The LTTE engaged in pitched battles, utilized mechanized fighting vehicles, operated a contingent of tactical aircraft, and even possessed a naval wing-the Sea Tigers. Moreover, the LTTE developed a sizeable military capacity that drove it to challenge the SLG in a conventional manner for much of the civil war. Many of their actions blurred the line between insurgency and terrorism. The LTTE was particularly brutal in its insurgent tactics including the use of suicide bombing, assassinations, the brutal treatment of SLG captives, and a frequent disregard for the prevention of collateral damage. By 1983 the LTTE had initiated a full-scale civil war against the SLG. Īfter the collapse of the Tamil political movement the Tamil insurgency quickly grew in strength.
In 1983 the LTTE abandoned hope for a political settlement and urged the Tamil population to boycott the elections. The TULF provided covert financial and material support to the LTTE while also spearheading legitimate efforts to achieve a political solution for the question of Tamil independence. During this time, the LTTE enjoyed the support of the legitimate political representatives of the Tamil community, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). The LTTE began its insurgency by employing low-intensity attacks aimed at frustrating and disrupting SLG efforts to maintain control in the Tamil-majority areas of the country. The shift in political and social dominance within Sri Lanka sowed the seeds for an ethnic-based secessionist movement demanding an independent Tamil state-a Tamil Eelam.įollowing competition between and consolidation of a number of Tamil nationalist groups, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were founded in May of 1976.
Eelam war iv series#
Following Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948, the majority Sinhalese initiated a series of reforms intended to revert the colonial-era imbalance favoring the Tamil minority and to reassert Sinhalese control of the country. The roots of the civil war are found in the ethnic divide between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. The Sri Lankan Civil War took place from 1983 to 2009 between the Sri Lankan Government (SLG) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), however, an active insurgency was underway as early as 1976. These Tamil-majority areas would form the basis of the proposed Tamil Eelam (homeland).
Traditionally, the Tamil population has been concentrated in the northern region of the country as well as in coastal areas along the eastern region of the island. The population consists of a Sinhalese majority who practice the Buddhist religion and a Tamil minority population who adhere to the Hindu faith. When the Sri Lankan Civil War began in 1983 the population numbered 15.3 million people. In 1796 the Dutch ceded the island to the British who would control the territory until Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948. Sri Lanka was first colonized by the Portuguese who were soon followed by the Dutch. Beginning in the 6 th century B.C., the island became populated with groups of ethnic Sinhalese migrating south from the Indian subcontinent. state of Maine that sits roughly 50 kilometers off the southwest coast of India. Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, is a relatively small island nation about the size of the U.S. The Sri Lankan Civil War: Turning COIN on Its Head and Learning to Adapt