Sri Lankan Civil War

The Sri Lankan Civil War was a war fought from 1983 to 2009 on the island nation Sri Lanka, and it was fought between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a sepratist organization who wanted to create an independent nation for the Tamils, the main ethnic minority of Sri Lanka. It was one of the bloodiest, nastiest and longest wars ever in post-World War II history.

The war itself was just a part of the whole ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The Sinhalese are the ethnic majority of Sri Lanka and make up three quarters of the population. The Tamils inturn just make up 17% of the population, and both groups immigrated to Sri Lanka from India during ancient times. According to the historians, the Sinhalese came to the island four hundreds years before the Tamils, something that the Tamils are quick to deny. The background to the conflict is debatted; some historians believes that it started during the British adminstration of the island between 1815 to 1948. Others believes it started already at the 11th century, when the Tamil Chola Empire invaded Sri Lanka and destroyed the Sinhalese kingdom of Anuradhapura in 1017. In 377 BC, the Sinhalese king Pandukabhaya founded the ever first kingdom on Sri Lanka in the city Anuradhapura, which also bared the kingdom's name. Through the centuries, it became an mighty kingdom, there Sinhalese literature and culture dominated the island. Also the technology was advanced enough to create massive harvests each year for the population to feed on. Trade with the Roman Empire made the kingdom even more powerful, due to the Romans' generous payment for Sri Lankan spices. However, misfortune would come when King Raja Raja Chola I of Chola Empire invaded the kingdom 993 and in 1017, his son, Rajendra Chola I, sacked and destroyed the city of Anuradhapura, forcing the exiled Sinhalese to the south. After the Chola victory, war between the Tamil superpower and the new Sinhalese kingdom of Polonnaruwa was fought in some hundreds years. In the 14th century, the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa was replaced by the Kingdoms of Kotte and Kandy as the main Sinhalese players. The Tamils in turn created the Kingdom of Jaffna in 1215, after the Chola Empire lost their grips on the island. The competition was then fought for some more centuries until the Portugese came to island and conquered all the three nations. In 1815, the British came and took over the island, naming it Ceylon. The British were quick to reform the whole system; The political power was centralized and moved to capital city Colombo, former capital city of Kotte, Christianity was brought in and plenty of Christian schools of British model were built everywhere on the island. Also plenty of the rainforest was cut down in order to give ground to the tea-plantations. Because the demand for tea was strong in the homeland, the British recruited Tamils from India proper as plantation-workers and transported them to Ceylon. To make sure that they would remain in control of the island in the future, The British did as the Romans and many other great conquerors did; they allied with the weaker fraction of the population, in this case the Tamils. To make sure that the Tamils would be loyal and productive workers and allies the British granted them all the privileges they could offer, like better and higher education, influence of the local politics, better homes, and so on. With these the Tamils became quickly the Britons' allies. The Sinhalese, however, didn't get any of the privileges the Tamils enjoyed, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Sinhalese nationalism started to grow. This Sinhalese nationalistic moment was for the most part peaceful and non-violent but in some periods it became violent; during the revolution of 1848 the Matale Rebellion broke out against the British Empire. Though it was bloodily beaten down, the Sinhaleses' will became all stronger through the next hundred years. Their most importent advocate was Anagarika Dharmapala, a nationalistic philosopher who talked about Sinhalese, buddhistic superority. His main ideal was that only Buddhistic Sinhalese should rule the island, and not either the British or the Tamils. He wrote several books about his ideals that became very popular among the Sinhalese. They were so inspired that in year 1915 they tried with another rebellion which spread through the whole island. It also failed but the Britons' rule over the island was no longer safe at that point.

