Understanding Modern Sri Lanka — Interview with Journalist Mark Salter

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US

Mark Salter, a journalist, analyst, and writer with over 25 years of professional experience in democratization, governance, and post-conflict peacebuilding, speaks to JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, Pitasanna Shanmugathas, about his upcoming book From Independence to Aragalaya: A Modern History of Sri Lanka. In this interview, Salter discusses the complex history of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, examining the role of British colonialism, post-independence governance failures, and the evolution of Tamil political resistance. Drawing on his extensive experience in South Asia—particularly Sri Lanka, where he has lived since 2019—Salter offers insights into how bad governance and corruption have plagued the country for decades, culminating in the 2022 Aragalaya protests.

As the author of the acclaimed To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka, Salter also reflects on missed opportunities for peace during the civil war, including the challenges of bipartisan political cooperation and the ultimate failure of negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. The interview concludes with a discussion of current political dynamics under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, examining the transformation of the historically anti-Tamil, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), into a coalition that has gained significant support in Tamil areas while facing challenges in delivering promised constitutional reforms.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Pitasanna Shanmugathas: Mark Salter, you’ve essentially moved from Sweden to Sri Lanka, where you now live most of the time. I’ve read your previous book To End the Civil War, which is on the Norway mediation of the ethnic conflict. You incorporated the perspectives of all sides to the conflict: the Norwegians, the Sri Lankans, and the Tamil separatist rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). What was it that made you become so interested in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict and Sri Lankan history?

Mark Salter: First of all, it’s a pleasure to be here with you, Pitasanna, and to talk about my research and upcoming book, ”From Independence to Aragalaya: A Modern History of Sri Lanka.” It’s due out in about six months and covers the period from independence in 1948 up to the Aragalaya in 2022.

As for your question, it’s always a bit hard to pinpoint. I’ve been working on issues of conflict, democracy, reconciliation, and conflict management for over 30 years, in places like the former Yugoslavia, Central and Eastern Europe, Iraq, and Somalia.

It was in that context that I first visited Sri Lanka in 2002, just after the ceasefire agreement. When you travel a lot, as I’ve been lucky to do, there are some countries you find interesting and then move on. But with a few places, you feel a pull—“I like this place, I want to understand it better.” That’s what happened with Sri Lanka from the very beginning. It’s like a little bee that’s been buzzing around my head ever since.

After many visits over the years, I had the chance to move there in 2019, and I’ve now lived in Sri Lanka for over five years. I’m fascinated by the country—not just intellectually but personally. I feel at home there. Of course, Sri Lanka is full of contradictions. On one hand, it’s the idyllic island of sun, sand, and smiling faces you see in tourist brochures—and that’s true. But there’s also a much darker side that coexists. You don’t have to choose one or the other—they’re both real.

That interplay is what really drew me in, and when my publisher asked if I was interested in writing a history of the country, I wanted to explore that tension more deeply. Most people who work in conflict resolution and take an interest in Sri Lanka tend to focus on the civil war—from 1983 onwards. That’s understandable. But the more time I spent digging into the earlier history, the more convinced I became that you can’t fully grasp the civil war—or modern Sri Lanka—without going further back and examining its deeper roots.

History is like that: peel away one layer and another appears. Even though this book covers the period from 1948 to today, I now feel that doesn’t go far enough. If I were to write a second volume, it would start with the Portuguese colonization in the early 16th century and run up to independence—because that colonial legacy so clearly shaped the post-independence experience.

Shanmugathas: I’m glad you raised that point about the colonial history of Sri Lanka, which was previously known as Ceylon during colonial rule and had other names as well. I once co-authored an article with anti-colonial scholar Dr. Chamindra Weerawardhana, who is Sinhalese. The piece examined Britain’s colonization of Sri Lanka. The island was colonized by three different European powers over a span of 400 years, with the British occupying it the longest. They took control of the entire island, and we explored the devastating impact of their colonial rule and how it partly played a role in what led to the civil war in post-independent Sri Lanka.

