SJS 7: Sri Lanka's Lingering State of War

Sources:  Thiranagama, Sharika. “Sri Lanka’s Lingering State of War.” Current History Apr. 2014: 163-65. Print.

Author Credentials: Sharika Thiranagama is an assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University, so the board of admissions allowed her to teach because they believe she is educated enough on the subject, and she is also the author of In My Mother's House: Civil War in Sri Lanka, published in 2011. She has experience on learning about the state of Sri Lanka, and the capability to teach others about the events. 

Summary: Sri Lanka has had devastating wars in the past which have nearly ruined it's nation, and although progress is being made, they are far from success. There is still conflict because the LTTE is still prominent. The LTTE is a group of Tamil minorities that joined and killed others because of inequality, which we learned about in a case study during the South Asia unit. The LTTE believed they had disadvantages because they were a Hindu minority group, so they used violence to reveal their anger towards other Sri Lanka citizens. Now, people are buried all over the country. These large graves continue to haunt Sri Lankans, shaping contemporary issues through past and future violent breakouts. The security system has a hard time controlling the LTTE, because their violent tactics are sometimes too powerful. The economy also struggles at times because the ethnic group uses a lot of the country's money for weaponry, and other money goes towards the burial of the mass amounts of bodies. Also, some in Sri Lanka believe that the previous violence almost gives them more of a reason to act out now. The past has not been completely resolved, so some tend to believe that makes violence in the contemporary world okay. The article states; "Sri Lanka is postwar, but not post-conflict." This connects to the socio-historical events we have learned about, and how all actions in history influence modern life and how that country chooses to socially interact now that they know the history behind the troubles in their nation. 

Analysis: I believe the author makes a strong argument. She does a great job of pulling out the facts and emphasizing things we have already learned in the class, such as the basics of the LTTE and the government's efforts to stop them. She includes dates and numbers recorded from official historians to prove her information is factual. She then explains why she includes that particular information in her article, and why it is important to the main topic. She provides great evidence, using statistics from the events along with potential conflicts that can arise due to their current position, and her reasons make sense and all connect through several central ideas. She also very clearly shows a difference between fact and opinion: she states facts, then later explains why her what her opinion is and how her opinion is supported by the information given prior. She is reliable because of her high credentials, her neatly written work, and her great use of an explanation.