Most Sri Lankans or the world outside is still unaware -- the well-protected, secluded life under serene surroundings, with a thick layer of re-inforced concrete overhead, ended for Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on March 30.
Until then, it was from here that he crafted a strong military machine and directed a violent terror campaign even after the Norwegian-brokered Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) of February 2002. His concrete palace, like other fortified military installations in the Wanni, provided the answers to a long-standing puzzle.
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| FROM LTTE LEADER VELUPILLAI PRABHAKARAN'S ALBUM - In 1987 he prepares his own meal. In the latter years, he employed several cooks who specialised in different cuisine. |
The tons of cement and steel that went past checkpoints into the Wanni during the early stages of the ceasefire, often highlighted in The Sunday Times, much to the chagrin of then political leaders, went to create these concrete fortresses. Then, intelligence assessments that the tonnages exceeded quantities that went during the previous ten years were scoffed at during conferences. The wisest and vociferous among them, now Ministers in the present Government, argued that cement and steel were not like guns and bullets. They cannot cause any harm but contribute to development, they argued. It did contribute to development, but of a different kind. That was to build fortifications to withstand future assaults by the Security Forces.
On March 30, the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed one such fortification in Puthukudiyiruppu. It was after credible intelligence that a retreating Prabhakaran was living in that concrete fortress. Reports of his presence had come not only from IDPs (Internally Displaced People) but had been verified thereafter from other channels. After the sorties, reports of damage sequel to the bombing raids were awaited when other developments occurred.
A day later, (April 1), the Army laid siege in that general area trapping a large group of guerrillas. During six days, they advanced to carry out what one officer in the Wanni described as "the largest assault in our history." The Army's official web site said more than 400 guerrillas, including senior leaders, were killed. One of them was Theepan, the man who had led many a battle with the Army in that area. The former intelligence cadre was wounded in the chest in a previous encounter. A doctor in Army custody, who identified him, had confirmed he had treated Theepan only days earlier after he bled profusely.
That successful encounter by the Army was to lead them to an important find - one of Velupillai Prabhakaran's hideouts. It is here that they found his family photo albums, his birth certificate, his horoscope, educational certificates and a plethora of other documents. There were also framed pictures adorning the thick walled building. The good news of the find was given to President Mahinda Rajapaksa upon his return from an official visit to Libya.
Until he moved into this fortified structure, Prabhakaran had lived in makeshift hideouts for years. There, he sometimes cooked his own food. (See photo). However, with the advent of the CFA in 2002, the guerrillas had developed an infrastructure that included several concrete structures. Unlike the ordinary cadres, the lives for leaders became more comfortable and comparatively, even luxurious.
The turning point for Prabhakaran came on March 30. His close encounter with death after the Air Force bombing must surely have jolted him. That day, together with his close aides and personal protection group, he decided to move out hurriedly. Together with his entourage, he went into the Civilian Safety (or No Fire) Zone and took cover there. Proof of his presence came from the hundreds of IDPs who fled to Government-run camps. According to some accounts, the LTTE leader was also in the company of his son Charles Anthony. His heavily armed bodyguards trailed him. Alongside were guerrillas clutching portable radio communication equipment strapped to their back. Prabhakaran was not observed using it perhaps for fear of intercepts giving out his location. Now, 39 days later, the question uppermost in the country's defence and security establishment is the whereabouts of Prabhakaran. Is he still in the CSZ or has he fled Sri Lanka? Colombo's intelligence community, an informed source said, was almost unanimous that he remains trapped. They believe that despite attempts to flee, the Navy has managed to prevent a surreptitious exit. This, they say, was borne out by recent engagements the Navy had with Sea Tigers. Yet, there are smaller sections that opine Prabhakaran would have made a hurried exit.
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| FROM LTTE LEADER VELUPILLAI PRABHAKARAN'S ALBUM: Teaching daughter Duwarkha how to shoot. She is now a medical student in a foreign country. |
However, the latter theory is being countered on the grounds that the guerrillas, now holed up in only some five square kilometres of the CSZ, were still offering resistance. They have not heeded calls by the Government to lay down arms and surrender. This was because Prabhakaran was still there. It is only a matter of a time before the troops re-capture the remaining stretch of territory and thus lay bare the truth.