Salter: The first thing I’d say is that any historical account that doesn’t span the full arc of events is, by nature, incomplete. Every stage of the journey—pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial—shapes the trajectory and deserves attention. That said, writing a book demands focus, and focus comes with limitations. In my work, which centers on Sri Lanka’s post-independence period, I was acutely aware of these constraints. I made a point of acknowledging the significance of the pre-colonial and colonial periods—not just to signal awareness, but to point readers toward areas worth deeper exploration if they wish to understand the fuller picture.

A major concern I have with much of the discourse around Sri Lanka’s modern history—especially the civil war—is how frequently it’s framed in teleological terms. That is, people often speak as though the war was the inevitable outcome of everything that came before. I don’t subscribe to that view. While I fully accept that events are connected—what happens in one era can and often does influence what follows—I draw a line at determinism. The fact of British colonialism and its violent, extractive legacy should not be minimized for a moment. But to say that this alone made the civil war inevitable is, in my view, inaccurate and unhelpful.

The war didn’t erupt simply because of colonialism. It emerged from a particular convergence of the ideologies, decisions, and power structures that came into play after independence. These were rooted in earlier dynamics, but they took on new forms in the post-colonial context. After the British left, power shifted to a Sinhalese-majority government, whose leadership made a series of choices—especially in relation to ethnic politics—that systematically marginalized the Tamil population. These choices played a central role in the lead-up to the war. But again, this trajectory wasn’t preordained; it was contingent on the specific political and social developments of that time.

This distinction is vital, particularly in the Sri Lankan context, where both Sinhalese and Tamil narratives often fall into deterministic readings of history. You’ll hear Sinhalese nationalists point to ancient invasions, or Tamil nationalists refer to British favoritism in employing Tamils in the colonial administration, as though these factors alone explain everything that followed. I would argue instead that we need to pay closer attention to the post-independence actors, ideologies, and institutions that shaped events. The war wasn’t inevitable—it was the result of choices made within a particular set of historical and structural conditions.

Even the start of the civil war is often oversimplified. We refer to ”the civil war” as though it began as a singular, clear-cut event. But if you look at 1983, what you see is a series of incidents—the LTTE’s ambush of Sri Lankan soldiers in the north, followed by the pogroms of Black July. These were horrific, but not unique in global terms; similar kinds of violence have occurred in many places without escalating into civil war. The key question is: why did they lead to full-scale conflict in Sri Lanka? What were the conditions that allowed violence to escalate rather than be contained or resolved?

That’s one of the central questions I try to explore in the book. I place particular emphasis on the early years of the war—the 1980s and 1990s—because they’re often overshadowed in both academic and popular discourse. Most people, especially those outside Sri Lanka, are more familiar with the later stages of the conflict, particularly the post-2002 period following the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). But understanding how the war took shape in its earliest years is essential to grasping the deeper structural and ideological forces at play.

Shanmugathas: In addressing your point about the influence of British colonization on Sri Lanka, what we argued in that article is that while British actions were not the sole cause of the civil war, they did play a significant role. We contend that the British implemented reforms such as the Donoughmore and Soulbury Reports without consulting the indigenous population. Leaders like T.B. Jayah, representing the Muslim community, and Ponnambalam Ramanathan, representing the Tamil community, advocated for their communities’ interests to be incorporated into any reforms imposed on the country.

We also examined how the British used language as a tool of governance. The introduction of English disproportionately benefited the Tamil minority, who came to hold a significant presence in the civil service and other influential sectors—far exceeding their demographic proportion compared to the Sinhalese. This imbalance fostered deep resentment.

The Sinhalese observed how language could be used as an instrument of power and, after independence, employed similar tactics through the enactment of the Sinhala Only Act. This is one of the patterns we trace in our work. We also argue that the British introduced the concept of citizenship based on documentation through the Donoughmore framework. The Sinhalese later adopted this principle to disenfranchise Indian plantation Tamils—many of whom had been brought to the island from Southern India by the British as indentured laborers—and  stripped them of citizenship. The post-independence Sinhalese state repurposed these British mechanisms to subjugate Tamil groups, but framed it as ”redress” for historical grievances they suffered under colonial rule. These developments, we argue, played a direct role in marginalizing Tamil communities and contributed to the tensions that eventually erupted into civil war.

