Sri Lankan Civil War - Outbreak of Civil War

Outbreak of Civil War

Supported by the on-going politics of conflict in Sri Lanka, politicised Tamil youth in the north and the east started to form militant groups. These groups developed independently of the Colombo Tamil leadership, and in the end rejected and annihilated them. The most prominent of these groups was the TNT, which changed its name to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or the LTTE in 1976. The LTTE initially carried out a campaign of violence against the state, particularly targeting policemen and also moderate Tamil politicians who attempted a dialogue with the government. Their first major operation was the assassination of the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah in 1975 by Prabhakaran.

The LTTE's modus operandi of the early war was based on assassinations, whereas the mode of operation for the UNP was through a series of checkpoints set up around the city. The assassination in 1977 of a Tamil Member of Parliament, M. Canagaratnam, was carried out personally by Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE. In July 1983, the LTTE launched a deadly ambush on a Sri Lanka Army check point Four Four Bravo outside the town of Thirunelveli, killing an officer and 12 soldiers. Using the nationalistic sentiments to their advantage, the Jayawardena organised massacres and pogroms in Colombo, the capital, and elsewhere (see Black July). Between 400 and 3,000 Tamils were estimated to have been killed, and many more fled Sinhalese-majority areas. This is considered the beginning of the civil war.

Apart from the LTTE, there initially was a plethora of militant groups (see list). The LTTE's position, adopted from that of the PLO, was that there should be only one. Initially, the LTTE gained prominence due to devastating attacks such as the Kent and Dollar Farm massacres of 1984, where hundreds of men, women and children were attacked during the night as they slept and were hacked to death with fatal blows to the head from axes; and the Anuradhapura massacre of 1985, where they indiscriminately opened fire, killing and wounding 146 civilians within Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi Buddhist shrine. The Anuradhapura massacre was apparently answered by government forces with the Kumudini boat massacre in which over 23 Tamil civilians died. Over time, the LTTE merged with or largely exterminated almost all the other militant Tamil groups. As a result, many Tamil splinter groups ended up working with the Sri Lankan government as paramilitaries or denounced violence and joined mainstream politics, and some legitimate Tamil-oriented political parties remain, all opposed to LTTE's vision of an independent state.

Peace talks between the LTTE and the government began in Thimphu in 1985, but they soon failed, and the war continued. In 1986, many civilians were massacred as part of this conflict. In 1987, government troops pushed the LTTE fighters to the northern city of Jaffna. In April 1987, the conflict exploded with ferocity, as both the government forces and the LTTE fighters engaged in a series of bloody operations.

The Sri Lankan military launched an offensive, called "Operation Liberation" or Vadamarachchi Operation, during May–June 1987, to regain control of the territory in the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE. This offensive marked the Sri Lankan military's first conventional warfare on Sri Lankan soil since independence. The offensive was successful, and the LTTE leader Prabhakaran and the Sea Tiger leader Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan alias Soosai narrowly escaped from advancing troops at Valvettithurai. The key military personnel involved in the operation were Lt Col. Vipul Boteju, Lt Col. Sarath Jayawardane, Col. Vijaya Wimalaratne, Brig. Denzil Kobbekaduwa and Maj. Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

In July 1987, the LTTE carried out their first suicide attack. Captain Miller of the Black Tigers drove a small truck carrying explosives through the wall of a fortified Sri Lankan army camp, reportedly killing 40 soldiers. They carried out over 378 suicide attacks, more than any other organisation in the world, and the suicide attack became a trademark of the LTTE and a characteristic of the civil war. The killings of Father Mary Bastian and George Jeyarajasingham, both human rights activists, have been attributed to the government forces. These are but two examples of the thousands murdered in this period.