When militants/rebels/terrorists begin to acquire air power to strike at their targets it becomes a serious cause for concern for any government.
Tamil rebel planes bombed government positions Tuesday in northern Sri Lanka in their second-ever airstrike. The military said six soldiers were killed but that the aircraft were turned back before reaching a key base, reports The Washington Post.
The Tamil Tiger rebels said two airplanes carried out Tuesday’s air attack on the government’s Palaly military base in Jaffna peninsula, and the main armory.
It was the second rebel airstrike since the Tigers started their campaign for a homeland for the country’s Tamil minority in 1983. The first was launched last month, when at least one rebel propeller plane bombed a Sri Lankan air force base outside the capital, Colombo, killing three airmen and wounding 16.
An earlier BBC story (when the first aerial attack took place) says: Despite a ceasefire still being in place on paper, Sri Lanka has been sliding back towards civil war, with more than 4,000 people killed in the past 15 months, our correspondent says.
The rebels have been fighting the armed forces of the predominantly Sinhalese government for much of the past 20 years. They want to establish an independent homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east of the country, to be called Tamil Eelam.
About 65,000 people have been killed and one million displaced by the fighting.
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.