When the door to negotiation had been firmly shut by Prabhakaran and the average military losses had climbed up to 90 deaths per month in 2006, Rajapaksa chose to retaliate with military action, stating, вЂњ(Mavil Aru) gave me the green light.вЂќ 4 In his heroвЂ™s Day speech on 27 November 2006, Prabhakaran challenged rajapaksa to take on the Tigers. Eric Solheim, a special advisor to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign affairs in Sri Lanka, who was the key architect of the 2002 Cease Fire agreement (CFA) and negotiations, attempted to arrange a meeting of the SLG with Prabhakaran. 2 Yet, Rajapaksa wanted to make one last attempt at the resolution of the conflict through dialogue. Rajapaksa explored outcomes from two rounds of pro-forma talks at Geneva and Oslo in 2005-06 but became convinced that the LTTe, under its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, would never be amenable to a negotiated settlement, as he was determined to win Eelam through military means. The LTTE was offered the best chances for devolution by Wickremasinghe, when both sides agreed to explore a federal solution in December 2002, but the Tigers reneged on this proposal. The first of five attempts was the failed Indo-sri Lanka accord, which was followed by efforts towards power- sharing, made by Presidents r Premadasa and Chandrika Kumaratunga, Prime Minister Ranil WickremAsinghe and President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Ceasefires were accompanied by five direct and two back-channel negotiations with the LTTE. The centrepiece of previous government strategies was to bring the LTTE to the negotiating table. The security forces scored a historic victory on, when the Tigers capitulated near their stronghold of Mullaithivu.

The decisive Eelam War IV started at Mavil Aru in July 2006 and flared up into an all-out offensive. It was officially revoked by the Sri Lankan Government (SLG) only in January 2008, though for all practical purposes, it had been broken in 2006. The next round of fighting (Eelam War III) began in April 1995, and culminated in the February 2002 ceasefire, the longest in the conflict. Eelam War II began in July 1990 and closed in a ceasefire in January 1995. The LTTEвЂ™s brush with the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) from October 1987 to March 1990 ended inconsequentially. LTTE book prepared in India by Baby Subramanium and aides 1991 India intervened to end the war in which the SLA had the upper hand. 1 The killing of 13 Sri Lankan army (SLA) soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 July 1983 marked the initiation of armed hostilities and the beginning of Eelam War I, which ended in 1987. Highlighting stress and the pictures have been added by the Editor, ThuppahiДЇour watershed events spurred the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka вЂ“ the Sinhala Only Act of 1956, the republican Constitution of 1972, the Parliamentary elections of 1977 and the 1983 ethnic riots.

Note that this is is a long article of over 10,000 words.

Ashok Mehta, courtesy of transcurrents and Sri Lanka Guardian after it appeared in public courtesy of theВ Centre for Land Warfare Studies where the title is вЂњ Sri LankaвЂ™s Ethnic Conflict: How Eelam War IV was Won.

Eelam war