Sri Lanka's Civil War Research Articles

Mediating between tigers and lions: Norwegian peace diplomacy in Sri Lanka's civil war

Sri Lanka has suffered from one of Asia's most intractable civil wars, and is remarkably resistant to resolution. The peace process was initiated with a ceasefire between the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan Government in 2002. This article explores the implications of the Norwegian mediation on this process. We argue that Norway's aspiration to promote an image of being a global peacemaker and the consent from regional and global powers are important in explaining why Norway became involved. Moreover, the Norwegian mediation approach – based on impartiality, ownership by the two main parties, and internationalization – has had consequences for how the process has unfolded. For instance, it influenced the potential leverage of Norway and conceptions about bias. This article contributes to an understanding of how regional and global processes, as well as mediator characteristics and approaches, influence the dynamics of civil war termination.

Sri Lanka's civil war

In January 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially withdrew from the six-year-old Ceasefire Agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This followed a period of escalating conflict over the previous two years, during which it had become clear that the peace process was in serious trouble. As the fighting continues, neither side seems likely to be able to achieve its objectives by military means alone.

The impact of pesticide regulations on suicide in Sri Lanka.

Between 1950 and 1995 suicide rates in Sri Lanka increased 8-fold to a peak of 47 per 100,000 in 1995. By 2005, rates had halved. We investigated whether Sri Lanka's regulatory controls on the import and sale of pesticides that are particularly toxic to humans were responsible for these changes in the incidence of suicide. Ecological analysis using graphical and descriptive approaches to identify time trends in suicide and risk factors for suicide in Sri Lanka, 1975-2005. Restrictions on the import and sales of WHO Class I toxicity pesticides in 1995 and endosulfan in 1998, coincided with reductions in suicide in both men and women of all ages. 19,769 fewer suicides occurred in 1996-2005 as compared with 1986-95. Secular trends in unemployment, alcohol misuse, divorce, pesticide use and the years associated with Sri Lanka's Civil war did not appear to be associated with these declines. These data indicate that in countries where pesticides are commonly used in acts of self-poisoning, import controls on the most toxic pesticides may have a favourable impact on suicide. In Asia, there are an estimated 300,000 deaths from pesticide self-poisoning annually. National and international policies restricting the sale of pesticides that are most toxic to humans may have a major impact on suicides in the region.

Buddhism, the Asokan Persona, and the Galactic Polity: Rethinking Sri Lanka's Constitutional Present

Sri Lanka's civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil communities has now raged for nearly half a century. The Sri Lankan cum Sinhalese Buddhist state has since independence resisted all significant attempts by the Tamil political leadership at power sharing. Most constitutional lawyers and progressive Sri Lankan opinion (Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher, etc.) hold that short of a separate state, administrative power should be devolved in the form of a federal state, so as to give autonomy to the northeast of Sri Lanka, while the forces of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism have sought to justify the centralized state by recourse to the history of Buddhism and the Sinhalese on the island. Such arguments have drawn on the ontological potential of the cosmic order of Sinhalese Buddhism, which is fundamentally hierarchical in intent. Here I argue that the diffused nature of this cosmic order provides the ontological grounding for a decentralized state structure that can accommodate ethnic difference in a non-hierarchical relation. Thus, the legacy of Sinhalese Buddhism can be rescued from the forces of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.

Building the Tamil Eelam State: emerging state institutions and forms of governance in LTTE-controlled areas in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's civil war has created a political – territorial division between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte), where ltte is engaged in a process of state building within the areas they control. The article examines this state formation with an emphasis on the functions and forms of governance that are embedded in the new state institutions. It is observed that the emerging state formation has a strong focus on external and internal security, with an additional emphasis on social welfare and economic development. In terms of governance, the ltte state apparatus is marked by authoritarian centralisation with few formal mechanisms for democratic representation, but there are also partnership arrangements and institutional experiments that may foster more democratic forms of representation and governance. Hence, resolving the security problem in tandem with political transformations towards democratic governance remain prime challenges for peace building in northeast Sri Lanka.

Tamilnet.com: Some Reflections on Popular Anthropology, Nationalism, and the Internet

In this essay I argue that Tamilnet.com, an Internet news agency put together by a group of Sri Lankan Tamils to address the Tamil diaspora and influence English-speaking elites, subverted international news coverage during Sri Lanka's civil war by making "ironic" use of the discursive styles of journalism and anthropology. I also claim that this constituted a particular form of autoethnographic popular anthropology that challenged professional anthropology, and in some ways sought to replace it. In the first two sections of this essay, I dismantle the concept of "the popular" by showing that when anthropologists and social theorists use the term they are often referring to connected but distinct aspects of popularity which should be distinguished: Baudrillardian market popularity on the one hand, and Habermasian identity-resistance popularity on the other. I then show how the Internet, given its technology and software, is best seen as market popular in form but identity-resistance popular in content. In the remaining four sections I illustrate, ethnographically, how the creators of Tamilnet.com, while deeply embedded in civil war and a world-wide diaspora, recognized this aspect of the Internet and used it—again, "ironically"—to construct a site that advances their own nationalist interests.

Sri Lanka's civil war

Under the auspices of a Norwegian peace initiative, the Sri Lankan government, led by President Chandrika Kumaratunga, and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are edging hesitantly towards talks intended to bring the island's 18-year civil war to an end. Both are propelled by a mix of external and domestic pressures, but the political problems standing in the way of any peaceful solution remain formidable. If the two sides do finally meet over the negotiating table, the best that can be hoped for will be an agreement on a prolonged period of cease-fire, rather than any bold political departure. Nonetheless, this would at least buy time in which currently entrenched – and to date irreconcilable – positions might become less inflexible.

Economic cost of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict

Despite its low income per capita, Sri Lanka has achieved remarkable success in human development, largely due to appropriate government policies on health and education. However, Sri Lanka's economic performance has been below its potential, and the unresolved civil conflict poses one of the greatest obstacles to its long terms growth prospects. This article examines some indirect costs of Sri Lanka's civil war. It argues that the conflict has resulted in lower domestic and foreign investments, disruptions in trade and commerce, and lower revenues from tourism. As a consequence, economic growth has suffered. With no end in sight to the civil war, these costs are likely to mount, with pernicious effects on future living standards.

Sri Lanka's civil war

A UK-brokered deal between Sri Lanka’s two main Sinhalese parties has increased the chances that a coherent package of political autonomy for the Tamils will be presented to parliament or directly to the people via a referendum in the coming months. But while the peace process has been reinvigorated following successes by the Sri Lankan military, such as the capture of the Jaffna peninsula, the main Tamil insurgent group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has shown few signs of willingness to negotiate seriously. With the Army overstretched, however, and the economy creaking from the strains of the insurgency, President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government has few options but to search for a political settlement.