PEACE PROCESS IN SRILANKA AND JATHIKA HELA URUMAYA: A SPOILSPORT?

Focusing on the mid-2000s phase of Sri Lanka’s peace process, this article analyses the rise of Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU)—a Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist party—and its impact on the dynamics between Colombo, the LTTE and international facilitators. It traces how ceasefire fatigue, spoilers on multiple sides and shifting electoral incentives narrowed the space for compromise. The discussion assesses parliamentary leverage, street mobilisation and media narratives that framed concessions as existential risks. It argues that JHU’s hard-line platform amplified veto players, constrained elite bargains and complicated Norway-led facilitation, illustrating how identity politics can derail sequencing of talks, de-escalation and federal design options.

The body situates the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) and the subsequent Norwegian facilitation as the process baseline. Section One analyses JHU’s organisational origins, clergy-led leadership and programmatic agenda centred on territorial integrity and unitary constitutionalism. Section Two explains spoiler theory and applies it to both nationalist and insurgent camps, showing how selective violence, rhetoric and coalition manoeuvres recalibrated payoffs from cooperation. Section Three examines institutional arenas—parliament, presidency and the security establishment—highlighting how electoral competition and cohabitation politics reduced policy coherence. Section Four considers the role of external actors, including India, the United States, Japan and the EU, and how proscription decisions, aid conditionalities and monitoring through the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission affected incentives. The article concludes that durable peacemaking required broader coalitions, credible guarantees, and a phased agenda linking de-militarisation to political reform and development, none of which could withstand intensifying nationalist contestation in 2005.