South Asia Monitor: Sri Lanka: What Lies Ahead? - March 1, 1999

March 2, 1999

Sri Lanka's politics have been poisoned by its longstanding ethnic conflict, and recent studies assess the economic burden of the war at upwards of a year and a half worth of the country's GDP. While the government and their principal adversaries have devoted most of their attention to the military conflict since President Chandrika Kumaratunga's peace initiative failed in early 1995, there have been recent signs that a peace constituency is starting to find its voice. Turning this into a real drive for peace will still be an uphill struggle, but one well worth the effort of Sri Lanka's leaders.