The Tamil youth groups challenging the government were an interesting collection of educated young men and women. Sri Lanka Tamil society was very conservative, and Tamils were initially hesitant to support the groups. However, the militant youths were often the brightest and best school children in the country, and soon support or at least sympathy for the groups began to spread.
The first group to appear was the New Tamil Tigers, founded in 1972 by eighteen-year-old Vellupillai Prabakharan. Prabak-haran eventually killed or drove other leaders from his organization and formed a new organization called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). This group eventually split into a number of other groups, and by the early 1980's there were six or seven major youth groups fighting against the government. By 1984 the LTTE had become the largest and most important group. It eventually attacked the other militant groups, either defeating them or reducing their fighting ability.
In 1987 Sri Lankan president Junius Richard Jayawardene negotiated a peace settlement of the war, which called for the guerrilla groups to lay down their arms and for India to send peace-
Keeping troops to Sri Lanka to oversee the peace. All the youth groups fighting the government joined the agreement except for the LTTE. The LTTE cooperated with the Indians for a few months before attacking them.
The Sri Lankan civil war resumed again in the fall of 1987, with the Indians now fighting the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government no longer participating. After killing 1,500 Indian soldiers, the LTTE drove the Indians from Sri Lanka in 1990. All the militant Tamil groups except for the LTTE gave up their guns and became legal political parties. This left the LTTE as the only group fighting the government.
World History