In year 1948 Ceylon became independent from British rule, and the Sinhalese majority quickly took over the new nation. The Sinhalese population founded two political parties that since the independence had shared the power between the years. The first party is United National Party, or UNP, a righthanded party that represent mostly people working within the economical system, like bankers, traders and businessmen. The other party is Sri Lanka Freedom Party, or SLFP, an leftwinged party with both socialistic and Sinhalese-nationalistic ideologies. On the day of the declaration of independence, UNP became the ruling party and their first act was to kick out thousands of Tamils from the island back to India and denied the rest who stayed citizenships. The Sinhalese havn't forgotten the Tamils' alliance with the British so during the election 1956, SLFP, under the leadership of Solomin Bandaranaike, became the new ruling party through their political slogan "Sinhala Only", meaning that Sinhala would replace English as the offical language of Sri Lanka, and only Sinhala. Tamil would be ignored, if not discouraged, in the society. Of course, the Tamils wouldn't have any of it so they rioted and protested on several parts of the island, and as usual they were suppressed by the new leadership. In 1959 Bandaranaike was assassinated by, ironically, a Buddhist monk. His widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, took over the party and the government. She became the World's first female prime minister, and during her leadership Ceylon was led into a more socialistic way. In 1972, Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka and the head of state was no longer the Queen of United Kingdom but the President of Sri Lanka. After the JVP-Rebellion the year before the government became more hardhearted toward those they didn't like, especially the Tamils. In 1974, they introduced an invoked affirmative action on higher education, meant to make it very difficult for Tamils to seek it, as a way of revenge of the educational privileges the Tamils enjoyed during the British rule. This was the "that's it" for the Tamils. Through the independent rule the Tamils have used non-violent ways, inspired by those used by Mathatma Gandhi, to protest against what they though to be Sinhalese discriminations toward them and their culture but when the invoked affirmative action came many Tamil youths started to found militant groups as well as change demands of political influence to those of an independent nation entirely for the Tamils. The demand for an independent Tamil nation, Tamil Eelam, came first time 1976 by one of the Tamil groups, Tamil United Liberation Front, or TULF. Many other Tamil militias demanded the same thing, one of them LTTE. LTTE was founded 1976 by a man named Velupillai Prabhakaran, a former fisherman and student, and it became quickly the strongest militia with 1500 members. They started out with petty strikes and sabotages that didn't make much difference but in year 1983 they would prove how efficient they were when they made an ambush that would be the start of one of the bloodiest wars in post-WWII history.

The 23 July 1983, 15 Sinhalese soldiers in the Army were ambushed by the young LTTE in the city Jaffna, in the northern part of Sri Lanka. 13 of them were killed. The ambush was a revenge of the burndown of the ancient libary of Jaffna in 1981, which was filled with Tamil literature, by a Sinhalese mob. The burndown itself was revenge for the murder of two Sinhalese police officers the same year. The bodies of the dead soldiers were transported to Colombo for funeral. After the funeral the anger of the Sinhalese boiled in their blood and the most bloodiest riot in Sri Lanka's history was started. Around the nation Sinhalese mobs went out looking for Tamils and attacked them as soon they saw them and destroyed their properties. The police refused to stop these acts of revenge and in some cases they even helped. The mobs didn't care if their victims were members of LTTE or not. As so long they were Tamils than that was justification enough for attacking them. This dark happening is known as "The Black July". Around 1000-1300 Tamils were killed during this riot, and over hundred thousands Tamils fled to southern India, to Europe, to Austalia or to North America. The anger of the Tamils grew thanks to the riot. Many got their houses and their properties destroyed, their family members and friends killed, forced to run and most of them weren't even members of LTTE when they were attacked. The riot inspired though many Tamils to join LTTE and pretty soon after the riot LTTE became a strong organization, and the Sri Lankan Civil War became a circumstance. The war went on in many years and bloody battles were fought. LTTE quickly proved itself to be a well-organized and well-disciplined group, and the undertrained Sri Lankan Army was suffering from great casualties. It wasn't better that LTTE got Indian support in this early part of the war. Now, 50 million Tamils live in India, many of them refugees who had fled the violence in Sri Lanka. They live in a large settlement in southern India named Tamil Nedu. There, LTTE got military training and political protection of the Indian government, who was sympathetic toward the Tamils. The Indian support to LTTE caused the international relation between Sri Lanka and India to be icy. The war wasn't all peaceful and calm either; year 1987 the first suicidebombing against the Sri Lankan Army was done. A 21-22 years old Tamil man named Vallipurarn Vasantham drove a truck filled with explosives inside right at an armybase in Jaffna-province and detonated everything. He and dozens of soldiers died in the attack, and so the legend of LTTE's "Black Tigers" was born. Same year some time after the suicide-attack, the prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, forced both parties to a truce of peace, something both parties weren't enthusiastic about, especially the Sri Lankan government under the hardhearted UNP-president/prime minister J R Jayawardena. After the truce, Indian troops came to the island nation to make sure both parties followed the truce. Ironically it became the other way around; when Indian troops were patrolling in LTTE's territories, it was seen as "treason" in LTTE's eyes, that India was occupying their territories for their own profit's sake, and pretty soon open battles between LTTE and IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) were fought. Among the Sri Lankan side it wasn't so peaceful either. Even if the more moderate UNP-candidate Ranasinghe Premadasa was elected president 1988, and the introduction of Tamil as an offical lauguage alongside Sinhala same year, things started to go over hand. Many Sinhalese saw the truce as some kind of a joke, and India's presence as an occupation of what that was actually their land. This was the moment the Marxist/Sinhalese-nationalistic party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or JVP, had waited for. Even if JVP had suffered great casulties during their rebellion 1971, including their leader Rohana Wijeweera, who had been captured by the Sri Lankan state, the organization itself not dead. After the rebellion they've just retreated in the shadows waiting for a new opportunity for a new strike. The affairs 1987-89 gave them a new reason to start their next rebellion 1989. Wijeweera managed to escape his prison and started a new rebellion. Since JVP wasn't just a Marxist party but also a Sinhalese-nationalistic party they attacked anyone they though supported the Indians or the truce. So brutal they were that in many parts of the country, dead bodies could been seen on the open streets, and soon it became an everyday thing to see such things. People were forced to close their stores, as a part of JVP's economical warfare, and schools were closed because the Sri Lankan government was afraid that they would turn into recruitment camps for JVP. Bloody battles and attacks between the government and JVP broke out. In an attempt to defeat JVP the government introduced a new anti-terror law, that the parlament passed, that gave the police and the military the rights to arrest and "interrogate" suspected terrorists, even if they didn't have any evidence that they were actually terrorists. Thousands of people were arrested and "disappeared" around the nation. Though the harshment, the law proved to be efficent against JVP. Slowly JVP died out until their militant strenght died out completly. JVP became extremly weakened but they would remain an importent player of the Sri Lankan chessgame, though in the parlamental game instead the militant one. Around the time the second JVP-Rebellion was beaten down, IPKF withdrew out of Sri Lanka. They had suffered great casulties due to LTTE and they had enough of it. They had than been in the nation in two years. The government tried with a new peace truce but it failed and the war was refought.

