Why do we have war in Sri Lanka?

Lots of my friends here ask me this question so often. So thought of writing down the explanation in one place.

How it started

After we got independence from British, one of our political leaders made a mistake by making Sinhala, the only official language in Sri Lanka. This happened during the end of 1960s. Due to various reasons this aroused a conflict between Sinhala and Tamil leaders. Tamil leaders started a movement around TULF. But in 1977, with the election of the new president, JR Jayawardane, he corrected this problem by giving equal rights to all the ethnic groups.
But LTTE, a militant group formed in northern parts of the Sri Lanka, led by the cruel and political leader Prabhakaran. Eventhough they started the movement to get equal rights for tamils, they continued operate even after tamils getting equal rights. The reason I think was that once you get the taste of power, you don't want to give it up, even the cause is gone. They killed people opposing their movement, including both Tamils and Sinhalese. When they killed 13 soldiers, invane, rest of the people replied with the black july, killing lots of tamils in Colombo.
But that is past. Now there is no problem as such for about 2 decades. Since then tamils gained lots of rights and freedom in Sri Lanka.

Why there is a problem still

As one can see there are no problems for Tamils in Sri Lanka. They can go *anywhere* in Sri Lanka. Actually its the Sinhalese and Muslims that can not go anywhere they want due to these terrorists. If tamils are ill-treated, look at the following few examples.

1. Wellawatta, Kotahena, and many other major parts of Colombo itself were mainly populated by tamils. Even if we go outside of Colombo, there are lots of tamils everywhere.
2. In our undergrad intake to University of Moratuwa, engineering faculty in 1998, one of the most prestigious and prominent universities in Sri Lanka, there were 110 tamils out of the total intake of 350. Almost 1/3 of the batch.
3. Any tamil can go to any part of Sri Lanka without trouble. But muslims have trouble living in north-east and Sinhalese can not even go to north or east without trouble.

Those are simple examples.

It is obvious that its LTTE that is the enemy of tamils. They killed their leaders, their own people at a rate. They separated small children from their parents and trained them to fight against their own people, rather than letting them go to school. They are threatening all the tamils in Europe, Canada and other countries to donate money. (This video exposes how LTTE henchmen are/were forcing innocent people to contribute).
In nothern part of the country, LTTE is forcing their people to stay with them making them as baits for their fight. This has gone to an extent for UN to appeal to LTTE to allow those people to seek safety.
LTTE has killed so many innocent people in Sri Lanka, since 1983. They have also forcibly expelled Muslims from north, violated human rights.

But after all, we are about to see an end to this war. SL govt army is making the dream of peace a reality (see the battle progress map here). I wish if I could be with the brave Sri Lankans at this last moment.