Asia-Pacific

By the looks of the attack’s aftermath, nothing could be further from the truth. Air Lanka, the national flag carrier, lost six planes in the bombing.

Even worse off is the Sri Lankan tourist industry, the principal source of the country’s foreign exchange, which can no longer sell travelers on the island’s safety. In Colombo’s independent Sunday Times on Aug. 7, an editorial blamed the attack for crashing the “already fragile and just about managing” tourist industry on its head.

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The credibility of the political leadership too is now seriously in doubt. According to pundits, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was already facing a no-confidence motion and thinning parliamentary support, must come up with a power-sharing solution that will slake the Tigers’ demands for secession.

In Sri Lanka, the minority Tamils often face discrimination in education and jobs from the majority Sinhalese. The LTTE has been at war with the government since 1983, when it began its mission to create a Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern parts of the island.

According to reports, the LTTE’s endless source of money comes from its trade in narcotics. These funds enable the group to purchase highly sophisticated weaponry, including heavy artillery, from the international arms bazaar.

After the bombing, the Sri Lankan press was awash with condemnation of the Tigers’ no-holds-barred tactics. “The horrors unleashed by the Tigers,” a July 31 editorial in the government-owned Daily News read, “should have spoken more eloquently than words and borne the truth of the LTTE’s intransigence.”

Amantha Perera, writing in The Sunday Leader of Colombo (Aug. 5), noted that immediately after the attack, international flights into Sri Lanka were being “slapped with high insurance premiums,” and five-star hotels were “receiving cancellations around the clock.” The editorial lamented, “The rot is setting in.”