ABSTRACT
Sri Lanka’s success in retaking large parts of the East and the Jaffna peninsula can be attributed to its calculated use of biopower in those areas prior to and, in the case of the East, parallel to, its military offensives. With the military defeat and the obliteration of the politics of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, the Muslims reverted from being a ‘friendly’ race/species for the state, to the category of an ‘enemy’ race/species. Like the biopolitical nurturing and unleashing of Jihadism in the East, Sri Lanka used the economic embargo in the North to produce the effects of battle in the prelude to the implementation of its military strategy to retake control of the LTTE stronghold, Jaffna. In strategic terms, the existence of Tamil–Muslim tensions and the large scale presence of armed Jihadists in the East pushed the LTTE from the towns and rural areas of the East and into the jungles.