The Army says it is determined to round up Prabhakaran and his entourage. The troops have surrounded the CSZ on three sides, north, south and west. The Navy has placed a three-tier cordon off the Mullaitivu coast to prevent any outward movement of vessels from the coast that straddles the CSZ. Smaller patrol boats form the first tier, followed by fast attack craft in the second and larger offshore vessels in the deep seas. This, no doubt, is a gigantic task for the Navy with its limited resources.
The likelihood of some vessels getting away was demonstrated this week by the arrival of refugees in the South Indian coastal village of Kakinada.
Out of some 21 refugees, only ten survived to make headline news on Indian tv channels. This is at a time when the Sri Lankan crisis has become an electoral issue in South India in the ongoing parliamentary general election. The New York Times staffer Somini Sengupta was one of a number of journalists who went from New Delhi to Kakinada to interview the survivors. (See box for excerpts of her report)
In that article, one of the boat people Yesudas' remarks underscore a reality. The reason why the Army does not want to stop is to prevent the guerrillas from winning another respite, re-train, re-arm and return to fight another day. This is why the Government, defence officials say, resisted mounting international pressure to extend a ceasefire. Wounded pride of the Tamil Diaspora is going to urge the LTTE, or what is left of it to continue the fight. Tamil Eelam has become more than a terrorist group or a liberation movement depending on how one prefers to see it. It has become Eelam Incorporated, a multi-million dollar industry in which several key players have become multi-millionaires, most of them around the world. They own properties and flashy cars in western capitals all in the name of fighting for a separate state in Sri Lanka. This is a business that they can't easily send into liquidation.
That is why a worrying concern of some of the visiting officials from the UK and France (during the joint visit of their Foreign Ministers David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner last week) was the radicalization of the second generation of the Tamil Diaspora that left Sri Lanka since the 1983 July riots. They were concerned whether this problem in Sri Lanka would so easily fade away merely with the liquidation of the LTTE, militarily.
No doubt, Eelam sans the LTTE to fight for it will, to a great extent, deflate the movement for independence from Colombo. There may not be a common flag to rally round. But that nagging factor will remain and how it can be tackled is there to be seen.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa told heads of Colombo-based diplomatic missions on Thursday that he does not want to see the resurgence of terrorism. He leaves tomorrow on an official visit to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the third Islamic nation since visiting Iran and Libya. Some say that he is simply going away to avoid constant telephone calls from nagging leaders from the so-called International Community - a euphemism for the western world. He is sure to want more good news waiting for him from the battlefield upon return, when he can, sooner than later say 'Mission Accomplished' at least in a military sense.
| Refugees recount horror in the sea |
Here are excerpts of Somini Sengupta's New York Times report that appeared in the issue of May 5.
The boat was adrift on the Indian Ocean for nine days. Jaya Niranjana's 3-year-old daughter died. M. Yesudas lost his father, sister, nephew, brothers, and uncle - six in all. An 8-month-old baby, Kuberan, survived only because his mother somehow managed to breast-feed him until just hours before she died.
By the time these refugees fleeing the war in Sri Lanka reached Indian shores last Wednesday, 10 of the 21 original travellers had died or jumped overboard. They had nothing to eat and only saltwater to drink. The scorching sun beat down on their heads. Diarrhoea struck. The first child died on April 24, then the others. S. Indira Meenan, 25, recalled it in halting English: "One by one. Dead babies, children. No food, no drink." "Twenty-fourth, dead; 25th; 26th," he went on. "One by one. Dead."
This is the story of their boat, and their country's civil war, seemingly endless even as the Sri Lankan government closes in on the last stronghold of the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, the L.T.T.E., short for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The government has trapped the remaining rebel force in a four mile strip of territory in a corner of Sri Lanka. Pressing its final assault, the government has rebuffed heavy international pressure to suspend the war for the sake of an estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in rebel territory and a no-fire zone between the forces.
In the dead of night, the boat left the sandy spit of land where fighting raged. Its captain had apparently steered the vessel far out into the sea, in an effort to evade the fighting, and then lost his way. He had promised his passengers a journey of nine hours to the closest point on the Indian coast, about 100 miles, far shorter than the distance from Miami to Havana.
But the boat's outboard motor gave out after a few hours. By Day 9, the captain jumped into the sea - whether from guilt or delirium, no one will ever know. The testimony of these refugees in an Indian government hospital is a rare glimpse into Sri Lanka's war zone; the government bars journalists and most aid workers from anywhere near there. It is also a measure of the desperation of its survivors, the latest among an estimated 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who have taken refuge in India over the past 20 years.
