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Sri Lanka Taming Tamil Tigers

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The Associated Press

Published: January 12, 2009

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - When Hamilton Wanasinghe was Sri Lanka's military chief in the early 1990s, he tried to buy desperately needed weapons from Russia to fight the Tamil Tiger rebels. Money was so short he offered to trade crates of tea for arms.

The Sri Lankan treasury rejected the deal, Wanasinghe says. Then, three years ago, a new president took office and the coffers burst open.
Military recruitment swelled, training improved and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on new hardware to crush the rebels and end a civil war that has lasted 25 years and killed more than 70,000 people on this teardrop-shaped island off India's southern tip.

Senior officials, analysts, diplomats and former military officers say President Mahinda Rajapaksa's commitment to the fight - coupled with a string of miscalculations by the Tamil Tigers - has brought one of the world's most sophisticated rebel groups to the brink of defeat.

In recent weeks, government forces have broken through the rebels' front lines, forced them out of much of their de facto state in the north and cornered them in a shrinking pocket of northeastern jungle.

Top officials predict the imminent demise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and its dream of creating a breakaway state for the country's ethnic Tamil minority in the north and east.

If Sri Lanka succeeds, it could signal the end of one of Asia's most persistent and bloody insurgencies. But a lasting peace will depend on whether the 75 percent Sinhalese majority on the island of 20 million people can come to a political compromise with the Tamils.

Rajapaksa has said he would seek a political resolution to the ethnic conflict once the rebels were destroyed. Sinhalese nationalist politicians, however, have already said that with victory in sight there was no need for the sort of power-sharing arrangement seen as crucial to placating the Tamils and preventing a new outbreak of violence.

Iqbal Athas, a military analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly, cautions against declaring an early victory. "The war is not yet over," he said. "It could be protracted."

Some of the insurgents could take off their uniforms, blend in with the mass of civilians still living in their stronghold and fight on as guerrillas, said Austin Fernando, a former defense secretary.

Now the rebels are huddled in the northeastern jungles along with hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of them war refugees living in makeshift shelters.

Military officials think rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is hiding there, protected by hundreds of fighters and an inner security ring of up to 30 Black Tigers, the rebels' suicide commandos. He, like many of his fighters, is said to wear a cyanide vial around his neck to kill himself if captured.

Capturing or killing him could plunge the rebels into disarray. But Jehan Perera, a Sri Lankan political analyst, says much more will be needed before Sri Lanka is fully at peace.

"Ultimately, this is a conflict between the two largest communities that live on this island and that is not resolved," he said.

THE HISTORY

•The war that led to the murder of a former Indian prime minister erupted in 1983 after a rebel ambush in the northern Tamil city of Jaffna killed 13 soldiers. Sinhalese mobs rampaged through Colombo, the capital 190 miles to the south, leaving more than 2,000 Tamils dead.

•India, with its own sympathetic Tamil community, sent in peacekeepers in 1987, but they soon became targets of the rebels and left in 1990.

•In 1991, Rajiv Gandhi, who as Indian prime minister had ordered in the peacekeepers, was killed by a female Tamil Tiger suicide bomber in southern India.

•A cease-fire was brokered by Norway in 2002.

•Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected president in 2005 and after a brief stab at peace talks, he committed himself to all-out war.

•In 2008, Rajapaksa withdrew from the cease-fire.

REBEL'S MISTAKES

Analysts say rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has made costly errors. Among them:

•During negotiations after the 2002 cease-fire, he rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east but not full independence, according to a diplomat with knowledge of the offer.

•He called a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, which helped propel the hard-line Rajapaksa to victory.

•After new peace talks failed, the rebels cut off the water supply to more than 60,000 people in the east, provoking the latest government offensive.
TAMIL TIGERS
THE GROUP: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, commonly called the Tamil Tigers, have been waging guerrilla attacks against Sri Lankan armed forces and political targets for more than three decades. The group's goal is to seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority and create an independent Tamil state.

Rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had transformed the organization from little more than a street gang in the 1970s into a fearsome guerrilla group that ran a dictatorial regime ruling a wide swath of the north, with its own police, courts and customs department.

The rebels dug in effectively, deployed heavy artillery, established a significant naval wing and a rudimentary air force that once bombed Colombo's international airport.

MEMBERS: Many of the group's members are Tamil agricultural workers whose families lost their livelihoods during a period of economic reforms in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s. Unemployed Tamil youth also join the group. About 10,000 men and women are thought to be members of the Tamil Tigers. The group is thought to also have 10,000 reservists.

EXTREMISTS: The FBI lists the Tamil Tigers among the "most dangerous and deadly extremists" in the world. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.

WEAPONS: An international wing operates in London and Paris, and is responsible for obtaining weapons. Many of the weapons came from countries in the former Soviet Union. Arms also have been captured from Sri Lankan security forces.

FUNDING: Expatriate activists in the West provide funds for the weapons purchases, which have included artillery, surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers. The group raised up to $300 million a year from a network of fake charities and the international smuggling of arms, drugs and possibly even people, according to Jane's Intelligence Review.

TACTICS: During the war, the Tamil Tigers have:

•Perfected the use of suicide bombers

•Invented the suicide belt

•Pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks

•Killed 70,000 people since 1983

•Assassinated two world leaders, the only terrorist organization to do so

Sources: www.fbi.gov, The Associated Press

SRI LANKA'S ETHNIC GROUPS

Ethnic groups

•Sinhalese: 73.8 percent

•Sri Lankan Moors: 7.2 percent

•Indian Tamil: 4.6 percent

•Sri Lankan Tamil: 3.9 percent

•Unspecified: 10 percent

Religions

•Buddhist: 69.1 percent

•Muslim: 7.6 percent

•Hindu: 7.1 percent

•Christian: 6.2 percent

•Unspecified: 10 percent

Languages

•Sinhala (official and national language): 74 percent

•Tamil (national language): 18 percent

•Other: 8 percent

•English: Commonly used in government, the language is spoken competently by about 10 percent of the population

Source: CIA World Factbook

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