The Man Who Destroyed Eelam

Prabhakaran had everything: territory, international support and committed fighters. Senior journalist SHYAM TEKWANI, who has covered the LTTE and Sri Lanka for almost three decades tracks the alarming rise and astonishing fall of a man who sought to live to fight another day, but found only death at the hands of his nemesis

More vividly than anything that came afterwards in the Sri Lanka war, I remember his first handshake. The hand was soft, the grip delicate and limp. On that occasion in Madras, as he contentedly claimed credit for assassinating the Tamil Mayor of Jaffna and later, the slaughter of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers that ignited the conflict following the anti-Tamil riots of 1983, Velupillai Prabhakaran’s dainty handshake seemed in harmony with his soft voice.

A few more meetings and a couple of years later in 1987 - after successfully evading a media ban to reach the frontlines in Jaffna - I found myself reporting in the company of Prabhakaran’s ragtag troops in their war against the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). In the bougainvillea-lined mud tracks, while attempting to photograph his boys gunning down the Indian soldiers in an ambush, I was transfixed by the memory of that handshake as I watched the blood seep from an ill-fated jawan’s head and mingle with the Jaffna dirt.

The other memory is his startled expression when I congratulated him on his newborn towards the end of a long discourse on Eelam. Soon after his fleeting pause, it became clear that he had lost interest in going on and on with his vision of Eelam. He was less voluble, withdrawn and then abruptly left the room. It was left to the master’s voice, Anton Balasingham, to cautiously quiz me on how and what I knew of the addition to his leader’s family.

These two memories define, at any rate for me through all my experiences over the last 25 years in Sri Lanka, the man who has finally destroyed the dream he almost made true. Both the memories give a certain insight into the mind of the man. First, deceive all into believing the contrary about your capabilities - deception is the core of all his strategy. Second, never trust your own shadow - paranoia dictates his behaviour. These traits contributed to the amazing rise - and eventually the astonishing fall - of the leader of the most ruthless terrorist organisation in the world.

To suggest that Prabhakaran worked to a master plan in building and shaping his image of invincibility and developing the organisation from a ragtag bunch of boys into the outfit that inspired awe and envy would be to bestow upon him the title of a genius - which he is not. From the beginning, he adopted a twofold strategy - consisting on the one hand of an ‘international political campaign’ by galvanising the diaspora and international opinion in his favour and on the other by bleeding the economy and weakening the state through acts of terror. His success in sustaining the conflict for over a quarter century came from a combination of his own cunning and the lack of purpose, unity and determination in his enemies.

The propaganda carpet bomb

A light moment: Sharing a joke with Yosi, a close aide	Battle lines: Prabakaran at a strategy meeting with his aides in Jaffna
On guard: LTTE cadre guarding the water front from the ramparts of the destroyed Dutch Fort	Tigers pride: Prabakaran posing with his soldier ‘cubs’ in a safe house

“Today we’re engaged in the first war in history - unconventional and irregular as it may be - in an era of e-mails, blogs, cell phones, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras, a global internet with no inhibitions, cell phones, hand-held video cameras, talk radio, 24-hour news broadcasts, satellite television. There’s never been a war fought in this environment before.” That was former US Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 referring, of course, to his woes stemming from the unnecessary war in Iraq.

If propaganda wins wars, then the IPKF, which saved Sri Lanka from becoming another Lebanon, fell victim to a weapon far more effective than the deadliest conventional weapon in Prabhakaran’s jungle arsenal - his propaganda tool, the media.

Central to Prabhakaran’s guerilla strategy - over two decades before Rumsfeld made his observation - was a powerful communications network and a sympathetic media. Hence, his exclusive interviews to handpicked influential publications while he was enjoying the hospitality of the Indian government in Madras during the mid-80s, when I first got to shake his hand. From the outset, it was not difficult to win the support of the media, particularly in the West.

Prabhakaran played his underdog cards adroitly with the help of his advisor Anton Balasingham and his Australian born wife, Adele and the LTTE’s media headquarters in London.

