The conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is one of the world's most intractable contemporary armed struggles. The internationally banned LTTE is considered the prototype of modern terrorism, having introduced suicide bombing and becoming the first terrorist organization to acquire an air force.

Sri Lanka expert and scholar Asoka Bandarage analyzes the "iron law of ethnicity" -- the assumption that cultural difference inevitably leads to conflict -- that has been reinforced by the 9/11 attacks and conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan conflict, like many other political conflicts around the world, is interpreted from a very limited bi-polar perspective as a primordial ethnic conflict between two groups, according to Bandarage. It is seen as a Sinhala versus Tamil conflict: Sinhala majority as oppressor and Tamil minority as victim.

The book moves beyond the narrow bi-polar perspective to develop a broader, historically based political-economic analysis, providing a multi-polar approach, including the complex interplay of local, regional and international factors.

It shows that the connections among ethnic difference, conflict and terrorism are not automatic, and presents a conceptual framework useful for comparative global conflict analysis and resolution, shedding light on a host of complex issues such as terrorism, civil society, diaspora, international intervention and secessionism. Each of the arguments in the book is backed by meticulous and extensive research and substantial evidence. The many maps, tables and figures in the book help further clarify Bandarage's arguments.

Bandarage is a professor at Georgetown University and previously has been on the faculty at Mount Holyoke and Brandeis. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr. This is her third book, and her second book on Sri Lanka.

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Posted by Naresh Koshti on 13 May, 2009 4:24:47 PM IST #