The Tamil insurgency started in the mid-1980s. Initially, there were five major and 30 minor Tamil militant groups. The major groups were the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS), the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). From the mid-1980s, the most important militant group was the LTTE (Manoharan 2010: 191). The rise and fall of the LTTE between 1983 and late 2009 proves that insurgency could be successfully tamed by a state. The sections below provide a historical analysis of insurgency and COIN in Sri Lanka.