Salter: I wouldn’t disagree with your overall thesis. I think it’s almost unarguable that British colonialism impacted Ceylon enormously and in ways that go way beyond what you’re describing. Just the fact of an upper class who are English-speaking on both sides of the ethnic divide—on the Tamil side to an extraordinary degree and on the Sinhalese side to a significant degree—bears witness to this fact. Why are they speaking English? Fundamentally, because that was the way to advance and progress under British colonialism. So, I don’t disagree with that at all.

I possibly would disagree on the detail of Sinhalese language concerns. I would perhaps put more emphasis on the Sinhalese resentment and what they felt was the suppression of their language under the British as a key driving factor in the push for Sinhala Only. But I’m not saying there wasn’t also an undercurrent of anti-Tamil prejudice there.

With the documentation, I think what explains Senanayake’s move on documentation more than anything else was his concern that with the labour unions so patently being successful at organizing labor—witness the May-June 1947 general strike, which seriously challenged his government during the runup to independence—he was concerned that the same thing would happen amongst the Malaiyaha Tamils, also known as the Indian-origin Tamils. So, his move to strip them of citizenship was motivated as much as anything by a desire to limit the franchise so that he could maximize the chance of him winning elections. And yes, of course, there was probably also an element of unstated racism with regard to an ‘alien’ population.

Shanmugathas: It was actually the British who introduced universal suffrage to Sri Lanka during colonial rule. However, this raised significant concerns among minority communities, who argued that they needed protections against majoritarian rule by the Sinhalese, given the significant population imbalance between the Sinhalese and other communities in the country. In response, the British pointed to a provision in the Soulbury Report that prohibited discrimination, claiming that it was sufficient. They assured the minorities that their British-engineered system of governance was fine for Sri Lanka and that no additional protections were necessary. Of course, this approach had devastating consequences for Sri Lanka after independence.

Salter: I wish the Ceylon authorities had paid more attention to what was happening in India, particularly how the British Raj—though not everything, like Partition, worked well—shaped India’s post-independence federal structures. If we look at India’s federal framework, especially the language provisions, wouldn’t it have been beneficial if Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, as it was then) had followed a similar model?

I remember an Indian scholar telling me a few years ago that if you compare Sri Lanka and India, looking at the position of Tamils in the immediate post-independence period and then jumping to the 1980s, what becomes clear is that in Sri Lanka, the Tamil community was, by and large, very prominent in the Ceylon National Congress, in the national independence movement. They were some of the strongest advocates for a multilingual, independent Ceylon, and obviously had high expectations that, in an independent country, their position would improve, or at a minimum be maintained compared to the colonial period.

In contrast, in India, particularly in the Madras state, the first 20 years of Indian independence saw a strong anti-Hindi movement. The Tamils there, especially those in the Dravidian movement, did not necessarily want to be part of a Hindi-dominated Indian polity. It was only through the federal structure and language-based provisions that the post-independence Indian state adopted that this sentiment began to shift. By the late 1970s, Tamil Nadu, after becoming Tamil Nadu in the late 1960s, had become an integral part of the Indian polity. Meanwhile, many Sri Lankan Tamils—generally speaking—shifted from broadly supporting Ceylonese or Sri Lankan independence to supporting the growing number of Tamil Eelam directed groups and movements. This difference in political settlements and the respective outcomes in both countries is striking. Overall, it points to the important lesson that how you shape your democratic structures and processes plays a critical role in determining your ability to effectively manage prevailing social and other cleavages.

