Tamil Tigers

Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa claims that his military victory will usher in a new period of peace and prosperity on the island. It will not. The brutal methods deployed by the SLA in its efforts to win this war, and the horrific conditions the defeated Tamil population are now being subjected to, will fan the flames of Tamil resistance, guaranteeing the prospect of even more bitter struggles in the future.

This is the end of President Mahinda Rajapaksa's "solution by violence" to the civil war that has dragged on since 1983. He abandoned attempts at a negotiated solution and increased military spending hugely in preparation for the offensive.

The conflict has its roots in British colonial policy. The majority in the country was then the Buddhist Sinhalas; the minority Tamils, mainly Hindus and Muslims, were in the north. As usual the British recruited a minority into the lower levels of their administration, in this case the Tamils.

The ceasefire had been negotiated with the help of the Norwegian government in 2002 and brought to an end a war that had been going on since 1983. However, it did not resolve the issues that had caused the conflict in the first place.