The new part of the war is now known as Eelam War II, and this part of the war lasted between 1990-94, and it was much bloodier than the first period of the war 1983-87 (Eelam War I), though not as bloody as Eelam War III and IV. Eelam War II started when LTTE conquered police stations on the eastern parts of the nation. The Sri Lankan Police Force had surrendered and laid down their weapons in front of LTTE by the orders of the government. This proved to be a great mistake when LTTE moved the unarmed police officers into the jungle and shot them execution-style. 774 police officers were killed by LTTE. This scared the government so much that they retreated right out of the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. This of course gave LTTE the chance to conquer these parts, which they did and founded a kind of a state in the state, with Jaffna as their capital city and Prabhakaran as the head of state. LTTE started for some reasons to pursue the muslims during this period of the war. The reason was, according to LTTE, that the muslims were supporting the Sri Lankan government. The Muslims have been on the island since 8th-9th century. Many of them are descendants of Arabian merchants. They make up 8% of the population. The Tamils have tried to classify them as Tamils but they have refused to allow it. When the war started the muslims have resisted the foundation of Tamil Eelam because they were afraid that they would become "minority of the minority", and thats why their congress supported the Sinhalese during the war. This of course assured that the relationship between the Tamils and the Muslims became everything but warm. So when LTTE conquered the northern parts of Sri Lanka 1990 they gave the Muslims who lived there two choices; get out or die. It shouldn't be so difficult which alternative they chose, so pretty soon large groups of Muslim refugees walked from north and east to south and west. Those who stayed became pretty roughed up by LTTE. Even in territories controlled by the government didn't went safe. In the city Kattankudy in south an brutal attack on the local mosque took place when 147 civilian muslims were killed by LTTE-militants dressed as praying Muslims. Of course this only made the Muslims into important political allies to the Sinhalese through the rest of the war.

In the year 1991 one of the most important incidents of the war happened. The 21 May 1991 the former prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi was in the city Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nedu to gain election votes to the parliamentary election. Gandhi had lost his prime minister status 1989, and in 1991 he tried to make a comeback in the parliamentary election in hope that he would win a seat in Lok Sabha. During his political campaign in Tamil Nedu he was embraced by a crowd which wised him good fortunes. One of the people of the crowd was a young woman named Thanmuli Rajaratnam. She also wanted to meet Gandhi in person but Gandhi's bodyguards didn't let her come too close to Gandhi. Gandhi though let her come close. Seconds later blew Rajaratnam herself up to death, taking Gandhi and 16 other people with her. The assassination of Gandhi was the incident that made LTTE internationally well-known. Before it, the global world had little knowledge of the war since it was a local conflict that didn't affect the global world itself, but when the former leader of one of the most powerful nations in modern time could be assassinated by a jungle woman, even when he was surrounded by bodyguards, you can see why all the importent global players realized what a dangerous enemy LTTE actually was. This suicide attack also became a source of inspiration for future terrorist organizations, like Al-Qaida, since it proved that not even politicans of superpowers didn't walk safe during a conflict. The assassination was according to LTTE revenge for India's "treason" against them. The result was that India became the first nation to classify LTTE as a terrorist organization, and for the rest of the war India would throw their support behind their former enemy Sri Lanka with political and economical resources.