Shanmugathas: You made an interesting point in the introduction of your new book about the contrast between India and Sri Lanka. This was due to Indian Prime Minister Nehru’s insight when he said that he couldn’t make Hindi the official language or else this will lead to separatism and collapse of the Indian Union. As a result, he devolved power to the regions and pursued decentralization. Later on, his daughter, on the other hand, as Prime Minister was politically inept and sought to consolidate power to the central government. But I want to get into the main argument that you put forth in this new book of yours. What would you tell readers who are interested in knowing about Sri Lanka, what is the central argument in this book?

Salter: One of the central arguments—among several—is that Sri Lanka’s crisis over the past 35 years, including the civil war, stems fundamentally from a crisis of governance. The country has been poorly governed for decades.

Since the presidency of J.R. Jayewardene, we’ve seen the consolidation of a political elite—building on an already existing elite class—that entrenched itself in power across both major parties, the UNP and SLFP, primarily to secure its own enrichment. Corruption, nepotism, and other hallmarks of bad governance have been deeply embedded in the political system.

The 2022 Aragalaya protests laid this bare. Although largely driven by the Sinhalese majority, there was notable participation from Muslim and Tamil communities as well. At its core, the movement was a mass rejection of how the country has been governed over the last 50 or so years. And in this context Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s calamitously inept misrule, it can be argued, simply brought decades of misrule to a socially unbearable tipping point.

If bad governance has been Sri Lanka’s defining crisis for the past three to four decades, then the path forward must be rooted in structural, governance-focused reform—improving leadership, dismantling the nexus between corrupt politicians and business elites, and ensuring accountability. The clearest sign of bad governance has been the collapse of the economy in recent years, but the damage goes far beyond that.

The challenge now is whether the current government can do more than satisfy IMF benchmarks and international lenders. Can it actually improve the lives of ordinary Sri Lankans? Can it reverse the conditions highlighted by last year’s UNDP data—widespread poverty, hunger, families skipping meals? At the moment we’re still far from that goal.

My first argument, then, is that Sri Lanka’s core crisis is one of governance—marked by identifiable, addressable failures. Encouragingly, the current administration appears to be making some modest headway on that score. At the same, as Jayadeva Uyangoda has long argued, tackling necessary governance reform implies in part reconfiguring the fundamental nature of the Sri Lankan state—a task that has eluded previous governments, and will remain challenging for the NPP administration to address today.

My second point concerns identity. During the civil war years and beyond, ethnic identity in Sri Lanka—Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim—has become rigidified, but historically, these divisions were far more fluid. Both in terms of personal identity and everyday coexistence, the picture before the war was more nuanced.

Before the civil war, with the notable exceptions of anti-Tamil violence in 1956, 1958, and to some extent in 1977, interethnic relations in Sri Lanka resembled those in other South Asian nations: marked as much by tolerance and coexistence as by conflict. That’s not to deny tensions, but the broader pattern was one of living together, with overlapping identities and mutual tolerance.

One of the war’s most tragic outcomes has been the erosion of that coexistence. In the Mannar district, for example, which I know quite well, you hear so many stories, and on all sides, of how different communities used to live and work either together or side by side in an essentially conflict-free—that is violent conflict—manner. It’s heartbreaking to see how that has changed as a consequence of the civil war. I’ve seen similar dynamics in my years working in the former Yugoslavia—whether among Muslims, Catholic Croats and Serbian Orthodox in Bosnia-Herzegovina, or among Hindus, Catholics, Muslims and Buddhists in the Mannar district. These communities previously coexisted with relatively few deep divisions, or at least, divisions that spawned violence.

But when you go to Mannar today, the town and the surroundings are sort of ethnically cleansed. The Christians are all in one area, Hindus in another. And the Muslims are in another area geographically, physically speaking.

Shanmugathas: That’s also because of the LTTE and their ethnic cleansing of the Muslims from the North as well, right?

Salter: That’s bringing in another dimension. I know one or two people who knew Jaffna before the civil war. From what I understand, Muslims were a relatively small minority in Jaffna, but they were an important one. They ran things like jewelry stores—they had a real presence in the community.

With my own background, I tend to think this is reminiscent of Jews in Central Eastern Europe during Nazi times—what happened with Muslims in the Northern Province in late 1990 was the sudden uprooting of a whole community. But that’s a whole other story. There probably are a couple of other themes, but I think those two themes run very strongly through the book.

