Restaurants along the highway to Jaffna in the north are mostly army-owned or -run.
ECONOMIST: A victorious army keeps busy despite the lack of an enemy
On the Jaffna Peninsula the army converted a former officers' mess into a 22-room luxury resort.
ECONOMIST: A victorious army keeps busy despite the lack of an enemy
Another former Tamil militant from Jaffna currently living in the UK also went back recently.
"They were arrested at different places on the Jaffna peninsula and are now in Vavuniya, " he said.
BBC: Sri Lanka arrests: Jaffna police detain 'terror' suspects
This week they have been attacking Elephant Pass, Jaffna's sole land link to the rest of the country.
The financial and logistical pressure of supplying the Jaffna peninsula by sea and air will have been lifted.
But when they heard that Jaffna was now peaceful, they arranged a fleet of buses and came back together.
An elderly Tamil man, a lifelong resident of Jaffna, says that on a typical day his car is stopped at numerous checkpoints.
ECONOMIST: Mixed feelings among Tamils at the prospect of the war��s end
The army managed at great cost to capture much of the strategic Jaffna peninsula and hold on to it.
Separately, sources in Jaffna University say the police have given them a list of 10 students they want to arrest.
BBC: Sri Lanka arrests: Jaffna police detain 'terror' suspects
But the Sri Lankan army's attempt to open up a land route to Jaffna is proving both slow and costly.
At the same time, the army had launched a campaign to force open a land route to and from Jaffna.
To cope with the influx, the bureau is expanding its centres in the northern Jaffna peninsula and Welikanda in the east.
Students at Jaffna University in northern Sri Lanka have started a two-day boycott of classes after clashes with security forces on Wednesday.
Some 60, 000 refugees who came to Jaffna are either living with their relatives or in rented houses and many have no jobs.
The army recaptured Jaffna, the main northern city, early in her tenure.
This time they have been targeting the defences around Elephant Pass, a strategically-important causeway which links the northern Jaffna Peninsula to the mainland.
There have been reports that a displaced couple, who were sent to Jaffna, committed suicide a few months ago due to extreme poverty.
It is thought that last month's losses may have cost her many votes and any indication that Jaffna is vulnerable would be politically disastrous.
So far, Kumaratunga, 52, has restored government rule to the once rebel-held northern city of Jaffna, curtailed state repression and engineered something of an economic turnaround.
Turnout was low all across the country but voters were particularly scarce in northern Jaffna and Vanni districts, the areas worst affected by three decades of war.
In 1995 the Tigers lost the city of Jaffna, the main town of the peninsula, to the Sri Lankan army after talks with Mrs Kumaratunga broke down.
Indeed, in Jaffna, TNA leaflets claimed that to vote for the ruling coalition would be to subject the peninsula to rule by Sri Lanka's mainly-Buddhist Sinhala majority.
It had apparently aimed to capture the town of Pallai as a prelude to retaking the more important Elephant Pass, a causeway linking the Jaffna peninsula to the southern mainland.
Asked by the BBC why the students in Jaffna should not be allowed to march in the streets, Jaffna's military commander, Maj-Gen Mahinda Hathurusinghe, said the students have been "categorically told not to" because "they would become violent".
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