After the assassination the war went on for three more years. LTTE and the government shot each other here and there, none of them able to break the status quo that had taken its hold on the island. LTTE managed though to assassinate president Premadasa during the may day 1993 but it didn't started any internal struggles for the president-title like LTTE probably had hoped for, and election could be made 1994. Year 1994 it became elections in Sri Lanka. First it was the parliamentary election. It would become historical because UNP lost the power after 17 years to the People's Alliance, an alliance of political leftwinged parties founded by SLFP's leader Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of SLFP's founders Solomon and Sirimavo Bandaranaike. PA became the parliamentary superforce since their slogan was of new peacetalks with LTTE. The people had at that point become tired of the whole war and just wanted an end of it, so majority of them had voted on PA because they had hoped they could make peace possible. Then it was the presidental election. Against Kumaratunga was UNP's candidate Gamini Dissanayake. Though in the middle of the election he was assassinated by LTTE, and his widow Shrima took over. Kumaratunga won though the election and became the president of Sri Lanka. Her mother became prime minister. As soon she became president she started with her promised peacetalks with LTTE. It went for the start quite calm between the two parties. Letter exchanges and phonecalls between them went on. Government representives came to Jaffna, there they were embraced by charing people, to write under the new truce between LTTE and the government. With the truce, the government "relaxed" with their sea blockade of LTTE's territories. In return, LTTE freed some police officer who had been prisoners since the police massacre 1990. But is it something history has teached us is that no truce never last, and the Sri Lankan Civil War was no exception. After a time after the 1994 truce was written, Prabhakaran suddenly blamed the government for not doing enough to make their part of the truce. Immidiately after his speech, the Sea Tigers attacked the Sri Lankan Navy in their base in the city Trincomalee and killed 12 seamen. The third period of the war, Eelam War III, has started.

This period went from 1995 to 2002. Under her first years as the president created Kumaratunga the so called "War-for-peace" strategy. It meant that through military offensives the government would force LTTE to follow the truce, and they started with the hard parts immidiately. In 1995 the military was able to win a historical battle; Jaffna, LTTE's capital city, had been re-conquered and was in the government's hands. LTTE was forced to retreat into the jungle. Though even with the great lose of their capital city, LTTE was anything but defeated and weakened. In fact it was the start of their most successful campaign ever of the war. LTTE fought back 31 January 1996 when a truck with explosives inside ramed right into the Central Bank of Colombo and blew up, killing 91 people. Half a year later LTTE started Operation Unceasing Waves, which was a siege of the city Mullaitivu. The city was defended by 1500 soldiers and against them were 4000 LTTE-fighters. After a week of siege warfare LTTE finally conquered Mullaitivu, and the Sea Tigers moved their headquarter there. In year 1998 the tigers attacked the city Kilinochchi, which they were able to conquer and declearing it as their new capital city. Of course the military weren't so easily defeatable either, and at 15 May 1997 they started Operation Jayasikurui. The strategy was to build a road and supply lines between north and south and at the same time destroy as much of LTTE as possible. Status Quo was infecting the nation again. The war became even more bitter when LTTE blew up World Trade Center in Colombo and tried to assassinate Kumaratunga during the presidental election 1999. She survived but lost one eye as a result. In year 2000, a battle was fought at the strategical importent territory the Elephant Pass. It's a narrow isthmus that connect the northern Jaffna Peninsula with the rest of the island, and having control of it would allow the controller to allow which transporting supplies to go through if they moved toward or out of the Jaffna province. If LTTE would has control of it, it would make it difficult for the Sri Lankan troops stationed at north to gain quick supplies from the south. If the government controlled it, it would allow them to support their control of north the easy way without using the water ways, which would take much more time to transport the supplies. 5000 tigers and 40000 soldiers fought their very hardest for this control. With the moment of surprise the tigers attacked the military's postions right into their command center. The pass would remain in LTTE's hands until 2009.

