Upon achieving independence from Great Britain in 1948, the stunningly
beautiful island of Ceylon, re-named Sri Lanka in 1972, was expected to
become a sort of 'South Asian Singapore'. However, stable political
order and bright economic prospects proved insufficient to maintain
peace. A host of unsolved ethnic conflicts and social inequalities
conspired to erupt into an armed conflict in 1971.
By 1987, the crisis heated up to the point where the government in New
Delhi began exercising fierce pressure upon the Sri Lankan government
and the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgents to arrive at a peace deal. In order
to help maintain peace, the Indian Peace Keeping Force was deployed on
the island.
However, with a few weeks, the troops of the Indian Army found
themselves involved in a bloody and protracted confrontation with the
most powerful of Tamil insurgent movements - the Liberation Tamil Tigers
of Elam (LTTE). The peacekeeping operation was thus quickly converted
into a military intervention and a bloody quagmire. To make matters even
more complex, southern Sir Lanka meanwhile became engulfed in an
unprecedented wave of public violence, triggered by the second
insurrection of Sinhalese ultra-leftist movement, the JVP.
Calling upon extensive studies of the Sri Lankan War, with the help of
first hand sources, official documentation and publications from all of
the involved parties, this volume provides an in-depth and particularly
detailed account of military operations between 1987 and 1990. It is
illustrated by over 120 photographs, maps and 12 color profiles.