Shanmugathas: In this interview, I want to explore those two key themes. On the economic front, individuals like Balasingham Skanthakumar—a Sri Lankan political scientist—Mick Moore, an economist who has studied South Asia for over 50 years, and others, including  myself, have argued in our writings that the neoliberal policies implemented most notably during the J.R. Jayewardene era (though they began, to some extent, under Sirimavo Bandaranaike) had long-term detrimental effects.

Sri Lanka had once devoted a significant portion of its national budget—around 20 to 25% in the mid-1970s under Sirimavo—to social security and welfare, achieving a life expectancy comparable to some European countries. But with Jayewardene’s rise to power, those economic policies were dismantled. He opened the economy to foreign corporations, drastically weakened labor rights, and implemented neoliberal reforms that had disastrous consequences.

Subsequent governments continued along this neoliberal path, and the 2022 ousting of Gotabaya Rajapaksa was, in many ways, the culmination of these decades-long economic policies. These are the arguments made by myself as well as academics like Skanthakumar and Moore, and I’m curious to hear your perspective.

Salter: This is big stuff. I’m no fan of J.R.—don’t get me wrong—but I feel your depiction of his policies is somewhat skewed. A key motivation behind his liberalization of the Sri Lankan economy was what he had observed economically over the previous 15 years.

If you look at Sri Lanka under Sirimavo, the country was on the brink of default. The terms of trade were the problem. Sri Lanka’s balance of payments, and its ability to sustain the very substantial social security network you described, had become almost impossible to maintain. This challenge had existed since Senanayake’s time, due to the highly protectionist policies adopted. The price of rice, for example, was kept at a government-set level—any attempt to change that led to national strikes. It was a social market economy, but one in which protectionism played a major role.

Under Sirimavo, this trend went even further—she nationalized major sectors, including the petroleum industry, which caused companies like Esso to withdraw from the country. To be fair, these types of policies were quite common in the early 1970s, and Sri Lanka wasn’t alone in adopting them.

By the time J.R. came into power, however, there was a growing consensus that the economic situation was untenable. The country simply could not sustain its level of social protection without attracting significant investment. In J.R.’s view, liberalization was the path to doing that—bringing money into the country.

Now, beyond this, the debate shifts into more ideological territory. I agree that neoliberal governance contributed to the crisis. But it wasn’t the sole cause.

A major part of the problem was Sri Lanka’s political elite—how, both before and after independence, a small coterie of families monopolized power. By the 2000s, the Rajapaksas had joined this elite circle, but even before them, a tiny group of dynastic families produced most of the country’s prime ministers and leaders. That kind of entrenched elite dominance isn’t about neoliberalism—and it was bipartisan. And here the Bandaranaikes were just as complicit as the Jayawardene clan; Wickremesinghe included.

So, yes, I agree that economic liberalization under Jayewardene had serious consequences—particularly in exacerbating inequality. But at the same time, some degree of reform was necessary, not least in order to attract investment. The real tragedy is that both Jayewardene and his successors squandered the economic opportunities opened up by liberalization. Much of the money borrowed from international institutions and lent through bilateral channels ended up funding the war—and that, too, is a major part of the problem the country had to live with over the subsequent decades of civil war.

Shanmugathas: A significant portion of the national budget was devoted to the military. During the first decade of the neoliberal reforms introduced by J.R. Jayewardene, political scientists like Skanthakumar argued that an estimated one in four Sri Lankans lived in poverty. Even if one accepts the argument that some of Jayewardene’s policies were necessary, it’s important to note that he eliminated popular social programs, such as the rice ration program, which academics noted had no rational economic justification. He had previously attempted to dismantle this program in the 1950s, which triggered widespread protests and ultimately triggered the resignation of the UNP government at that time.

Jayewardene also created export processing zones, which welcomed foreign corporations into the Sri Lankan labour market and offered them complete tax exemptions. These neoliberal policies were not limited to his administration; they were carried forward by successive governments.

