ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses 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 increased in intensity from the early 1980s. Post-independence Sri Lanka inherited from the colonial rulers a spatially uneven economic structure favouring Colombo. Jaffna provided services to the peninsula and also acted as the collection center for agricultural produce for redistribution within the peninsula and to Colombo and other centers in the south. The destruction of infrastructural facilities has been an integral part of the strategy of the Tamil guerrillas. Political and economic centralization during the colonial era, especially during the British period, effectively undermined any vestiges of regional autonomy that may have prevailed in the island.