In November 1986, on the eve of the SAARC summit in Bangalore, the police under instructions from the Chief Minister MG Ramachandran, raided and seized arms and sophisticated communications gear from the assorted Eelam groups operating out of Tamil Nadu. Prabhakaran went on a much publicised fast-unto death in Madras quoting Mahatma Gandhi, whom he said he was emulating in peaceful protest for the return of the equipment. He demanded the immediate return of - not his rocket launchers, SAM missiles and AK-47s - but his lifeline to the world, his wireless sets. By this time, he had the media eating out of his hands and the romanticisation of Prabhakaran - already in motion - now entered the process of deification. Everything was returned to him in good order along with a glass of fruit juice that he sipped to declare his victory.

Tiger’s pride Prabakaran posing with his soldier ‘cubs’ in a safehouse

Battlelines Prabakaran at a strategy meeting with his aides in Jaffna

Light moment Sharing a joke with Yogi, a close aideLess than a year later, I walked into a scoop in the Jaffna peninsula. IPKF Mi-24 helicopter gunships were on the attack in Chavakachcheri, an LTTE stronghold. People around me were killed, most of them civilians. And my cameras were the only media instruments witnessing the deaths.

A week later, when I surfaced in Colombo and rushed to the phone in my hotel room to break the exclusive story, I was dismayed to find that the attack was already the big story in the media.

Prabhakaran had already beaten me to it - even though there was no electricity to light up his bases in the jungles. Even as the body count in the damaged market area was in progress, his ‘boys’ had radioed their souped-up version of the ‘bombing’ from their jungle hideouts to their ‘media’ headquarters in London from where a telex was sent out to every major international publication. Photographs of death and destruction from an assault during Operation Liberation (or Vadamarachchi Operation) by Sri Lankan gunships six months earlier were circulated as evidence of the Chavakachcheri attack.

The LTTE’s powerful communications network transmitted daily situation reports (sitreps) from Jaffna to its media headquarters in a Western capital where the sitreps were distributed as press releases though telex machines (later with the introduction of fax machines and the internet, it was able to readjust its media budget) to media and governments in Western capitals. Printed material was was a prime means of LTTE propaganda till the early 1990s, when the group went to great expense to publish multilingual and expensively produced four-colour booklets and pamphlets with profuse illustrations. These publications were distributed to the local and international media and select government organisations.

The LTTE’s high degree of familiarity with modern telecommunications enabled it to occupy a very definitive niche in the international public eye, in spite of the fact that it is party to a conflict in a small south Asian nation, largely ignored by the West, and the fact that its acts of violence have impacted only Sri Lanka and occasionally India.

The reason counter-terrorism practitioners began to focus their attention, after 9/11, to Sri Lanka is Prabhakaran’s global reach. His group is an integral part of the international terror network. Tactical and technical contagion is a fact of terrorist tactics. From hostage-taking, to hijacking to car-bombs, new methods have been quickly absorbed and copied among terrorist groups worldwide. Witness the Taliban’s use of civilians as human shields during the Pakistani-led assault in Buner district last week.

Years before the world heard of Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda, Prabhakaran was pioneering a new method of guerrilla warfare - the suicide bomber. Innovations in the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and the rampant use of child soldiers and new media technologies - were quickly copied as regular methods of warfare following the invasion of Iraq in 2002.

Prabhakaran has successfully operated in volatile environments where his ability to change has been the group’s linchpin not only of effectiveness, but also of survival. While Prabhakaran has had ample motivations for change - technological developments, counterterrorism measures, and shifts in people’s reactions to terror attacks - the change has not occurred automatically.

