Sri Lanka civil war

The Sri Lanka civil war was a protracted armed conflict fought between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Tamil separatist insurgent group seeking an independent state ("Tamil Eelam") in the north and east of the island. The war is conventionally dated from July 1983, following the anti-Tamil pogrom known as "Black July," to May 2009, when government forces defeated the LTTE in the northeastern Vanni region and killed its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The conflict's roots lay in post-independence grievances of the Tamil minority, including the 1956 Sinhala Only Act, standardisation policies in university admissions, and episodic anti-Tamil violence. The LTTE emerged in the 1970s and by the mid-1980s had become the dominant Tamil armed group, eliminating rival factions and pioneering tactics such as suicide bombings via its Black Tigers unit.

The war unfolded in four main phases (often called Eelam War I–IV), punctuated by foreign intervention and failed peace processes:

• Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) deployment, 1987–1990, under the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi and J.R. Jayewardene.
• A Norwegian-facilitated ceasefire signed in February 2002 between the government of Ranil Wickremesinghe and the LTTE, monitored by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.
• Collapse of the ceasefire and resumption of full-scale war under President Mahinda Rajapaksa from 2006, culminating in the 2008–2009 Vanni offensive.

The final months drew sustained international criticism. A 2011 UN Panel of Experts report found credible allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law by both sides, including shelling of civilians and hospitals in no-fire zones. UN Human Rights Council resolutions, notably Resolution 30/1 (2015), established accountability mechanisms that Sri Lanka later withdrew support from in 2020. Estimated total deaths range from roughly 80,000 to over 100,000.