ABSTRACT
Although Sri Lanka diverges in significant ways from the other cases examined here, many of the lessons we can learn from its experience remain the same. In a very different context it has had to face the same balancing act as other, clearly transitional states, and it has made similar compromises. In Sri Lanka, the key international player has been India, rather than the USA or the UN; India even sent a peacekeeping force into the civil war in 1987. However, in recent times it has maintained a rather studied silence with respect to events on the small island to its south. As with many other cases, while the military is numerically much larger than the rebels, and has made great gains, it has been unable to eradicate a guerrilla force skilled in terrorist attacks. It also appears that a different tradition of civil-military relations has made action on past abuses more feasible. Finally, the protracted and bloody nature of the conflict may finally be pushing those on both sides of the ethnic divide towards compromise: the results of the 1994 election are seen in part as a result of war-weariness, and the population seeking a separate state is said to have waned in its fervour for the rebels.
