Asia Times: Why the Tigers call the shots


	April 24, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Why the Tigers call the shots
By Sudha Ramachandran

'Towards the imagined haven of Eelam'

Selective roots to Tamil nationalism

BANGALORE - The 1983 anti-Tamil violence in Sri Lanka led to a proliferation of militant groups among the Tamils. While some of them limited their activities to pamphleteering, others shot into prominence with a robbery or an ambush and then faded into insignificance.

Six groups - the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE), the People's Liberation Organization of Tamileelam (PLOTE), the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), the Tamileelam Liberation Organization (TELO), the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS) and the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) - continue to be active, although the nature of their activity, their goals and their enemy has undergone considerable change over the years.

Personal rivalries, differences in tactics, areas of influence, ideological orientation and goals have separated these militant groups. There have been bloody clashes for supremacy and often it has seemed that the battles between the militant groups are as keenly fought as the one against the Sri Lankan army.

The LTTE's domination of the armed struggle became clear at the end of 1986 when India engaged in talks with its leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, in a bid to mediate a political settlement to the conflict. Several factors, including the nature and structure of the organization and its strategy, have contributed to the LTTE's rise to pre-eminence.

The LTTE organization has been built up very systematically. Certain key areas were given special attention by the leadership. One is the creation of an efficient and extensive intelligence apparatus, which in addition to providing information about the movements of the Sri Lankan armed forces has also undermined the LTTE's rivals and has protected the leadership from internal challenges.

Unlike other groups, the LTTE got the business side of the armed struggle straightened out from the beginning. The LTTE ensured that it had diverse sources of funding, and investments and economic interests are spread out across continents. To this end, it established its own financial ventures, including reportedly a lucrative narcotics network. It set up industrial units and ordnance factories with research and development (R&D) wings to reduce dependence on external suppliers.

In contrast, the other groups depended on India for their weapons in the 1980s, sat back, and did nothing to develop alternate sources. Consequently, when India stopped supplying weapons these groups more or less collapsed. Some of them got into kidnapping, extortion and other criminal activity, further undermining their image in the eyes of the Tamil people.

Alongside this elaborate organizing of its infrastructure is the motivation and training of its cadres, which the LTTE has tackled systematically. Tiger recruits are trained as much in the handling of weapons as they are indoctrinated and motivated to kill and die for the cause of the LTTE and its leader. It is in the tenacity of its fighters, their unquestioning loyalty to their leader and the cause of Tamileelam, and their willingness to die for this that the LTTE finds its richest resource.

The unquestioning willingness to die for the cause has enabled the LTTE to build what is said to be one of the world's most ruthless suicide squads. With a suicide squad in its armory, the LTTE has been able to inflict severe blows on the enemy's morale and manpower as well as to the Sri Lankan economy.

While the elaborate organization and network has contributed substantially to the LTTE's capacity to wage a protracted war against the Sri Lankan government, the most important reason for its emergence as the dominant militant group has been its systematic destruction of the other groups.

From the mid-1980s onward, the LTTE massacred the cadres and leadership of all the other groups. TELO leader Sabaratnam was killed in 1986; the EPRLF's entire politburo was gunned down in Madras in June 1990. Even the moderate TULF has not been spared the Tigers' wrath. Human-rights activists, dissenting academics and social workers in Jaffna, too, have been killed by the LTTE. By the mid-1980s, the LTTE had incorporated most civil-society organizations, such as the Citizens Committees and the Mothers' Fronts in the Tamil areas, into the LTTE or staffed them with its supporters.

Over the past decade, most of the former militant groups have joined the democratic mainstream. Some of these groups, such as the EPDP for instance, were part of the government and joined forces with the Sri Lankan army to fight the LTTE. Several Tamil parliamentarians representing the Tamil areas have articulated the Tiger line. In the present parliament, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has been openly putting forward Tiger demands, such as lifting the ban on the LTTE and so on.

However, it is the recent ceasefire agreement signed by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE in February that legitimizes on paper the dominant position of the LTTE. Not only does it formalize the territory under LTTE control by stipulating a minimum distance of 400-600 meters between the forward defense lines of the two sides, but also it envisages the disarming of other "paramilitary groups" within a specified period.

For groups such as PLOTE and EPDP, whose cadres carry arms supplied by the government, the disarming could signal the beginning of a further decimation of the anti-LTTE opinion among the Tamils. By providing for the disarming of the anti-LTTE Tamil groups, the ceasefire agreement has in effect endorsed the long-term Tiger project of weakening/wiping out all opposition to the LTTE among the Tamils.

The LTTE's propaganda has skillfully portrayed the Tigers as the only protectors of the interests of the Tamils. Only Tiger sacrifices are glorified, only Tigers merit being worshiped as martyrs. The LTTE never tires of saying that all the other moderate and militant groups have compromised the cause of Tamileelam and have agreed to dilute their demands for the sake of small favors from the government. In a public speech at Jaffna in 1987 following the signing of the India-Lanka peace accord, Prabakaran made clear that his goal remains an independent Tamil state. "Only a separate state of Tamileelam can be a permanent solution to the problem of the people of Tamileelam and that this goal will remain the same whatever form the struggle takes," he said then.

Almost 15 years later, on April 10, 2002, the Tiger supremo indicated to the international media that his goal remains the same. "I do not think that the necessity has arisen for us to renounce the goal of Tamileelam yet. The right condition has not arisen for the LTTE to abandon the policy of independent statehood," Prabakaran said.

In Tiger-controlled areas in the Eastern Province, children, while appearing for exams conducted by the Sri Lankan government, are required by the LTTE administration to do a course on Tamileelam studies. In this, children learn about the LTTE's history, its goals and its achievements. They know the map of "Tamileelam" and up to where its borders extend.

Through skillful strategy, the LTTE has made sure that Tamileelam is a reality today in the minds of the younger generation of Tamils.

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