Ending Ethnic Civil War: The Peace Process in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The ethnic civil war in Sri Lanka is one of the most intractable conflicts in the world today. Despite numerous efforts to resolve it, no agreement has been forthcoming between the two parties to the conflict: the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This article focuses on the peace process initiated in 2002 that was led by Norway and supported by the international community. It analyses how the process interacted with the fragmented political situation on the ground in Sri Lanka to produce the contrary result of a return to and intensification of the war.

Acknowledgements

The author is thankful to the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, San Francisco State University, for a summer stipend to support this research. The author also wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of the editor and anonymous reviewers.

Notes

The Sinhalese, who form the largest ethnic group on the island, constitute 74 per cent of the population; the Sri Lanka Tamils form 12 per cent of the population; and the Muslims 7 per cent. The Upcountry Tamils, often also referred to as the Indian Tamils, now form 6 per cent of the population.

Sri Lanka banned the organisation in 1998 after it attacked the most venerated Buddhist temple on the island in Kandy. The US and Canada banned the LTTE in 1997, and Britain and Australia did so in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. India had already banned the LTTE in 1994 and declared its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and other top figures to be criminals wanted to stand trial for the murder of Rajiv Gandhi.

John Gooneratne served as Deputy Director General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, part of the Prime Minister's Office, and was closely involved with all aspects of the peace process from its inception in January 2002 until May 2006.

Such amendments of the constitution in Sri Lanka require a two-thirds majority in parliament, and a majority vote in a popular referendum.

See Anton Balasingham's exchange of letters with Ranil Wickremasinghe over the interim administrative structure (Gooneratne, 2007: 231–245).

The JHU won nine seats for the first time, and TNA got 22 seats, up from 15 seats in 2001.

The UPFA won 105 of the total 225 seats in the parliament, of which the JVP accounted for 39 seats. The UNP won 82 seats compared to the 66 won by the SLFP.

By mid-2004, of the 321 persons killed, about 94 per cent were Tamils: Asian Tribune, 4 Sept. 2004, 29 Aug. 2004.

Amongst the most important of these was an attempted suicide attack by the LTTE in Colombo against the Sri Lankan Tamil politician, Douglas Devananda, as a message to the EPDP not to help Karuna and the government forces in the EP: Tamil Times, 28(6), July 2004, pp. 4–5, 31–35. On another occasion, several of Karuna's key commanders were killed with poison in a house in the suburbs of Colombo, raising acute fears about the degree of penetration of the capital city by Tiger operatives: Island, 1 Aug. 2004. See also Tamil Times, 24(3), March 2005, p. 12. In turn, the LTTE leader in Batticaloa, Kousalyan, and five others were allegedly killed by Karuna's forces (Hindu, 2 Aug. 2005).

This was reiterated officially by both India and the US in public comments.