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Sri Lanka
Key characteristics:
• 20 million people
• Mid-range GDP per capita
• Mountainous terrain in the center
• Religious breakdown: 70% Buddhist;
13% Hindu; 10% Muslim; 7% Christian
• Off the coast from Tamil region of Indian
mainland
• Commodity-driven economy that has
experienced rapid development
• Economically most developed in the
West around the capital, Colombo
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Ethnic geography of Sri Lanka
Tamil areas
Indian Tamils
Muslim areas
Sinhala areas
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Historical developments in Sri Lankan politics
• Colonized by Britain in 1815 as the
island of Ceylon
• Independence from Britain in 1948 with
a new democratic government; Ceylon
citizenship act disenfranchises Indian
Tamils
• Prime Minister Bandaranaike (elected in
1956) introduces Sinhala only act
• 1958 riots lead to thousands of Tamil
deaths; PM Bandaranaike assassinated
by a Buddhist monk in 1959
The Tamil Tigers became famous • Marxist Sinhalese revolts in the 1970s
for their female fighters
and late 1980s leads to mass repression
• Tamil militancy develops in the 1970s in
response to “standardization” policies
that reduce Tamil influence
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Origins of the Sri Lankan conflict
• Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) envisions an
The rise of the
Tamil Tigers
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•
Long-term causes
• Tamil advantages under the colonial period (English)
• Religious justifications for Buddhist superiority
•
Short-term causes
autonomous Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka (1972)
Tamil New Tigers formed by Prabhakaran in 1972
modeled in part on the Marxist revolutionaries
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) launch
an insurgency beginning in 1983
entrenched in national mythology of Sinhalese as a
vulnerable chosen people
Lack of Tamil faith that democratic participation can
bring any relief from discrimination
• Destruction of the Jaffna library by police (1981)
• “Black July” 1983 massacre against Tamils kill
•
several thousand
Government experience fighting the JVP rebellion
leads to mistreatment of civilians
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Patterns of conflict
Terrorism and
conventional
warfare
• Tigers had the world’s most highly sophisticated
•
suicide bombing operation; ex: assassination of
Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (1991), Sri
Lankan President Primadasa (1999)
Tigers developed their own navy “sea tigers,”
merchant marine “sea pigeons,” and airforce
• An Indian peacekeeping force intervenes 1987-1990
Indian intervention •
•
without Tiger agreement; Tamils to receive some
autonomy; Tigers to disarm in a political agreement
Leads to second Marxist insurrection (JVP) because
of fears of Indian imperialism
Indian withdrawal after battles with the Tamil Tigers
leave 1200 Indian troops dead
• Tigers reject the rigid Hindu cast system and
Civilian
involvement
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traditional gender roles
Active use of child soldiers; including by abduction
LTTE funding from the large Tamil diaspora abroad
Tamils built a functioning parallel state under which
many Tamils lived
Sri Lankan army uses mass punishment of civilians
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Counterfactual exercise
In what ways could this conflict end?
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The end of the Sri Lankan war
Failed peace agreement (2002)
Results of the conflict
• Context of international rejection
• Conflict formally lasted 26 years
of terror after 9/11
• Mediated by Norway; with a
• About 100,000 people killed,
mostly civilians
Nordic monitoring mission
• Tigers withdraw from peace talks
in 2003 and begin to regroup
• Internal Tamil fighting starts
between Northern and Eastern
forces; Eastern defection to
government
• Hard-liner Mahinda Rajapaksa
The military victory
• By 2008, the government masses
forces in the North
• Tamil Tigers are defeated and
Prabhakaran is killed, May 2009
• 40,000 civilians (mostly Tamil)
killed in the final stages of the war
elected as PM (2004)
• Fighting begins again in 2006,
and the Tamils assert statehood
• The Tamil National Alliance gives
up its demand for statehood in
favor of a federal solution
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Issues in the resolution of the Sri Lankan war
Civilian
protection
• Tiger use of civilians as shields and as shock troops
• Systematic army artillery attacks in civilian areas lead
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•
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to mass casualties
No real attempts have been made to bring
perpetrators of massacres to justice
Use of ethnic cleansing and “internal colonization” to
dilute the Tamil communal threat
Attacks on the Muslim community from both sides
• Can the Tamil minority regain
Integration of the
Tamil minority
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•
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confidence in the Sri Lankan
state?
Does it matter to the state if the
Tamils are reintegrated?
Does truth-telling in the conflict
matter to its resolution?
No real progress on this front to
date
Prabhakaran defeated
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Assessing the virtues of military victories
Benefits and Liabilities:
• Probability of a more stable outcome
• Government victories tend to be less
stable, however
• Popular relief at popular stability
• Low incentives to deal with underlying
grievances
• The human rights question: is it ok to
Rajapaksa’s triumph?
unequivocally destroy your
opponents?
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