24 July 2001 was the day of one of LTTE's most successful attacks ever. In the city Katunayake so were some tigers able get through the barbed wires surrounding the Bandaranaike International Airport when a black out cut the airport's communication and they then quickly placed bombs on the military aircrafts first and detonated them. The bombs blew up several military aircrafts and LTTE continue to destroy the rest with grenade launchers and machine guns. When the military found out that one of their most importent airbases was being attacked so had LTTE already caused much materialistic destruction. When The military sent a commando force to kill the tigers so had they putted their attention toward the civilian planes and started to destroy them as well. Finally the commandos were able to put down the attackers, and lucky there too since turistplanes from Maldives were about to land at the moment. No civilians were killed or harmed but the results were though that, when the news of attack went out to the international media, the turist indrusty of Sri Lanka lost their profits with 80-90%. Those turists that still were on the island became panicked and tried as quickly as possible to get the first plane home, creating choas inturn. The LTTE raid hurted Sri Lanka economically and it wasn't until after the war that the profits of the turist indrustry returned to the levels they were before the raid. All these harden Kumaratunga's heart and from had been a pro-peacetalk idealist she had become a war-ready leader who wanted to annihilate LTTE. It became difficult for her with that part since UNP won the parliamentary election 2001 and their leader Ranil Wickremasinghe became prime minister of Sri Lanka. The guy was, for some reasons, all for a new peacetalk with LTTE, which created tensions between him and Kumaratunga. Stangely enough so was LTTE all for a new peacetalk too, when in 2002 LTTE's main ambassador Anton Balasingham asked Norway for help with new peacetalks, while he was there for a operation. The Norwegians accepted his wish and immidiately started with new peacetalks. Both parties had no problems with Norway as the negotiator since Norway was seen a neutral party. Both LTTE's leader Prabhakaran and Sri Lanka's prime minister Wickremasinghe wrote on the new truce, and a Norweigan force was founded to make sure both parties followed the truce.

Three years of peace lasted but in 2004, an internal struggle happened in LTTE. What was happening was that Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, more known as Colonel Karuna Amman, became disillusioned with LTTE, which he though had ignored the eastern Tamils in favor of the northern Tamils and that Prabhakaran had a become totalitarian ruler and broke out of LTTE along with 5000 men and created his own militia, the Tamil Makkad Viduthalai Pulikal (Tamil People Liberation Tigers), or TMVP. LTTE's intelligence agency claimed that the break-up only happened because they were getting at the colonel's "businesses" behind the scene. Rumors said that the government was behind the break-up but so far no evidence for it have proven it. Armed struggles broke out between LTTE and TMVP and they quickly became bloody. Except for that, everything else in Sri Lanka was calm for the moment. Though Kumaratunga hadn't forgotten LTTE's attacks and assassination attempt on her life, so during a vote of confidence her political alliance allied with JVP, she dissolved the parliament and started a new parliamentary election in 2004. Thanks to the alliance between PA and JVP, Wickremasinghe lost the prime minister post and Mahinda Rajapaska, former minister of labour and aquatic resourses and Kumaratunga's personal friend, took over. PA got JVP on their side thanks to their promises that the government wouldn't have any future peacetalks with LTTE. Though the tsunami of 2004 temporarily stopped their plans for a time, they got their next chance in 2006, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lakshman Kadirgamar, an ethnic Tamil, was assassinated in his own home by a LTTE-sniper. Kadirgamar was a respected politican both inside and outside the country. The assassination causes EU to classify LTTE as a terrorist organization, much to LTTE's disapproval. Same year as Kadirgamar was assassinated, presidental election was starting again. That time, Rajapaska was nominated as SLFP's presidential candidate. His strongest slogan was he would put to an end of the war as quickly as possible. LTTE of course didn't like the promise and in their territories people were forbidden to vote in order to boycott the election. This would prove to be the beginning of the end for LTTE. Rajapaska won the election and became the new president of Sri Lanka. As soon as he was sworn in as president he prepared the nation for total war. The first thing he did was to buy as much of Chinese and Israeli weaponary as possible. Then he introduced harsher discipline within the military with help of American military advisors. The result was successful. The Sri Lankan military, which had once been a military of undisciplined and halfheartedly motivated slackers and thieves, quickly became a strong force made up of disciplined, well-trained and motivated troops. After this reformation the new force pulled their first moves in year 2006 against east. The Government allied with the near-defeated TMVP and together they, after a year of hard combat, forced LTTE out of the eastern provinces. Then they just had to win the same victory in north, in LTTE's "backyard", but just to make sure they wouldn't lose their control of the eastern parts to LTTE the government pardoned colonel Amman and his troops of their past deeds and made Amman the temporary governor of those provinces. By that way the government was able to gain TMVP's eternal loyalty. With that end of matter the military pushed to north. Slowly the military fought through LTTE's grounds and won the first battle after the next one. The casulties became extremly high for LTTE. In November 2008-January 2009 the Second Battle of Kilinochchi was fought on the city which was LTTE's capital city since 1998. The military won the battle and LTTE was forced to retreat from the city when military tanks pushed through their defences. LTTE fled to Mullaitivu, with the military right behind their backs. After twenty days of fighting, the city fell to the military as well. The Sea Tigers were annihilated as a militant force and LTTE had control of only 5% of the territories they once owned. The military quickly attacked this territory and at April 2009, LTTE's control of their last city, Puthukkudiyirippu, fell to the superior force. At May, LTTE's leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, the man who had led the most strongest terrorist organization to ever exist, fell when he tried to retreat inside an ambulance. When his body was later identified by Colonel Amman, President Rajapaska officially confirmed the tiger leader's death through live television, and declared that the war had been won. Soon LTTE accepted defeat and their last remnants laid down their weapons and surrendered. The 26 year long war was over.

