2008 looks set to be the year when Sri Lanka steps back into the darkness of civil war.
A truce between the government and the Tamil Tigers came to an end a few weeks ago and the body count has been mounting ever since.
On the last day of the truce, 32 people died and nearly 100 more civilians perished in the three days afterwards.
In recent days, as the country has celebrated 60 years of independence from Britain, dozens more have been killed in bomb attacks.
`It’s a very depressing place to be at the moment,’ says Sarah Dellor of Tearfund’s Tsunami Task Force who has just returned from the island. ‘People are fed-up with fear and the unknown.’
So far Tearfund’s post-tsunami work is ongoing and remains unaffected.
Eight Tearfund partners are helping communities recover from the tsunami and in total £9 million is being spent. Additionally some of the funds are being used to help people from these areas who are also affected by the war. Click here to find out more.
Growing tension
But for all of Tearfund’s eight partners in Sri Lanka, the day-to-day reality of a country at war with itself is tighter security and travelling around is harder.
At the heart of the conflict is an ethnic dispute between the majority Sinhalese population and the minority Tamils, with the latter claiming discrimination by the former.
Years of fighting came to an end in 2002 with a truce but although that ended formally recently, the writing has been on the wall for far longer.
Clare Crawford, Tearfund’s partner programme manager for Sri Lanka, said. ‘The situation has been deteriorating for two years since the current president was elected.
`He brought family members into his cabinet who see that the only resolution is to use military force to overcome the Tamil Tigers. They may win the war but they will not win the peace this way.’
The government’s control is widespread but the north, apart from the Jaffna peninsula, is in Tamil hands. And that is where the government says it expects to make inroads by the end of the year, so intensification of fighting is to be expected.