As adaptive as a chameleon

Prabhakaran’s ambition to sever the island in two has been the only constant in his life. Sustaining that for 30 years required a continuous evolution and a firm hand. The practices he adopted were based on selectively chosen models appropriated from a range of religious and political traditions and rituals for a variety of political and publicity goals. The flavor of the 1980s, for him, was Marxist rhetoric. When his oft-repeated desire for a single party socialist government in his imagined Eelam drew gasps of horror, the Lenin portrait in his den was summarily removed and Marx was forsaken in all conversation. He then abandoned ideology to aggressively build the cult around his persona. An adoring media lent as zealous a hand as his followers to help build his cult to mythical proportions - tales of his marksmanship, valour and genius became commonplace. Soon, taking an oath in his name by his cadres, celebrating his birthday, and displaying his portrait everywhere became mandatory. Adele introduced the concept of feminism to recruit girls. In her words, “Nowhere in the world has male chauvinism been eradicated and it certainly has not disappeared from the Tamil society.

In his own image

However the male cadres show a great deal of respect, appreciation and pride in the women combatants’ achievements.” From Hinduism, he borrowed the practice of deifying his martyrs and erecting shrines where people were expected to make offerings and pray on a day designated as holy. Western military traditions provided him a model to build his army while Hollywood, apart from inspiring movies of bravery and heroism, taught him to produce slickly produced audio-visual presentations for profit and for goodwill.

Food for fight Snacking at one of his safe houses in Jaffna Powerful trio Prabakaran, Adele and Anton Balasingham in MullaitivuAcutely conscious of the power of propaganda and his image as the most lethal weapon in his arsenal, Prabhakaran ensured that everybody in his group understood how to use it. Cadres were not to interact with anyone outside the fold. His photograph - and only his - would be the single image that hung on the walls of all denizens in his territory. Every street corner would have his speeches or Eelam national songs playing from the loudspeakers at all hours every day. Every offer of a ride in the Balasingham’s air-conditioned SUV, with Adele at the wheel, in the Jaffna peninsula perforce meant listening to Prabhakaran blaring from the only cassette she would insert into the music player.

Calendars, posters, CDs, DVDs, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations - he had them all out years before the world had heard of the al Qaeda propaganda machinery. And while the word ‘web’, at any rate for most of us in south Asia in 1993, triggered images of the common house spider, the LTTE had its first website running on the server of a university in the United States. This conveniently coincided with an increasingly unfriendly media following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. A computer academy funded and run by professionals from among the diaspora in the Vanni region ensured that the ‘brains trust’ of the LTTE kept abreast with the latest know-how.

A wing of the group (Internet Black Tigers) is credited with the first ever cyber attack (1997) known to the world when it downed the networks of Sri Lankan embassies across the world for a fortnight. In the same year, it was able to hack into a university in the United Kingdom, steal legitimate email IDs and solicit funds for a fictitious hospital in Colombo. And as recently as last week, a group calling itself Kalai Amman Electronic Warfare Unit hacked into the Sri Lanka Army website and defaced its home page. Social network sites were quickly adopted and a search on YouTube yields several hundred videos of the group.

During one of our initial photo sessions (in the early 1980s), Prabhakaran was awkward, uncertain of what was expected of him and very receptive to being directed. When it was suggested he change into combat fatigues, he went one further and emerged from the room with his pistol fully loaded. Within seconds, framed by his bodyguards and a huge cut out of a Tiger, with a huge portrait of Lenin in the background, he was in his elements and an hour later eagerly asked for copies of his performance. Several photo sessions later and in Jaffna while fighting for his supremacy against the IPKF, he reveled in playing the role of actor and director with consummate ease. He would tease a twinkle into his eyes with as much ease as a flash of fury. There was bluster in his voice, preparedness in dealing with questions and animation in his conversations but his grip had lost none of its daintiness.

He would play to the gallery with sardonic witticisms, refrain from any response in English, ponder a bit to deliver a quotable quote and strike the pose that struck him as just right for the occasion. In one of his hideouts during the IPKF operations, he called for his leopard cub and while bantering with his friend and deputy, Yogaratnam Yogi, posed gleefully for the camera stroking his pet - much like a prosperous zamindar back from a hunt.

It was essential to his strategy to get the message across that he had a committed following - and that this commitment came from man, woman and child. The cyanide pill was the emblem of commitment - which he generously arranged for me to photograph as his boys gamely posed with them around their necks.