These refugees said they did not want to be quarantined in a Sri Lankan-government-controlled camp, where tens of thousands of displaced ethnic Tamils have fled in recent weeks. Instead, they took the risky journey across the water. They considered themselves lucky. Unlike many others, they had a boat, a motor and kerosene for fuel.
For two months, their boat, a fibreglass vessel no more than 20 feet long, first served as a bunker on the last bit of coast in Mullaitivu district on the north-eastern corner of the island. The boat belonged to Mr. Yesudas. He and his relatives had dug it into the ground, covered it with palm tree trunks for a roof, and hid inside when artillery shells rained down. The area, a village called Mathalan, had been designated by the Sri Lankan government as a "no-fire zone."
On one side of the sandy spit was the sea. On the other stood the front line of the Tamil Tigers, exchanging artillery fire with the Sri Lankan Army across a narrow lagoon. Those shells landed in the no-fire zone. For nearly two months, according to United Nations estimates, more than 150,000 civilians, including these refugees, were trapped inside. About 50,000 remain there now, the United Nations estimates. It has repeatedly pressed the Tamil Tigers to let their people go, and the government to stop firing on civilians. Both sides have rebuffed those appeals, denying the charges.
Two and a half weeks ago, on April 20, the refugees said, they witnessed the most intense fighting. The army that day broke through a mud embankment that shielded a portion of the last rebel-held spit of coast, allowing tens of thousands of civilians to flee into government-held territory………….. The refugees here recalled that both sides shelled indiscriminately that day, and that those among them who hid in their bunkers had no time to count the dead.
"About 1 a.m., after the shelling had stopped, they dug out the boat from under the sand and quietly took it out into the sea. Had the Tamil Tigers detected them trying to escape, Mr. Yesudas said flatly, they would have shot at the boat. "If we didn't get out that day, we wouldn't have gotten out at all."
They had all fled fighting before. Mr. Yesudas's family filed out of their ancestral village in Jaffna Peninsula in 1996, following the rebels as the army chased them out. The family settled into a new village, prospered and saved their sons and daughters from being forced to fight with the guerrillas. When the war resumed last year, they ran from village to village, hoping that a cease-fire would soon come.
M. Aruldas played with his 8-month-old nephew, Kuberan, as they recovered in a government hospital in Kakinada, India, on Monday, after drifting on a boat for nine days with other Sri Lankan refugees. Sivadasa Jagadeeswaran, the father of Kuberan, the baby, said that for nearly 10 months, his family had been on the run, too, living mostly in makeshift tents of bed sheets and palm fronds. There were not enough tents to go around, and not enough food. A month before he fled, his father was killed, he thinks by shelling, in the main market in the no-fire zone. They found his father's body at the hospital, the back of his head blown out entirely.
"Early on April 21, he stepped into the boat with his wife and their two sons. Their eldest, age 4, was among the first to die. They threw the child into the sea. Then, his wife's father died. Her two brothers jumped overboard, lured by the twinkling lights of what may have been a fishing trawler. His wife held on until the last day. She complained of thirst, but vomited when he gave her seawater. Soon, she was gone. This afternoon, a single father to an only child, he cooed softly to the baby on the hospital bed. He gave him a bottle of milk. He checked to make sure his diapers weren't wet. The baby giggled, oblivious to the misery around him.
Indira Kumar and his wife, Jaya, watched him from the next bed. He said he decided to leave that night to save his daughter, Prasambavi. She, too, held out until the last day on the boat. The night before, she had begged for a cold drink. Their boat was first noticed by an Indian fisherman, K. Srinivas Rao, who had gone shark hunting that day, roughly 90 miles from shore. In the distance, he saw two men waving their arms frantically. One of them was holding up a baby. When he got closer, he saw that most of the passengers were so weak they could hardly move. He drew the boat to the shore. The strangers could barely explain their circumstances. They spoke only Tamil.
"Mr. Yesudas said he had no interest in going home. He had saved his family for so long, and lost so many. He had no hope that things would get any better anytime soon in Sri Lanka, not even after the war is declared over. "The L.T.T.E. is not going to stop. The army is not going to stop," he said, referring to the rebel group. "It is an eternal war." |
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