Tropes Involved with this War

• Badass Army: LTTE was no doubt this. The Sri Lankan Army didn't really become this until Rajapaska became president and started to toughen them up.
• Child Soldiers: LTTE recruited children as young as eleven into their ranks. They spent most of their childhood training to be the perfect soldiers, away from the front lines but if LTTE was suffering from lack of soldiers than they usually was forced to make up the holes with armed childrens.
• Cyanide Pill: The members of LTTE carried this, all from the leader to the least-ranked grunts.
• Enemy Mine: After the assassination of former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, India begun to help the Sri Lankan state with economical and political resources. Before, India had been a strong supporter of LTTE and their war against Sri Lanka.
• Follow the Leader: Prabhakaran was an enthusiastic admirer of both Napoleon Bonaparte I and the USMC, and many of LTTE's strategies and tactics were inspired by them. Also, pretty much every terrorist organization of today have used tactics and strategies that LTTE invented or perfected into new levels.
• Gambit Pileup: The Sri Lankan state and LTTE weren't the only participants in the war. India was involved by helping LTTE with military and political support before sending its own troops to Sri Lanka. There they got into fights with their former Tamil allies. The Marxist revolutionary party JVP tried to use the Sinhalese people's anger toward said Indian involvement to overthrow the Sri Lankan government. Disillusioned tigers in the east broke out of LTTE 2004 and formed their own militia, TMVP, giving birth to a civil war in the civil war. And the dominant political parties of Sri Lanka, UNP and SLFP, were struggling with each other for the highest political power, and both used the war in their slogans and campaigns to gain votes and the smaller parties' allegiances.
• Keystone Army: In the endgame, LTTE turned out to be this. During the war, LTTE was one hell of an opponent who couldn't be defeated but as soon Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed, LTTE admitted defeat and the war suddenly ended.
• Magnificent Bastard: Velupillai Prabhakaran, founder and leader of LTTE. For near three decades he out-witted his opponent both militarily and politically. His counterpart, current President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaska, is quite the political player too.
• NGO Superpower: LTTE became somewhat of this around 1991-92. On the territories they had conquered from the Sri Lankan government they built up an well-organized political administration, competitive to those of international recognized nations. While LTTE's Tamil Eelam wasn't an international superpower, it was powerful enough to beat back the troops of India, one of today's militarily strongest nations.
• The Remnant: Rumors claims that some ex-LTTE members are planning for a restart of the war inside their hideouts in India.
• Shocking Defeat Legacy: Averted; when LTTE lost their capital city of Jaffna to the governmental troops in 1995, they didn't became weaker at all, in fact they became even more stronger than before.
• Suicide Attack: While LTTE wasn't the ones who invented suicide bombing as a military strategy, they were the ones who perfected it to the grand art of war it has become today.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Military of Sri Lanka took some serious levels in badassary during Eelam War IV. Before they were just a bunch of undisciplined psychos in uniforms but between 2006-2009 they've become the asskicking Badass Army of tomorrow of the entire south Asia.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka 1994-2005. She tried her hardest to make peace with LTTE and end the war, but the cruel reality kinda broke all her efforts to make that possible.