The Functions of Recent Warfare in Sri Lanka
1) Identity Creation
Jonathan Goodhand: After the war “Sinhala nationalists will need to find new enemies,” since winning against the LTTE has been such a key component of their platform.
Jonathan Spencer: “For the LTTE the struggle, with its attendant symbolism of martyrdom and transcendent death, had become its own raison d’etre.” (p. 624)
2) Economic Functions
ICG: “state’s role was widely seen as providing jobs for the Sinhala majority” (p. 7)
Spencer: “kickbacks and sweeteners on defence contracts, not to mention the employment bonanza of a growing army” (p. 624)
Goodhand: “business interests in partnership with foreign investors increasingly colonising the east” (p. S355)
3) Creates sense of a domain ‘outside of politics’
Spencer: “the killing of political figures (…) was presented as a kind of cleansing of the nation from the murk of the political.” It is an appeal to the “transcendent unity of the nation” (p. 619).
4) Practical/Strategic Functions
For Government - Goodhand: the ‘demerger’ of the north and the east, which had been one territorial unit under the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord.
ICG: Ultimately, the creation of a Sri Lankan identity that is Sinhalese in character? (p. 17) The maintenance, at least, of a unitary Sri Lanka.
HRW: It is an exercise in demonstrating the legitimacy, capacity and responsibility for all Sri Lankan citizens of the government in Colombo, through ‘Safe zones’ for IDPs and ‘Welfare Villages’.
For LTTE - Venugopal: Terrorist attacks affecting tourism/export industry