Saturday, August 22, 2009

DTN News: Sri Lanka To Train Pakistani Army To Fight Taliban

DTN News: Sri Lanka To Train Pakistani Army To Fight Taliban
*Sri Lanka is to train Pakistan army officers to fight the Taliban insurgency with lessons from its devastating defeat of the Tamil Tigers.
*Source: DTN News / Telegraph UK ~ By Dean Nelson
(NSI News Source Info) ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - August 22, 2009: Colombo has been inundated with training requests since it finally put down the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elaam's (LTTE) 26-year rebellion in a final onslaught which claimed the lives of more than 10,000 civilians and left 300,000 displaced by the fighting. Sri Lankan soldiers take cover under umbrellas during a heavy downpour in Mullaittivu, the former military headquarters of the Tamil Tiger rebels. The apparent accolade for the Sri Lankan forces will cause alarm among human rights groups which have accused the government in Colombo of war crimes over the shelling of civilians in a tiny "no-fire" zone in the last weeks of the war. The government denies the allegation. Many of their artillery assaults were launched using aerial film footage from remote-controlled drones, which the Pakistan government is also to deploy in its own war on militants in the tribal areas along the Afghan border. Now Sri Lanka is planning to set up new training centres in towns formerly held by the LTTE to train foreign forces in special operations. "We received a request from Pakistan to train their officers on our small team operations, so we have decided to open several new training schools in Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and Vavuniya to train local and foreign military officers," said Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka's new army chief. His army's operations manuals were being translated into English so other nationalities could learn their "innovative" strategies, he said.

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