Ending the Sri Lankan Civil War

Abstract

The Sri Lankan Civil War erupted in 1983 and dragged on until 2009. The origins of the conflict can be traced to Sri Lanka's colonial era and subsequent postcolonial policies that had significantly constrained the social and economic rights of the minority Tamil population. Convinced that political avenues for redressing extant grievances were unlikely to yield any meaningful results, a segment of the Tamil community turned to violence precipitating the civil war. A number of domestic, regional, and international efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict all proved to be futile. A military strategy, which involved extraordinary brutality on the part of the Sri Lankan armed forces, brought it to a close. However, few policy initiatives have been undertaken in its wake to address the underlying grievances of the Tamil citizenry that had contributed to the outbreak of the civil war in the first place.