The re-conquest of Kilinochchi after a decade marks a decisive moment in the Sri Lankan government’s military offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. With the Tigers’ last sea-base of Pooneryn under army control and the A-9 highway open for the free movement by land deep into the north, the army is now confident of wresting all remaining territory from the Tigers. The battle will now be carried into the Mullaithivu district and the Wanni jungles, the Tigers’ last stronghold, where they may bare uglier fangs than in Kilinochchi. The symbolic value of the Kilinochchi conquest, however, outweighs its strategic advantage. The town had been the administrative headquarters of the Tigers, with its own time zone, judiciary and banking. The army takeover, which Vellupillai Prabhakaran had dismissed as an impossibility as recently as in November, deals a crippling blow to the LTTE’s prestige and clearly establishes the Sri Lankan army’s military advantage. But that is the limit to which the significance of the humbling of Kilinochchi should be read. Winning over lost territory does not imply the decimation of the Tigers, who will now return to guerrilla warfare and try to spread the army as thinly as possible over the north and make Colombo doubly vulnerable to suicide missions. Besides, a regained Kilinochchi has been lost before, as in 1998. The government cannot rule out the possibility of the Tigers, though now much reduced in strength, regrouping and reasserting themselves.

Thus the military victory is unlikely to yield a permanent cure for Sri Lanka’s troubles. The island’s president, Mahinda Rajapakse, is not unaware of this. The council elections in the eastern territories just freed of the Tigers show that the current administration may try to find a lasting political solution through what Mr Rajapakse calls the four Ds of demilitarization, democratization, development and devolution. But a resurgent Sinhala pride and nationalism, upbeat after the victory, may blind the government to its own much-vaunted principles. The army’s offensive carries a high human cost. This might prove to be insurmountable if the government forgets the hardships of the civilian population, facing the brunt of the violence, and, ultimately, the issues of the people’s political freedom and choices, which is what gave the Tigers their power over them.