingly fragile Pakistan.
Inventors of the suicide vest, the LTTE conducted more suicide operations than Hamas and Hezbollah combined. Innovators in international fund raising, they proudly boasted that they were the only militant group to have formed a navy and an air force.
But after Sept. 11, the mighty Tigers, who once controlled up to a quarter of Sri Lankan territory, quickly found themselves on the wrong side of history. And the once feeble government of Sri Lanka was emboldened by the Global War On Terror launched by the US and its allies.
We’ll examining this and much, much more in our piece, including if the conflict is truly over. We’ve seen at least one premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished” since the war on terror began. Major combat operations in Sri Lanka may have ended, but there’s a lot of hard feelings and the long road of reconciliation still lies ahead.[caption id="attachment_29" align="alignleft"... more
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Via The Daily Dish, a clip of a film called "Four Lions" which may well be the world's first English-language comedy about...suicide bombing?
The filmmaker, Chris Morris, is a British comedian who apparently has no problem attracting controversy. From The Mirror's article about the movie:
Key scenes from the film are said to include a farcical suicide bomb plot at a Sheffield fun run that sees the bombers dressed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle outfits....Despite the film’s contentious subject matter, Morris seems undeterred by the hullabaloo that will inevitably greet the movie. "Most of us would dearly love to laugh in the face of our worst fears”, he says. “Why aren't we laughing at terrorists? Because we didn't know how to, until now."
This is actually a point I find myself agreeing with. Admittedly, the clip made me laugh. (His voice never changes - and the beard thing! Hilarious.) I think the more seriously we take terrorism the more it accomplishes its goal of creating, well, terror. When the Bush Administration made the choice to declare a War on Terror after 9/11, instead of treating the attacks as heinous criminal acts, it escalated the gravity of the terrorists themselves. It made them larger than life, gave their actions more power. A film like this brings terrorists back down to earth. They're just people, right? Horribly-intentioned people.
I look forward to hearing the Current Movies review from Sundance!
Recently on the Current News Blog:
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- Haiti: Challenges to comeVia The Daily Dish, a clip of a film called "Four Lions" which may well be... more
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March 29, 2010 2:19 a.m. EDT
Moscow (CNN) -- Explosions rocked a pair of central Moscow subway stations during morning rush hour Monday, killing at least 37 people and wounding 10 others, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The first blast occurred about 8 a.m. at Lubyanka subway station. That explosion killed 25 people -- 14 aboard the train and 11 on the platform.
The Lubyanka station is near the Kremlin and the nation's intelligence service, the Federal Security Service.
Another blast happened about 30 minutes later at Park Kultury station, on the same train line. The Emergency Situations Ministry reported 12 dead in the second explosion. Russian TV said the blast killed 15 people and injured at least 10 others.
Millions of commuters use the Moscow metro system every day.
Are you there? Send CNN photos, video text
Officials immediately cast suspicion on Chechen separatists for the explosions. A female suicide bomber in August 2004 killed nine people and herself, and wounded 51 others, when she detonated a bomb outside a subway station in northeastern Moscow. In February 2004, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb on a Moscow metro train, killing 40 people and injuring 100 others. A suicide attack in 2003 killed 15 people at a Moscow concert.
Chechen terrorists killed hundreds in 2004 at a school in Beslan, Russia. They also were suspected in the downing of two Russian airplanes that year in an attack that killed 89.
Chechnya is a southwestern Russian republic, in the Caucasus Mountains region. The Chechens have long fought for independence from Russia.
Chechnya's population of 600,000 to 800,000 is primarily made up of Sunni Muslims and Russian Orthodox Christians. Thousands have been killed and 500,000 Chechen people have been displaced in their conflict with Moscow.
CNN's Matthew Chance contributed to this report.March 29, 2010 2:19 a.m. EDT
Moscow (CNN) -- Explosions rocked a pair of central... more
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Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Sri Lanka to see how the Tamil Tigers, one of the world's most lethal and influential terrorist organizations, were finally defeated.Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Sri Lanka to see how the Tamil... more
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Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of army recruits Tuesday in an Iraqi province where devastating attacks persist despite security improvements in the rest of the country. At least 28 people died, the Iraqi police and military said.Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of army recruits Tuesday in an Iraqi... more
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Most of the explosions have resulted in more injuries than casualties, but at least 7 people have died in the violence as Shiites make their way to visit the burial site in Karbala of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures.
Two other attacks saw a government official in Samarra killed by a suicide bomber who hid his explosives under the wheelchair he was using, and 4 police officers killed in Mosul when a convoy came under gunfire.Most of the explosions have resulted in more injuries than casualties, but at least 7... more
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Tori
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3 years ago
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An Israeli woman has been killed in a suicide bombing claimed by Palestinian militants in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first such attack in a year. How will this affect the recently renewed peace efforts?An Israeli woman has been killed in a suicide bombing claimed by Palestinian militants... more
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When mounting stories like the most recent death of Benazir Bhutto happens, are the killers making more non-believers than believers? The shadow of a real theological paradox looms in the mind .. When mounting stories like the most recent death of Benazir Bhutto happens, are the... more
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