Distrust among the communities within a country can lead to conflict and can lead to civil war. Civil war can affect the peace and harmony of nation.Explain this point highlighting the after effects of Civil war in Sri Lanka.
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Answer:
The conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has lasted nearly three decades and is one of the longest-running civil wars in Asia. More commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE wants an independent state for the island’s Tamil minority. Following a fierce, year-long military offensive, the Sri Lankan government claimed in May 2009 that it had defeated the separatist group (NYT) and killed its leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran. But the group may continue to launch guerilla-type attacks on the country. For a lasting peace, experts say the government will need to find a political solution to the ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils that has plagued the country since its independence. The European Union and Canada have joined the United States, India, and Australia in labeling the LTTE a terrorist organization, which has made it more difficult for the group to get financing from abroad. The civil war has killed nearly seventy thousand, and watchdog groups have accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military of human rights violations, including abduction, extortion, and the use of child soldiers.
Historical Context
Sri Lanka has been mired in ethnic conflict since the country, formerly known as Ceylon, became independent from British rule in 1948. A 2001 government census (PDF) says Sri Lanka’s main ethnic populations are the Sinhalese (82 percent), Tamil (9.4 percent), and Sri Lanka Moor (7.9 percent). In the years following independence, the Sinhalese, who resented British favoritism toward Tamils during the colonial period, disenfranchised Tamil migrant plantation workers from India and made Sinhala the official language. In 1972, the Sinhalese changed the country’s name from Ceylon and made Buddhism the nation’s primary religion. As ethnic tension grew, in 1976, the LTTE was formed under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran, and it began to campaign for a Tamil homeland in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, where most of the island’s Tamils reside. In 1983, the LTTE ambushed an army convoy, killing thirteen soldiers and triggering riots in which 2,500 Tamils died.
India, which has its own Tamil population in the south, deployed a peacekeeping force in 1987 that left three years later amidst escalating violence. During the ensuing conflict, the LTTE emerged as a fearsome terrorist organization, famed for suicide bombings, recruitment of child soldiers, and the ability to challenge Sri Lankan forces from the Jaffna Peninsula in the north down through the eastern side of the island. The U.S. State Department placed the LTTE on its terror list in 1997. In 2002, Norway brokered a cease-fire agreement between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. Peace talks broke down the following year, but experts posit the fragile truce held in large part because of devastation related to the 2004 tsunami, which caused thirty thousand deaths on the island.
In August 2005, the assassination of Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, reignited the conflict. For the next two years, both the government and rebels repeatedly violated the cease-fire agreement. In January 2008, a cabinet spokesman said it was "useless talking to them [the LTTE] now" (AP), and the Sri Lankan government formally withdrew from the truce, prompting Nordic monitors to pull out of the country. Since the end of the cease-fire, the Sri Lankan military has been trying to root out the LTTE, and in May 2009, the government claimed that it had defeated the rebels and liberated the country.
Answer:
After decades of increasing ethnic tension, the war began as a low-level insurgency in July 1983. Ethnic riots broke out in Colombo and other cities. Tamil Tiger insurgents killed 13 army soldiers, prompting violent reprisals against Tamil civilians by their Sinhalese neighbors across the country.