On May 18, 2009, Sri Lanka brought to an end one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in modern Asian history.
For twenty-six years, terrorism had shaped the psychology of the island.
The suicide bomb.
The checkpoint.
The bus blast.
The targeted assassination.
The fear that ordinary life itself could at any moment become extraordinary tragedy.
Entire generations grew up under the shadow of conflict.
And when the war finally ended, one political reality became permanently etched into Sri Lanka’s modern history:
It was Mahinda Rajapaksa who fulfilled the promise that several leaders before him had failed to deliver – the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Alongside that political leadership stood the military command structure led by then General Sarath Fonseka, whose wartime operational leadership became central to the final military campaign that crushed the LTTE’s conventional fighting capability.
To millions of Sri Lankans, the end of the war represented not simply victory, but relief.
The bombs stopped.
The trains moved.
Tourism revived.
Roadblocks disappeared.
Parents worried less when children travelled.
For many across communities, particularly those exhausted by decades of violence, May 18 represented the recovery of normalcy itself.
Be that as it may, history rarely permits uncomplicated heroes or uncomplicated endings.
There remains little argument that the LTTE presided over one of the world’s most feared militant campaigns. Suicide bombings, assassinations, forced recruitment, ethnic expulsions, attacks on civilians and the elimination of dissent formed part of a long and brutal conflict that traumatised Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims alike.
Supporters of the military campaign continue to argue that no democratic state can allow constitutional rights, political grievances or demands for autonomy to emerge through the use of armed terror and indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians.
And many Sri Lankans continue to believe that had the war not ended militarily, the island itself may have faced permanent division.
Yet even as celebrations unfolded in 2009, another national and international debate intensified.
Questions surrounding civilian casualties, disappearances and alleged human rights violations during the final phase of the war rapidly became part of the post-war global discourse surrounding Sri Lanka.
Rajapaksa consistently denied allegations that he oversaw war crimes as Commander-in-Chief. Successive governments under his influence also resisted calls for an independent international investigation, maintaining that Sri Lanka’s armed forces conducted a legitimate military operation against terrorism under extraordinarily difficult conditions.
To supporters, much of the criticism appeared selective and geopolitically driven.
To critics, however, accountability and reconciliation remained impossible without credible independent scrutiny.
And so the paradox of post-war Sri Lanka emerged:
The same military victory that many celebrated as liberation simultaneously became the foundation for continuing arguments over justice, accountability and reconciliation.
The years immediately after the war were expected by many to become a historic rebuilding period, particularly for the North and East.
There was visible infrastructure development.
Roads.
Electricity.
Rail connectivity.
Urban renewal.
But many Sri Lankans also expected a deeper reconciliation process capable of politically and economically integrating former conflict regions into a more equal national framework.
Critics argue that this broader transformation never fully materialised at the scale anticipated.
Instead, the post-war years increasingly became associated with centralised power, growing allegations of corruption, abuse of authority and the expansion of political patronage networks surrounding sections of the ruling establishment.
The removal of presidential term limits through constitutional change fundamentally altered public perceptions of the Rajapaksa administration.
Ironically, the immense popularity generated by ending the war was gradually eroded by accusations involving governance itself.
And ultimately, the leader who became politically dominant by defeating terrorism would later suffer electoral defeat while seeking an unprecedented third presidential term.
Yet history remains resistant to simplification.
Even many political opponents of Rajapaksa privately concede one reality:
the war ended under his presidency.
Meanwhile, Sarath Fonseka – later appointed as Field Marshall – himself would later become one of the most extraordinary figures in Sri Lanka’s political history – transitioning from wartime military commander to political challenger against the very administration under which the war victory was secured.
Today, nearly two decades later, the challenge of building a truly reconciled republic remains very much a work in progress.
Indeed, post-war Sri Lanka has itself given birth to an entire new industry of questioning the state:
its military conduct,
its governance,
its accountability,
its corruption,
its use of power,
and its interpretation of patriotism itself.
And perhaps that too reflects a complicated evolution of democracy after conflict. Serious questions and concerns remain giving way to real scenario where people in the north still view the State as ‘tormentor’; targetted surveillance still takes place furthering the fear amongst our Tamil citizenry, that, the state is watching their every move almost as though the Tamil people are quietly regrouping themselves into an organisation more like the LTTE.
As for Mahinda Rajapaksa, the once-dominant wartime leader is now largely retired from frontline political combat, fighting a very different battle:
attempting to safeguard himself and members of his immediate family against mounting legal, political and institutional pressures that continue to gather around the Rajapaksa legacy.
The battlefield war ended on May 18, 2009.
The struggle over how Sri Lanka interprets that victory, however, continues still.
