Abstract
In the first few months of 2009, thousands of innocent civilians were killed as the Sri Lankan government besieged the notorious Tamil Tigers, after a brutal struggle that had lasted for almost thirty years. Sri Lanka claimed that the victory was the product of the “Rajapaksa Model” of counter-insurgency (COIN), but many western theorists disputed this claim and put Sri Lanka’s success down to an opportunistic reaction to a unique set of events. This paper investigates whether Sri Lanka’s defeat of the LTTE is an example of genuine COIN success by analyzing the causes of the conflict and more specifically the factors that had up until then prevented its resolution. Finally, it investigates why the “Rajapaksa Model” led to the defeat of the world’s foremost terrorist group. This paper argues that Sri Lanka’s victory in this case is not as a genuine COIN campaign because it failed to build on the military victory and did not address the underlying causes of the conflict. The “Rajapaksa Model” of COIN provided a remedy rather than a cure.
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