Where artillery and shells shrieked overhead a little over 15 months back, there are now gigantic, smiling women holding tubes of skin-whitening cream, states the Time magazine in an article on 15 August titled 'Business Returns to Sri Lanka's Former War Zone'.

The article further states, "after being cut off from the rest of the country for more than 25 years, commerce has arrived in this part of Sri Lanka. Business is booming, even on the swath of land known as the Vanni that was controlled by the Tigers until mid-2009."

Here is the text of the article:

They are everywhere and more are coming: huge billboards advertising everything from formula to mobile phones dominate most vantage points in Sri Lanka's former war zone. Where artillery and shells shrieked overhead a little over 15 months back, there are now gigantic, smiling women holding tubes of skin-whitening cream. In Kilinochchi, the former political and administrative nerve center of the Tamil Tigers, a toppled water tank once symbolized the wanton destruction caused by war. The tank is now obscured by a billboard for Highland milk; the ad is a vision of the future, the tank a vision of the past.

After being cut off from the rest of the country for more than 25 years, commerce has arrived in this part of Sri Lanka. Business is booming, even on the swath of land known as the Vanni that was controlled by the Tigers until mid-2009.

Veramuththu Singamuththu, a displaced fisherman turned entrepreneur, is helping transform the landscape. A native of Kilinochchi, he fled his home village of Pulliyankulam, south of Kilinochchi, with his wife and three children in 2008. After a year on the run, they ended up in a camp for displaced civilians. They left in December 2009 with $220 from the government and aid agencies. Not long after, Highway A9, the link between Jaffna and the rest of the country, was reopened to civilian traffic.

The 58-year-old saw his chance for a better life in the buses full of visitors that were speeding on the highway. He used his cash grant to set up a tea shop on the side of the road. "The best decision I ever made in my life," he says. He makes $300 a month selling phone cards, tea, snacks and even meatballs to visitors from the south and government soldiers. His boat now sits empty. "I don't think I will go back to fishing," he says. "This is much better and easy work." He's not the only one whose luck has changed. "Before the opening of the A9, things brought from outside were just too expensive here," says Murugesu Rajagopal, a furniture dealer in Jaffna. "Now we can sell at affordable rates and there are no shortages."

The reopening of Highway A9 was a milestone for Singamuththu and, indeed, for the region as a whole. As thousands of tourists and civilians flooded north, entrepreneurs and companies like Dialog, the country's top cell-phone service provider, moved in. Within 90 days of the war ending, the phone company established a network in region. "Dialog's subscriber base and service utilization has witnessed substantial growth," says the company's chief executive Hans Wijayasuriya. Lion Brewery, the maker of Sri Lanka's most popular brew, has also benefited. "From a growth perspective, it has been tremendous," says chief executive Suresh K. Shah. All told, the demand for goods and services has jumped by double-digit margins since unrestricted road access was provided to Jaffna this year.

Still, not everybody is satisfied with the pace of change. The north remains economically marginalized, says Muttukrishna Sarvananthan of the Point Pedro Institute of Development. The mainstays of the northern economy before the conflict were agriculture and fishing. As the fighting raged, the region found itself left out of the rapid industrialization that was taking place elsewhere. The north's economic contribution is still modest; according to the Central Bank's provisional figures, the northern province's contribution to GDP increased only fractionally in 2010, from 3.2% to 3.3%. This tremor of change only feels like an earthquake, critics say, because this type of free-market trading seemed unimaginable during wartime, when supplies came by sea, if at all, and shortages, high prices and double taxation were common.

"I did not see much improvement in the situation of the civilians when I was there," says Suresh Premachandran, a parliamentarian from the Tamil National Alliance. Indeed, goods transported south are still searched by police and parts of the Vanni remain closed to the rest of the country. There are also complaints of extortion, artificial monopolies and kidnappings for ransom, Sarvananthan says. Despite the return of tens of thousands displaced by the fighting, the reconstruction of houses is only beginning and permanent jobs still remain elusive.

There are worries, too, that outsiders will siphon off the region's meager gains. A foreign bank generated deposits of $8 million within a few months of opening a branch in Jaffna, but failed to issue a single loan during the same period. A new project hopes to reverse that trend. MAS Intimates, a leading apparel manufacturer, is setting up a $3 million plant in Omanthai, on the southern edge of the Vanni. The plant will create 1,500 jobs with USAID providing a capital infusion of $600,000. The aid agency has plans to create 10,000 new jobs in the north through similar programs.

More projects like this could help channel the peace dividend to ordinary people and, in so doing, help the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that faces the unenviable task of rebuilding the fractured country's economy. Singamuththu, for one, is cautiously optimistic they'll succeed. He's planning to repair a billboard that was recently swept away by a speeding tour bus — another sign, he hopes, of prosperous times ahead.