Despite the economic difficulties under Sirimavo Bandaranaike in the mid-1970s, Sri Lanka’s development indicators at the time—such as literacy and life expectancy—were comparable to those of some European countries. But I don’t want to get too deep into the economic side right now.

I want to turn briefly to the ethnic issue you raise in your book. For our readers who may be unfamiliar with the ethnic conflict history, could you speak to the various discriminatory policies enacted by successive governments? It’s important to emphasize that the Tamil population did not immediately seek separatism. Tamil leaders such as Senator Murugeysen Tiruchelvam and members of the Federal Party passionately advocated in Sri Lanka’s Parliament for federalism and equal rights under a united Sri Lanka. Their message was clear: We want federalism. We want what Canada has. We want what some of these European countries have. We do not want a separate state.

Salter: Absolutely, good question. The first thing I’d say is to remind you of the comparison with India, because it tells you a lot about the divergent trajectories of the two countries. Broadly speaking, at the time of independence, the average Tamil—man or woman—was likely, at worst, neutral, at best supportive of Sri Lankan independence. Tamils saw themselves as an inextricable part of the new polity. I think that was clearly the majority view among Tamils, and likely among the Sinhalese too, though with some reservations on the latter side.

I would describe the evolution of the ethnic conflict in three broad phases. Up until the late 1950s, the central issues concerned the foundational structures of the state: What would be the official language? Who would be employed by the state? How would representation be distributed among ethnic groups? These were formative questions in the wake of independence—essentially, how would the new cards be dealt?

This formative period lasts roughly until the assassination of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1959. From then until the early 1970s, the focus of Tamil political struggle shifted to legislative institutions. To their great credit, under leaders like Chelvanayakam, Tamils sought to resolve their grievances through democratic channels, primarily Parliament, supplemented by nonviolent direct action—Satyagraha, sit-ins, and other creative protests in Jaffna and Colombo.

However, despite repeated political-level dialogues and some attempts at fashioning an overall settlement between successive governments and Tamil political leaders, notably Chelvanayakam, very little tangible progress was made. No firm agreements emerged on, for example, issues such as language policy, civil service recruitment or university admissions. The latter, especially, became deeply contentious when standardization policies were introduced, which Tamils understandably saw as attempts to limit their access to higher education.

After about a decade of political engagement, a new generation of Tamils began emerging in the early to mid-1970s. These younger Tamils did not share their parents’ faith in parliamentary debate or traditional political avenues. Their questions were more urgent: When will we get the university access we deserve? When will we get fair representation? When will we get our language rights? This marked the beginning of a shift from democratic to extra-parliamentary and eventually violent struggle.

That said, the move to militancy was not immediate or widespread. In the early years, Prabhakaran and the LTTE were a fringe group—small, marginal, not representative of the broader Tamil population. But with the outbreak of civil war, and especially after the watershed moment of Black July in 1983, things changed. That was the flashpoint when large numbers of young Tamils, disillusioned with peaceful political avenues, decided to join ”the Boys,” as the LTTE came to be known.

Shanmugathas: And of course, the LTTE wasn’t the only Tamil separatist movement. There were several others, but the LTTE eventually eliminated these rival groups to undemocratically consolidate itself as the sole representative of the Tamil-speaking people.

I often say there’s a legitimate argument to be made about the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Specifically, it’s understandable why some Tamils took up arms. There’s a credible case that, given the circumstances, armed resistance made sense—because in Sri Lanka’s case, a small island nation off the coast of India, the international community largely ignored the anti-Tamil pogroms of the 1950s and 1970s. These massacres weren’t making headlines in global media.

So, the argument goes that in order to draw international attention to the decades-long subjugation of Tamils, armed struggle became a viable means of raising awareness. And to a significant extent, that goal was achieved because there was a growing international recognition of the Tamil plight.

