Post-LTTE Sri Lanka

Abstract

Over the last 30 years or more, Sri Lanka has been one of the principal trouble spots of South and South East Asia, with successive governments of Sri Lanka confronting a powerful challenge from the separatist and terrorist LTTE. In mid-May 2009 the Sri Lankan armed forces inflicted a decisive defeat on the LTTE. Sri Lanka now faces the daunting challenge of absorbing the territories once controlled by the LTTE and fashioning a reconciliation between the Sinhalese majority and the alienated Tamil minority. There is in addition the need to organise the reconstruction of the north and east of the island, some of the least developed areas of Sri Lanka, lacking in natural resources and unable to provide its population with the standard of living the younger generation aspires to. The opportunities they desire are available in the Sinhalese areas of the country. Given the emotions involved in the tensions and hostilities of recent times, reconciliation between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, whose cause the LTTE claimed to represent, has to be negotiated on a long-term basis through carefully planned policies and imaginative gestures. A generous investment of resources on economic growth is one aspect of this but an essential one considering the neglect of these areas by the LTTE and the damage inflicted on housing and infrastructure in the course of the conflict.