It's only an hour's flying time from the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, to the Jaffna peninsula at the northern tip of the island, but getting there is a miserable ordeal that can take half a day. Suitcases in hand, heaving and sweating for hours under the broiling sun, passengers at Colombo's Ratmalana airport run a gauntlet of checkpoints, where they are repeatedly stopped, questioned, frisked and hassled. Most are ethnic Tamils, a minority on the island but the overwhelming majority in the battle-scarred Jaffna region. Those without the necessary paperwork are turned back. No one dares protest. The slightest disruption can halt air services at any time.
After five hours of queueing in the sweltering heat, a Tamil passenger sighs, then mutters: 'This is how you're treated when you're taken to a prison camp.'
The people of Jaffna can only hope their repressive isolation will end soon. For two years, they've been cut off from overland access to the rest of the country by fierce combat in the swampy jungles of the Wanni region, just 50km south of the peninsula.
That's where the separatist Tamil Tigers continue to wage one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
The A9 highway, once a vital lifeline connecting the Tamil heartland to the Sinhala-speaking south, runs through the middle of this war zone.
In recent months, the Sri Lankan army has made sweeping advances along the A9 to threaten Kilinochchi, the insurgents' de-facto capital.
For Jaffna's Tamils, the army's imminent victory offers hope that the A9 will finally reopen, freeing the peninsula from years of repression, isolation and economic stagnation. The highway closed sporadically after the army took control of the peninsula in 1995, but it has remained shut for the past two years after the fighting escalated, strangling Jaffna's economy.