The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka – Terrorism, ethnicity, political economy
Author: Asoka Bandarage
279pp, Routledge, Contemporary South Asia Series
By Dr. Mahes Ladduwahetty
Dr. Asoka Bandarage’s timely book on the Sri Lankan conflict was launched on February 4, 2009, under the auspices of the Georgetown University’s Mortara Center for International Studies and the South Asia Forum. She was introduced by Dr. Joseph A. Ferrara, Associate Dean of the Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute where Dr. Bandarage teaches. Dr. Bandarage’s address at this well attended event covered the salient sections of her book, taking the political history of the conflict from pre-Independence, through the post-Independence years and into the current period with its new possibilities of a resolution.
There has been a significant dearth of scholarly works on the Sri Lankan conflict, and Dr. Bandarage’s book helps fill that vacuum. While its target is basically the academic community of political scientists, it is also an immensely readable book that relates a gripping tale to the lay reader interested in this conflict. She takes the reader through the historical underpinnings of the conflict, its British colonial history, the background events that led to the 1983 riots, the Indian intervention and its failure, and into the current internationalization of the conflict with its ramifications. It deals with the multiple actors, political, military and diplomatic, both internal and external, who entered the stage during the period covering the nearly 4 decades in which the LTTE was called to arms by Tamil political leaders; leaders who continue to be described by supporters as being “moderates’ and ‘Gandhian’ despite the LTTE’s modus operandi of violence of the most ruthless kind. The several cycles of the LTTE’s near defeat and revival, coupled with the entrance of international conflict resolution players such as the Norwegians who actively aided the LTTE, as well as the cycles of war and ceasefire/negotiations that have been experienced by the Sri Lankan people with hope and anguish in turn, all in the background of successive Sri Lankan governments with their political agendas as well as partisan politics, are dealt with and analyzed.
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