The last five years have seen a dramatic upsurge of international involvement in Sri Lankan politics. Reflecting on such internationalisation and donor involvement during this period and earlier decades, are two donor sponsored documents called the Strategic Conflict Assessments. Both documents offer the donors a critical perspective on their past and present methods of engagement with the political economy of Sri Lanka. Ultimately, the SCAs set out to convince the donors that the ethnic conflict is only one dimension of a larger "crisis of the state." As a central argument, the SCAs claim that the donors need to work politically to address issues of governance and the peace process. While there is a need to underscore the usefulness and uniqueness of the SCAs, which are rare self-critiques of the international community's engagement, there remain concerns about the framing of problems of neoliberalism, governance and conflict. Specifically, these are questions of how the SCAs conceptualise challenges to the internationally supported peace process, the political trajectory of the LTTE, and central causes of the conflict and flawed governance.