However, after  the Tamil plight gained international recognition, Prabhakaran refused to engage, even after Chandrika Kumaratunga tried  to address Tamil grievances— mainly through the Union of Regions constitutional proposal, which was the most far-reaching constitutional reform initiative in Sri Lankan history—Prabhakaran rejected negotiations, going so far as to assassinate one of the key formulators of that proposal, Neelan Tiruchelvam.

At that point, I believe the justification for continuing a violent ethnic conflict lost its force. What are your thoughts on that?

Salter: I’m finding myself broadly agreeing with you. However, I think it’s important to add the next stage: by the end of the ’90s, Chandrika had tabled her radical constitutional reform proposal. It’s crucial to recognize, though, that the reason it failed was mainly due to classic confrontational, bipolar Sinhalese politics. Specifically, at one point in the late 1990s Ranil Wickremesinghe, then leader of the UNP, and his supporters tore up a copy of her draft constitution in Parliament, which essentially contained many of the same ideas they themselves had proposed earlier. The difference was simply that now they came from the other side of the political fence.

I think this is a lesson learned, which I highlight in my first book, as the Norwegians also do. Regarding what went wrong or what could have been done differently in the Sri Lankan peace processes , one key takeaway would be the crucial importance of ensuring bipartisan support within the Sinhalese polity for whatever peace and/or related constitutional reform proposals are tabled.

What happens, otherwise, is that when Ranil proposes something, Chandrika opposes it—not for the content, but because it’s the other side presenting it. This dynamic, for example, is essentially what led to her undermining any realistic chance of reviving peace talks in late 2003. When the LTTE tabled their Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal, she responded by calling it an affront to national security, sacking the defense minister, and taking back control of the government from Ranil, thereby pulling the rug from under the peace process. As the Norwegians later admitted, if they had only made a bigger effort to persuade Ramil to bring Chandrika on board with the CFA process, actually involve her, consult her along the way, the outcome might have been very different, at least on the Sinhalese side.

To go back a bit, I think where I wanted to focus in response to your question is that by the end of the ’90s, there was a kind of tacit mutual understanding between the Sri Lankan government and Prabhakaran: “We could keep fighting this forever, but it remains a stalemate. No one is winning, and we’re all suffering in the meantime”—a hurting stalemate, as such situations are sometimes called. And this basic understanding was the reason both sides approached the Norwegians, asking if they would be prepared to facilitate peace talks between them.

This was an extraordinary move, especially on the part of the LTTE. A common mistake, especially in Sinhalese commentary, is to suggest that the peace process simply empowered the LTTE, giving them an opportunity to buy more weapons and supplies during the ceasefire period. But it’s important to remember that Prabhakaran and the LTTE leadership agreed to the CFA at the height of their military strength. They had just attacked Katunayake Airport and destroyed half of the Sri Lankan Airlines fleet. According to classic deterrence theory, this was hardly the ideal time for the LTTE to seek peace, which in turn suggests that, at least for a time, there was genuine interest in peace on their side. I’m not sure this interest lasted long once the process actually began, but there was an opening at that point in the early 2000s.

So, to answer your question, if you’re interested in understanding how the ethnic conflict evolved beyond the late ’90s I’d recommend reading my other book, as the details are important. One reason I wrote that book is because the Norwegians felt they had been given the short straw. They made a tremendous effort over nearly ten years to facilitate the peace process, yet by the end, they received almost nothing but criticism, mostly from the Sri Lankan government, but also to some degree from the Tamil side.

The government blamed the Norwegians, saying, “It’s your fault we wasted all that time on the peace process; we should have just gone in and hammered them from the beginning, like Gota Rajapaksa did.” Indeed, by the war’s final stages, for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government it had pretty much become a case of ‘when in doubt blame it on the Norwegians’: ‘those salmon-eating busybodies’, as Mangala Samawarweera memorably called them.

On the LTTE side—not just the LTTE, but the broader Tamil side, both during and after the war—the Norwegians were criticized both for failing to defend the Tigers and supposedly causing the LTTE’s defeat, which I think is a massive misunderstanding. The Norwegians were not fighting the war; the LTTE was fighting the government. They, not the Norwegians, were the primary actors.

