and support by larger powers to prevent or enable the conflict to be subject of international intervention are likewise important for spurring highly costly wars. The case of Sri Lanka indicates that conflict fuelling arms trade is not always significantly profitable. The profits made from exports to Sri Lanka are unlikely to have been decisive for any arms producer or arms exporting government. Rather, arms exports were often motivated by the interest of other states to gain influence in the region, or enabled by the mere uninformed or lax implementation of principles for arms trade.
Military victory does not end conflict With the ltte practically eliminated as an actor in Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan government has been praised for successfully having defeated “terrorism”. This would be a strong argument for a positive impact of arms trade, since the influx of more and better weapons systems from abroad to the Sri Lankan government enabled it to counteract ltte arms smuggling and finally finish off the ltte. However, the military strategy involved repeated violations of human rights and international law. The brutal methods utilised to defeat the ltte have by no means solved the underlying causes of the conflict, which are to be found in the centralised state and the Tamil sense of marginalisation. In addition to this, the excessive violence and massive human rights abuses by both sides, together with Sri Lanka’s long history of impunity of perpetrators, have deepened conflicts and enemy images in society and made a long-lasting solution to the underlying conflicts difficult to achieve. Having won the war, the Sri Lankan government has pursued further centralisation of power, rather than power sharing that could address Tamil grievances. Whether the Sri Lankan government’s strategy of preventing new rebellions through massive military presence in Tamil areas will be successful remains to be seen. In any case, it is clear that although the Sri Lankan government won the war, it is still far away from ensuring sustainable peace.
The risks of replicating the “Sri Lankan model” Since the defeat of the ltte in 2009, Sri Lanka has gained an international reputation as a model for how the “war on terror” can be won militarily. Those who praise the Sri Lankan strategy, however, often overlook its severe human costs and adverse consequences for long-term peacebuilding. The Sri Lankan model for conflict management received outright support from some international actors (such as China) who both exported arms and avowed that a sovereign state like Sri Lanka has the right to defend itself against internal threats – also at a high cost in terms of human lives and human rights violations. Sri Lanka’s costly military 8