The Moment

Fifteen years ago, Tamil rebels overran a marshy strip along Sri Lanka's northwest coast. Pooneryn became a headache for Colombo: a strategic redoubt, shored up with artillery, that shielded the base of operations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), one of the world's most dogged insurgent groups. But on Nov. 15, government forces seized Pooneryn, giving Colombo full control over its western seaboard for the first time in over a decade. The government called for a week of celebrations.

Sri Lanka's bitter, 25-year-old civil war — Asia's longest-running conflict — has never been closer to a military solution. Since a cease-fire disintegrated in 2005, steady government advances first pushed out the L.T.T.E. from their positions in the island nation's east, then cut off most of the maritime smuggling networks supplying the insurgency in its northern stronghold. The L.T.T.E.'s de facto capital, Kilinochchi, is encircled by troops approaching on three fronts.

A final reckoning looms. Despite Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's offer of talks, stubborn resistance is expected from the cornered L.T.T.E. — a group which, in its struggle for an independent Tamil homeland, pioneered suicide bombing and taught fighters to imbibe cyanide pills rather than surrender.

An estimated 70,000 people have died since hostilities began, and both the government and the rebels stand accused of a catalogue of crimes. Many Tamils say they face discrimination from official policies, and recent security measures throughout the country have heightened the sense of a minority under siege in the majority Sinhalese state. Upwards of 300,000 people may be displaced by the latest combat, though no journalists can enter the conflict zone to confirm this. Whatever the outcome of this campaign, the work of accounting for both sides' misdeeds and of repatching Sri Lanka's tattered society must begin. There, as elsewhere, peace cannot be won by military bravado alone.