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Analysis: Sri Lankan War Comes Roaring Back

Council on Foreign Relations

September 11, 2006
Prepared by: Carin Zissis

Escalating violence between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger separatist group threatens to end the shaky 2002 cease-fire and spark another round in a brutal civil war that has caused 65,000 deaths. S.P. Tamilselvan, a leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) called the army’s recent occupation of the formerly Tiger-dominated northeastern city of Sampur a violation of the truce, saying the Tamil populations are in “misery” and warned the Sinhala population, who make up three quarters of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people, that they “face the same fate in the future.” (The Hindu). The terrorist organization, which is known for recruiting child soldiers and pioneering the use of suicide bombings as a terror tactic, has proven a resilient foe for the Sri Lankan military over the course of more than two decades, as this new Backgrounder explains. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that the Tigers are weakened by a breakaway faction, waning support from the minority Tamil population, and the recent crackdown on LTTE operatives in the United States.

Another blow to the cease-fire agreement has been the near-disintegration of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), formed in 2002 and made up, until recently, of five Nordic countries. The rebels forced EU member nations to withdraw in retaliation for an EU decision to join the United States, Canada, India, and Australia in listing the rebels as a terrorist group (VOA). Norway and Iceland will remain members of the SLMM, which has also had disagreements with the Sri Lankan government since the monitoring body blamed the military for involvement in the massacre of seventeen Tamil aid workers (Bloomberg) employed by a French humanitarian agency.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.