The Sri Lankan Civil War Begins
- Date
- 1983
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- South Asia (Sri Lanka)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
Sri Lanka's civil war began in 1983 with an outburst of anti-Tamil violence that set the island nation on a course of nearly three decades of conflict. On 23 July 1983 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ambushed an army patrol, killing thirteen soldiers.
The killings triggered "Black July," a wave of anti-Tamil rioting that began in Colombo on 24 July and spread nationwide, with mobs, some aided by ruling-party members, attacking, burning and killing Tamil civilians over seven days; around 18,000 homes were destroyed and hundreds, possibly thousands, died. The pogrom drove huge numbers of Tamil youths into militant groups, swelling the LTTE from a handful of fighters into a formidable insurgency demanding a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east. What followed was a brutal civil war marked by suicide bombings, assassinations and heavy civilian tolls, drawing in Indian intervention before the government crushed the Tigers in 2009. The 1983 violence is widely regarded as the war's starting point and a defining trauma of modern South Asia.
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Empires active in 1983
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Yugoslavia1918 CE – 1992 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
- Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero1975
- The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi7 April – 19 July 1994
- The September 11 attacks11 September 2001
- Cuban Missile Crisis16–28 October 1962
- Korean War25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953
Further reading
The wider story
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
Magisterial, readable history of the subcontinent since independence.
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