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The Tamil Tigers, who controlled the majority of the territory in the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka at the peak of their strength, responded to state violence with ruthless techniques of warfare, weaponizing human bodies through the systematic deployment of suicide bombers. Frequently targeting civilians, over the years they managed to kill several politicians, including the prime minister of India in 1991 and the president of Sri Lanka in 1993. The Tigers also massacred Sinhalese and Muslims living in villages bordering the front lines of the areas they controlled, while forcefully recruiting child soldiers from the Tamil population.

After four failed rounds of peace talks, an unsuccessful deployment of Indian peacekeeping forces, and a cease-fire agreement that lasted from 2002 until 2005, sporadic fighting resumed. By January 2008, the government declared a full military operation against the Tigers. Blasting its way through the northeast tip of the island, the Sri Lankan military slowly regained control of most of the regions previously held by the rebel group, while the civilian population that either sympathized with the Tigers or were afraid of the government forces moved deeper and deeper into the small swath of land still controlled by the Tamil guerrillas—an area characterized by the government as the “Tiger cage.”

At one point, the Sri Lankan military unilaterally declared the creation of three no-fire zones within the cage (including the one mentioned in the intercepted cable), urging the civilian population to gather in these zones by dropping leaflets from planes and notifying them through the radio and loudspeakers. As an estimated 330,000 internally displaced people assembled in these zones, the United Nations erected makeshift camps and, together with several humanitarian organizations, provided food and medical assistance to the desperate population—not unlike the safe areas the U.N. had created in Bosnia in 1993.

The Tamil Tigers also retreated to the no-fire zones on the coastal strip, where they had prepared a complex network of bunkers and fortifications and where they ultimately mounted their final battle. Like other instances of guerrilla insurgency in other conflicts, they positioned their artillery batteries among the civilians and prevented many of them from leaving the area once the shelling began, in some cases shooting those who tried to exit the zone.

While the Sri Lankan military claimed that it was engaged in “humanitarian operations” aimed at “liberating the civilians,” it was in fact reclaiming the northeast tip of the island that was still in Tamil hands. An analysis of satellite images as well as numerous testimonies revealed that the Sri Lankan military continuously pounded the enclosed land with mortar and artillery fire, transforming the designated no-fire zones into killing fields. Between 10,000 to 40,000 caged-in civilians perished in the so-called safe zones, while thousands more were severely injured, often lying for hours or days on the ground without receiving medical attention because virtually every hospital—whether permanent or makeshift—had been hit by artillery.

The Sri Lankan civil war was subjected to international legal scrutiny. Following the government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers, a panel of experts appointed by the U.N. secretary-general published a damning report accusing both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government of having carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity. In addition to charges of murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture, the panel accused the Tamil Tigers of using civilians as a human buffer and killing civilians attempting to flee the no-fire zones. The report charged the Sri Lankan military with intentional, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks on civilians, starvation and denial of humanitarian relief, and attacks on medical and humanitarian objects.