The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebel group announced on 17 May they have "decided to silence our guns," and that their battle with government troops "has reached its bitter end," CNN  and the BBC reported, citing a Tiger spokesman's statement posted on pro-rebel Web site Tamilnet.com.  The statement said, "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger," and that the Tigers had to "remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is expected to announce in a 19 May address to the nation from parliament that military operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are over, according to the Sri Lankan government. The Tigers have admitted defeat.

The defeat of the Tigers is significant for several reasons.  The Colombo government is the first this century to defeat an insurgency.   The Sri Lankan forces did it without modern technology.

The Sri Lankan victory is an alternative, low-tech solution to that being pursued by the US in Afghanistan. It was accomplished with a force ratio in excess of 40 government soldiers for every Tamil fighter, but sufficient to achieve victory by maneuver and sustained military pressure by infantry forces.

That means over a quarter century, the Sri Lankan insurgency evolved into positional warfare in which superior mass of men and conventional materiel triumphed. To date this is the only scenario that has worked.

Sri Lanka is not like Afghanistan, HOWEVER, because the Tamil region is much smaller than the Pashtun region. That means many more men would be required to suppress insurgency in a larger area.

The Tigers conceded without proclaiming any intent to wage a guerilla or terrorism campaign and ostensibly to relieve the hardships on the Tamil civilian population – the majority of Sri Lankans are ethnic Sinhalese.  This is good news, unless you are a Tamil.