This thesis examines the production of Tamil youth in the state of Canada as threats, extremists, radicals, terrorists, and as subjects to be engaged in de-politicized humanitarian discourses of reconciliation and peace. By drawing attention to the exclusion of Tamils from rights in legal proceedings, the positioning of youth protesters as harbingers of a multicultural 'crisis,' and the role of education in securing Canada's response to the MV Sun Sea as a 'humanitarian' project, I argue that the targeting Tamils is not only integral to Sri Lanka's ongoing genocide, but is also crucial to the Canadian state's project of white settler colonialism. In examining the law, media and education as sites of racial management in the 'War on Terror' and its globalized counter-terrorism regime I identify the targeting of Tamil diaspora youth as a necessary racial logic for the legitimacy of the Canadian state in an era of official multiculturalism.

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Superficial information of the civil wars in Aceh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka creates the idea that both conflicts were in similar situations when they were hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. It thus seems surprising that in the wake of the tsunami, the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia signed a peace agreement, while the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Government of Sri Lanka returned to war. This thesis aims to explore what factors related to the tsunami contributed to this difference and whether rational choice theory can serve as an explanation for this difference. In order to find out, I conducted a qualitative comparative case study though the analysis of secondary documents. The results suggest that the factors that contributed to the difference can be divided into four broad themes: (1) the timing of the tsunami and thus the pre-disaster context; (2) the geographical situation and with that, the military impact; (3) the types of guerilla groups, including their abilities to rule, their access to financial capital and their strategic; (4) the role of the international community, which can be further divided into firstly, the geopolitical relevance of these countries, and secondly, internationalization, community engagement and separating the tsunami and conflict. I believe that rational choice theory explains the difference in outcome between the two conflicts very well. This theory assumes that people, given the circumstances, and in view of all the possible options, will act in line with the option that is expected to satisfy them most and minimize their losses. Applying this theory to the case studies of Aceh and Sri Lanka following the tsunami, it was appealing for the Free Aceh Movement to settle, but this was not the case for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. As a result, the former chose to sign a peace agreement with the Government of Indonesia, whereas the latter chose to continue its fight against the Government of Sri Lanka.

The thesis (A)symmteric dynamics of the conflict in Sri Lanka is an attempt to apply the theoretical concept of asymmetric conflicts and asymmetric warfare to the empirical case of the conflict in Sri Lanka and to figure out whether or not the asymmetric nature of the relationship between the sides of the conflict was the cause of the conflict's long term persistence and incapability of finding a durable solution to the conflict . In order to do so, the author first introduced the theoretical framework itself and highlighted the most significant features which were furthermore employed as the tool for the following analysis. On this basis the conflict in Sri Lanka was set into the theoretical framework and relevant asymmetries between the two counterparts - the Sri Lankan government/army and the organization of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - were identified. As the next step, the author tried to embrace the variable dynamics of the conflict in terms of relevant asymmetries and also symmetries which came to being within the course of the conflict. Since the symmetric situation is deemed to be more advantageous for finding the solution to a conflict, the author focused on the impact of the "symmetrization" on the prospects for the solution to the Sri Lankan conflict. However, the final findings...

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