Maybe, just maybe, they'll finish this one

AFP has an article about the 'war' in Ceylon:

Sri Lankan government troops on Monday pushed deeper into the last pockets of jungle still held by the Tamil Tigers after capturing the rebels' final urban stronghold and military headquarters.
Soldiers overran Mullaittivu, a northeastern coastal town held by the Tigers for over a decade, on Sunday, three weeks after taking Kilinochchi, their political capital where they had their own courts, police and a bank.
Army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE) now controlled just a "small strip" of land in the northeast, and were cornered and about to be completely defeated. "We have cleared 95 percent of the work to defeat the Tigers," Fonseka said, as the island's government expressed confidence it would soon win one of Asia's longest-running civil wars after a massive military offensive. "The end of terrorism is near and we will definitely win," Fonseka said.
Helicopter gunships attacked Tiger positions outside Mullaittivu after soldiers had taken control of the town, the military said in its latest update. "As advancing troops are now rolling into the remaining Visuamadu LTTE fort, troops continued to confront several pockets of terrorists," it added.
There has been no comment from the rebels, but the pro-rebel Tamilnet website accused the military of shelling a civilian "safety zone" declared by the security forces. It said 22 civilians had been killed. Battlefield claims from either side cannot be verified as independent journalists are barred from travelling to the conflict zone. Aid agencies and human rights workers are also banned from areas where the Sri Lankan military is active.
President Mahinda Rajapakse congratulated his troops, saying Sri Lankans wanted to pay "heartfelt tributes to the war heroes who have fought relentlessly to eradicate terrorism from our motherland."
The fate of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, who has been leading a separatist war against Sri Lanka's ethnic Sinhalese majority since 1972, is unclear, with some suggesting he has already fled the island. The Tamil Tigers were trained and armed by New Delhi in the early 1980s, but Prabhakaran is now wanted by India in connection with the 1991 murder of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE, which is listed by the European Union and United States as a terrorist organisation, has become infamous for its use of suicide bombers and child soldiers.
The Tigers are widely expected to return to fighting a guerrilla war from hidden jungle bases. "The military phase has come to an end, but the conflict will go on," said Jayadeva Uyangoda, the head of political science at the University of Colombo. "The Tigers may not be able to regain the political or military power that they had before, so they will return to guerrilla tactics."
Military officials say 50,000 government troops are now fighting fewer than 2,000 Tiger fighters. Uncertainty also surrounds the fate of an estimated 150,000-250,000 ethnic Tamil civilians. The government and UN agencies accuse the Tigers of holding them as a human shield. The rebels have accused government troops of firing indiscriminately into areas where there are civilians.
Rajapakse said in a New Year's address that 2009 would be the year of "heroic victory" over the Tigers and would see an end to the war. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the conflict began but the government pulled out of an on-off ceasefire last year and launched a fresh campaign to crush the Tigers once and for all. Rajapakse has promised a political solution to the island's long-running ethnic strife, but only once the rebels are defeated.

Rico says he refuses, on good historical and linguistic grounds, to use the pseudonym Sri Lanka for the ancient and honorable name of Ceylon. But, no matter what you call the place, it would be good if this comic-opera war can finally come to an end...