For 26 years, a war between Sri Lankan authorities and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ravaged the island nation, killing more than 70,000 people as the ruling ethnic Sinhalese majority fought the separatist Tamils. In May the fighting came to an end, as Sri Lanka's army trapped a cohort of LTTE stalwarts in a 2 sq. mi. sliver of territory in the nation's northeast and killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the group's elusive chief. Though the end of the ghastly conflict was cause for celebration, beleaguered Sri Lankans were left to languish in the aftermath of a war in which neither side could claim the moral high ground. To crush the rebels, the Sri Lankan government suppressed dissent, curtailed human rights and green-lighted a final onslaught that killed 7,000 civilians, according to the U.N. For their part, the Tigers who were considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and U.N. and who at one point controlled a quarter of the country and installed their own system of roads, taxes and courts pioneered suicide bombing as an insurgent tactic and used civilians as human shields. More than 250,000 Tamil civilians were detained after the fighting petered out; in December, the government moved to accelerate their release.
The Top 10 Everything of 2009
- Top 10 Albums
- Top 10 Animal Stories
- Top 10 Apologies
- Top 10 Art Exhibitions
- Top 10 Awkward Moments
- Top 10 Best Business Deals
- Top 10 Breakups
- Top 10 Buzzwords
- Top 10 Children's Books
- Top 10 Crime Stories
- Top 10 Editorial Cartoons
- Top 10 Facebook Stories
- Top 10 Fashion Faux Pas
- Top 10 Fashion Moments
- Top 10 Feuds
- Top 10 Fiction Books
- Top 10 Fleeting Celebrities
- Top 10 Gadgets
- Top 10 Green Ideas
- Top 10 Heroes
- Top 10 iPhone Apps
- Top 10 Late-Night Jokes
- Top 10 Magazine Covers
- Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
- Top 10 Movie Performances
- Top 10 Movies
- Top 10 New Species
- Top 10 News Stories
- Top 10 Nonfiction Books
- Top 10 Oddball News Stories
- Top 10 Pariahs
- Top 10 Pictures of the Year
- Top 10 Plays and Musicals
- Top 10 Political Gaffes
- Top 10 Quotes
- Top 10 Religion Stories
- Top 10 Scandals
- Top 10 Scientific Discoveries
- Top 10 Songs
- Top 10 Sports Moments
- Top 10 T-Shirt-Worthy Slogans
- Top 10 TV Ads
- Top 10 TV Episodes
- Top 10 TV Series
- Top 10 Tweets
- Top 10 Underreported Stories
- Top 10 Untruths
- Top 10 Video Games
- Top 10 Viral Videos
- Top 10 Worst Biz Deals
TIME charts the highs and lows of the past year in 50 wide-ranging lists