For 26 years, civil war tore Sri Lanka apart. Unfortunately, most academics portray the conflict as a terrorist problem of a secessionist group or as an ethnic problem between the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority. So far, little attention has been paid to intra-Tamil network dynamics. To challenge this view I conducted field research in the Tamil areas where I found that (1) prior to the 1983 riots Tamil militant groups were surprisingly similar in terms of structure, size, training as well as foreign state support. (2) Astonishingly, by the mid-1980s it was TELO that was the most effective and innovative group of all while the LTTE remained relatively amateurish and static. (3) The Tigers only started to dominate the scene once they applied a tactic of eliminating and absorbing their main competitors. These findings are important to better understand how non-state armed groups can fuel intra-state conflicts.
