LTTE

LTTE

The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam) was founded in May 1976 by Vellupillai Prabhakaran in Sri Lanka which has a Sinhalese majority. The LTTE wanted to create Tamil Ealam, an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka as an ethnic homeland for the minority Tamils. The campaign was one of the longest running armed conflicts in Asia until the LTTE was defeated by the Sri Lankan Military in May 2009. The LTTE has been recognised as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries but are known to be supported by the Tamil Diaspora in Europe and North America and some Tamils in India.

India became involved in the conflict in the 1980s for a number of reasons, including its leaders' desire to project India as the regional power in the area and worries about India's own Tamils seeking independence and the flood of refugees. It first intervened by air dropping food parcels in Jaffna. It also signed the Indo-Sri Lanka accord which assigned a degree of regional autonomy in the Tamil areas, with the establishment of a regional council. Tamil militant groups were also required to lay down their arms and the Indian Peace Keeping Force(IPKF), part of the Indian Army, was sent to Sri Lanka to enforce disarmament and to watch over the regional council. Tamil militant groups did not have a role in the making of the agreement as it was signed between the Sri Lankan and Indian Government.

The LTTE rejected the accord because they opposed the candidate, who was to administer the regional council. The LTTE proposed three other candidates who India rejected. The LTTE then refused to hand over their weapons to the IPKF.

Soon the LTTE and the Indian army were engaged in a military conflict. The government of India decided that the IPKF should disarm the LTTE by force and launched a number of campaigns, including Operation Pawan, which attempted to capture Jaffna. The ruthlessness of the Indian intervention, made it extremely unpopular with not only the Tamils in Sri Lanka, but also with the Sinhalese population. The IPKF left the country in 1990, on the request of the Sri Lankan government. Fighting continued throughout the 1990s and Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India was assassinated by a suicide bomber associated with the LTTE in 1991. In 1993 Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa was also assassinated. Relations between India and Sri Lanka became sour due to the conflict.

In 2001, the LTTE dropped its demand for a separate state. Instead, it stated that a form of regional autonomy would meet its demands. The Sri Lankan Government agreed to the ceasefire. In March 2002, both sides signed an official Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). The LTTE boycotted the 2005 election and the increasing number of rifts between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government caused a number of ceasefire violations in 2006. The government officially pulled out of the ceasefire agreement in January 2008 and President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared military victory over the Tamil Tigers on May 16, 2009 after 26 years of conflict.