The fundamental mistake, I think, is that much of the commentary on the peace process—especially from the Sinhalese side, but also from the Tamil side—confuses the role of the facilitator, blaming the facilitator for the fact that the war didn’t end, or that it didn’t end in their favor. A facilitator’s role is just what it says on the packet: to bring the two sides together. Ultimately, facilitators are only as strong as the commitment of the parties they’re working with. If those parties, as was the case in Sri Lanka, don’t sustain their commitment to the peace process, how could it possibly succeed?

Shanmugathas: The fundamental argument you make in your previous book, ”To End a Civil War,” is that the lack of a peaceful settlement to the civil war stemmed from two main obstacles. First, the party rivalry between the two dominant Sinhalese parties, the UNP and the SLFP. .Second, Prabhakaran’s unwillingness to consider a federal solution, despite people like the LTTE’s spokesperson Anton Balasingham being more receptive to it, as seen in the Oslo Declaration.

Lastly, prior to concluding this interview, if I could briefly ask you about your thoughts on the current situation in Sri Lanka. We now have the JVP. They’ve come into power with a parliamentary supermajority. Historically, the JVP was anti-Tamil, but they have now garnered significant support, even within the Tamil-dominated North of the country.

The JVP now have a supermajority in Parliament, but there is a great deal of frustration among Tamils. For JURIST, I recently interviewed Sri Lankan Tamil academic, Mahendran Thiruvarangan, and he expressed that there is considerable frustration in the North because Anura Kumara Dissanayake has not fulfilled his promise of a new constitution for Sri Lanka. If you contrast this with Chandrika’s time when the stakes were much higher by this point in her Presidency, she was already making moves in assembling a team to draft a constitution for the country. We are not seeing anything like that from AKD despite his coalition’s supermajority in Parliament. Could you speak to that?

Salter: I’ll make two quick points here. The first is that what we’re seeing here is indeed interesting. You called them the JVP, which, of course, they are in origin, but you never hear about the JVP anymore. It’s the NPP, the alliance AKD earlier constructed of which they’re now part, and I can’t help but feel sometimes that this is a conscious attempt to keep the JVP brand out of sight as much as possible, for obvious historical/political reasons.

I think we’re seeing two things. First, this government is mostly made up of people who have never been in government before, with one or two exceptions among the ministers. So, they came into government with a lot of ideas and promises but very little experience of the mechanics of getting things done in Sri Lanka. As all your readers know, getting things done in Sri Lanka is not always an easy task. It requires time, patience, and commitment to move things forward, including in Parliament, all the committee processes, and the almost bureaucratic side of Sri Lankan governance. This is proving to be an obstacle for the NPP so far, as we can clearly see in the lack of speed with which things like reviving the constitutional reform process are happening on the ground.

The second thing is that, quite frankly, in terms of this government’s priorities, for all the rhetoric around ”We are now one country, we’re all Sri Lankans”, the intimations of true reconciliation, a political settlement, and AKD going up to Jaffna, as well as Tamils voting for the NPP in significant numbers for the first time in history in the north—I think the truth is that the national question, reconciliation, and Tamil rights are simply not the government’s number one priority. They may in fact not even be number two or three. They are definitely on the list; I don’t think they’re wholly unprepared to do anything about them. I just think the NPP government is being  pulled in other, competing directions. And of course, the economy is number one.

I don’t intend this observation as an excuse. It’s not an excuse, but I think it may be part of the explanation for what’s happening. I’m not getting from them that one of the obstacles to movement on things like the national question is residual JVP anti-Tamil sentiment. I may be missing it, but I’m not picking that up, in particular from AKD himself.

Sometimes the party general secretary Tilvin Silva says things that make me think, ”That sounds rather like the old JVP.” But apart from that, I’m really not picking up that sentiment from them so far. If you’re looking for some encouragement, that could be one small measure of hope. It might lead one to conclude that, for example, if AKD is thinking in terms of his overall presidency, possibly addressing Tamil rights will be part two of the agenda. I certainly hope so.