Three years after the Sri Lankan government successfully concluded its military campaign against the secessionist insurgency led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the country has done little to address the root causes of the ethnic conflict. Many in Sri Lanka and beyond believed that the end of the war would create new opportunities to devolve Colombo's power and increase regional autonomy. However, political developments since May 2009 do not indicate any breakthrough in political reforms towards power-sharing with ethnic minorities. The debate on how to resolve the ethnic conflict has been reopened not to promote a constructive solution, but only to reproduce the conflict in new forms.
Earlier, the war and the LTTE threat were two important factors in the political balance of forces between the state and ethnic minorities. Those same factors also gave Sri Lanka's ethnic minorities some bargaining power with the two main political parties – the United National Party (UNP) and the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA). The end of the war has altered the equilibrium in the UPFA-led government's favour. Leaders of most minority parties are aware of the new situation, and their new politics of pragmatism prioritises what they see as 'developmental rights' over political rights.
The Sri Lankan government now insists that there is no ethnic conflict in the country, and that the bloodshed of the past three decades was solely a 'terrorist' problem. Since it recognises no political dimension to the ethnic conflict, the government sees no need for a political solution, and instead focuses on rehabilitation, resettlement and economic development. By ascribing Tamil grievances to economic inequalities, the government's nation-building project now focuses on the economic integration of the North and East with the rest of the country.
The current Rajapaksa government has a very particular understanding of how that integration should be implemented. The post-war discourse on state reform looks to consolidate the unitary state and further centralise power as part of the state's peace-building economic program.