ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact which Tamil insurgency has had on the regional development of Jaffna. Post-independence development in Sri Lanka faced many external and internal challenges. Of the internal challenges Tamil insurgency has been the most damaging, both in spatial extent and in magnitude. Tamil insurgency is also the most extensive in its damage, as its impact transcends economic development to other areas of life as well. The ultimate irony of Tamil insurgency is that in promising a better future for the Tamils, it has delivered a worse present. Tamil insurgency in its present form is a guerrilla war waged against the Sri Lankan state to establish a separate state called “Eelam” in the areas within the northern and eastern provinces. In Sri Lanka, planning and development are very largely centralized despite the establishment since the late 1980s of the Provincial Councils.
