Sri Lanka has a military history going back to more than 2000 years. The roots of the modern Sri Lankan military lead back to the colonial era when the
Portuguese,
Dutch and
British established local militias to support their wars against the local Kingdoms. The British created the
Ceylon Rifle Regiment during the
Kandyan wars. Although it had natives in its ranks, it was largely composed of
Malays. It was disbanded in 1873.
Imperial service The lineage of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces dates back to 1881, when the British created a
volunteer reserve on the island named the
Ceylon Light Infantry Volunteers. Created to supplement the British garrison in Ceylon in the event of an external threat, it gradually increased in size. In 1910 it was renamed the
Ceylon Defence Force (CDF) and consisted of several regiments. The CDF mobilised for home defence in
World War I and again in
World War II when its units were deployed along with
allied forces in Asia and Africa. At the end of the war it had grown in size to that of an independent brigade, but was demobilised in 1946 and disbanded in 1949. In 1937 the
Ceylon Naval Volunteer Force was established (later renamed as the Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (CRNVR)), it was mobilised for World War II in 1939 and was incorporated into the
Royal Navy.
Sri Lankan Civil War and the Second JVP Insurrection By the early 1980s, the Sri Lanka Armed Forces mobilised against the insurgency of
Tamil militant groups in the north of the island. This was the beginning of the
Sri Lankan Civil War. The size of the Armed Forces grew rapidly in the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, the Armed Forces began launching operations in the like of
conventional warfare against the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which had by then became the most powerful of the Tamil militant groups and had been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Sri Lanka. This led to India intervening by entering Sri Lankan air space to carry out food drops. Shortly afterward the
Indo-Sri Lankan Accord was signed and the
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was sent to Sri Lanka to establish peace. The military was redistricted to its bases but was soon involved in another insurrection by the JVP in the south of the island from 1987 to 1989. In the north, tension increased with the
LTTE and the IPKF leading to open war with the two suffering heavy casualties. In 1990 the IPKF pulled out and the war commenced with the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the LTTE. In 1994, a brief
ceasefire came into place and peace talks began. The ceasefire ended when the LTTE
sack two SLN gunboats. The phase of the war that followed, known as
Eelam War III, saw a conventional war taking place in the northern and eastern provinces of the island and LTTE attacks in other parts of the country, which included several largescale
suicide bombings. The Sri Lankan Army began deploying full divisions in offensive operations and the Navy and Air Force increased their inventories to support the Army. In 2002, a new Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA) was established with Norwegian mediation and peace talks began. The
SLMM was established to monitor the ceasefire and certain progress archived until the LTTE withdrew from the peace talks in 2003. Although the ceasefire continued no peace talks took place till 2005. In 2006, the
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) reported that the LTTE had violated the CFA 3,471 times and the Sri Lankan security forces 162 times since the signing of the ceasefire. Some defence reforms also commenced in 2002 when the Prime Minister established the Defence Review Committee (DRC) which formulated extensive recommendations that encapsulate force modernisation as well as the restructuring of command and control in ways that would make the army more responsive to civil control. The first task of the Committee was to assess the Higher Defence Organisation, given the decision by the President to relinquish the defence portfolio. When a paper drafted by the Committee was inadvertently made public, concerns were raised that the Committee's recommendations for restructuring Higher Defence Organisation might be constitutionally flawed in relation to the role of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Sri Lankan armed forces. Although the work of the Committee thereafter proceeded apace, the DRC itself became a political football amidst the growing tension between the President and the Prime Minister. In 2003 the President took the decision to bring an end to the work of the DRC and, instead, assigned the task of SSR to the Joint Operations Headquarters, since when little progress has been evident. In April 2006 following a suicide bomb attack on the Commander of the Army, airstrikes began followed by skirmishes, however, both the government and the LTTE claimed that the ceasefire was still in place. The offensive by the Armed Forces was launched when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru reservoir on 21 July and cut the water supply to 15,000 villages in government controlled areas. This led to several major attacks by the LTTE in the eastern province and the north. The Armed Forces went on the offensive successfully recapturing LTTE control areas in the eastern province during 2007. By then the LTTE had been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries. In 2017 Sri Lanka Armed Forces deployed nearly 10,000 personnel and equipment for relief, help and rescue operations of
2017 Sri Lanka floods. This is the biggest military deployment of the peacetime. On 3 January 2008 the government informed Norway of its decision to quit the ceasefire, with it the ceasefire officially ended on 16 January 2008, following several bombings in the capital. Along with the ceasefire operations of the SLMM also ended. During 2008 there was heavy fighting in the northern province where the Sri Lanka Armed Forces launched major offensives and succeeded in recapturing LTTE controlled areas of the
Mannar District, the
Vavuniya District and moving into the
Mullaitivu District and
Kilinochchi District. During December 2008, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces were engaged in offensives on all fronts, with heavy fighting around
Kilinochchi (where the LTTE had its headquarters) and close to
Mullaitivu. In early 2009 the Armed Forces recaptured in quick succession Kilinochchi and the strategically important
Elephant Pass. Thus establishing a land route to the government controlled
Jaffna Peninsula which had been supplied by sea and air for over 10 years after its recapture in 1995. Shortly thereafter Mullaitivu was recaptured by the
59th Division of the SLA. Boxed into a small land area north of Mullaitivu, the LTTE with its remaining cadres and leadership was effectively trapped, with this land mass being slowly reduced until May 2009. On 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Armed Forces won its final battle against the LTTE with the death of several LTTE leaders, including its head
Velupillai Prabhakaran while he was attempting to flee. On 22 May 2009, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa confirmed that 6,261 personnel of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces had lost their lives and 29,551 were wounded during
Eelam War IV since July 2006. The Armed Forces along with the LTTE have been accused of committing
war crimes during the war, particularly during the final stages. A
panel of experts appointed by
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of
accountability with regard to any alleged violations of
international human rights and
humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that
war crimes and
crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE, with most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war being blamed on indiscriminate Sri Lankan Army shelling and the LTTE being blamed for using civilians as a human buffer. The
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused the Sri Lankan Armed Forces of committing widespread and often extremely brutal
sexual violence against both Tamil females and males alike in a report in 2015.
Major operations of Sri Lanka armed forces •
1971 JVP insurrection •
1987–89 JVP insurrection •
Vadamarachchi Operation •
Operation Balavegaya •
Operation Riviresa •
2008 SLA Northern offensive ==Funding==