Sri Lanka's Continual Civil War

Sri Lanka’s Continual Civil War The ethnic tension between Sri Lanka’s majority and minority populations, the Sinhalese who are mostly Buddhists being the majority and the minority being mostly Hindu and are called Tamil, has been going on for many of years. Finally in 1983 the ethnic tensions finally spilled over into civil war. The civil war has been mostly between the government of Sri Lanka and the militant organization called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE are fighting for an independent Tamil state called, Tamil Eelam. The government of Sri Lanka has relied heavily on two of the four faces of power and those two would be force and persuasion, while the LTTE has used punishment as its main face of power in this conflict. In July 1983 the LTTE launched their very first attack on the military and they were successful in killing 13 of the soldiers. After this first attack the Sri Lanka government had to use force to try and control this rebel organization. They were not successful in bringing down the LTTE initially and that same success, or lack there off, is still continuing to this day. Until about 2001 the fighting continued with neither side showing any signs of slowing down. The Sri Lanka government was making it clear to the LTTE that they were not taking this matter lightly and that Sri Lanka was going to stay one country as long as they had anything to say about it. The LTTE themselves showed no signs of weakening either. They seemed extremely determined to be successful in their mission to create a Tamil Eelam state. The rebels are trying to create so many causalities of both civilians and of soldiers that the Sri Lanka government will allow them to break off and create their own state. The Sri Lanka government and military are trying to use force to prove to the rebels that they will not allow this to happen and hopefully by using enough force they will finally crush the LTTE’s movement, which obviously has not been

Cited: “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Sri Lanka, separatists)”, August 2006 http://www.cfr.org/publication/9242/ “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/ltte.htm Timeline: Sri Lanka, August 3, 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1166237.stm “Chronology - Sri Lanka 's civil war goes on as talks fail” http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SKAR-6V3D3D?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P