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 done so far. The use of force is very prevalent in the situation of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government is attempting to use force to stop the LTTE from attacking both civilians and soldiers.

Through all the fighting over the years there has been a fair amount of attempts to form a peaceful resolution; it is just that these resolutions have never really lasted very long in Sri Lanka. In December of 2000 the LTTE called for a ceasefire, which was granted by both sides until April 2001 when the LTTE launched another attack on the Sri Lanka government. There is a formal ceasefire that has been in effect since 2002. However the LTTE has launched attacks despite the agreement they had made. Then finally in February of 2006 peace talks went extremely well and both the government and the LTTE agreed to stop the fighting until peace talks could be resumed later on in April. This is one of the few times the Sri Lanka government used persuasion in their battle against the LTTE. The government must not have been that persuasive however because the LTTE resumed violence extremely soon and pulled out of peace talks officially in April. Even with the existing ceasefire, peace talks have not been successful as of late and the fighting still is occurring today.

The LTTE has not only been launching attacks against the Sri Lanka military but also terrorist attacks against innocent Sri Lanka citizens. The Sri Lanka government is not allowing the LTTE to break off and form their own state, which is precisely why there is a civil war. To punish the Sri Lanka government