Author: Nilan Fernando, The Asia Foundation

The civil war in Sri Lanka has taken a terrible toll. No one knows for sure how many people have died, but it is probably not an exaggeration to say that, on average, 5,000-10,000 people have died annually for the past 25 years. Most of these casualties, both Tamil and Sinhalese, have come from the ranks of the poor.

The war has triggered massive displacement and migration and the country’s demographic makeup has been altered, probably forever. For Tamils in the North, the war has been particularly disastrous.

Now, after two years of intense fighting, the 25-year-old civil conflict in Sri Lanka is reaching a climax with the government on the verge of victory. The 2002 Ceasefire Agreement between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) unraveled in 2006 and, having largely cleared the Eastern Province of the LTTE in 2007, the government focused on winning back the Northern Province in 2008.

The last LTTE fighters and their leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, are now clinging to a sliver of territory on the northeast coast, hiding behind what the government and members of the international community have called a ‘human shield’ of around 100,000 Tamil civilians.

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