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Terror leader sabotaged peace deals as he clung to power
Ed Harris18.05.09
He transformed a small band of poorly armed rebels into one of the world's most sophisticated and ruthless insurgencies and then made a string of miscalculations that led his Tamil Tigers to total defeat.
To his followers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54, was the heart of a battle to establish a breakaway state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority.
But his many detractors saw him as the brutal ruler of a suicide cult who repeatedly sabotaged peace deals in his pursuit of power.
Over more than a quarter century of civil war, Prabhakaran's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam assassinated top politicians including former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and fought the Sri Lankan government to a near-standstill.
At the height of his power, the portly rebel leader with the bushy moustache and Browning pistol ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people across northern Sri Lanka.
His guerrilla force was armed with heavy artillery, a rudimentary air force that once bombed Colombo's airport and a navy that consisted of attack craft, boats laden with explosives, crude submarines and huge smuggling ships that plied the Indian Ocean.
The rebels reportedly earned as much as $300 million a year from their arms and drug smuggling. Prabhakaran rarely appeared in public, preferring to communicate in a “state of the nation” address every November.
He alienated his strongest allies in India by sending a female suicide bomber to kill Mr Gandhi in 1991.
Then during negotiations that followed a 2002 ceasefire, he rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east.
It fell short of total independence but was widely seen as the best deal he could ever get.
Reader views (1)
When did the LTTE and the aspiration of an independent state come into question? Not until 1977, when the TULF (Tamils United Liberation Front) became the opposition party in SriLanka demanding a separate state as the only solution for the Tamils. Do you know what happened in 1958, when the "Sinhala only" law was enforced, and how many Tamils were murdered and chased away to the North and East? What happened to the peaceful protests by the Tamil leaders who were brutally tortured by the government forces. In 1977 yet again the Tamils were murdered and sent back to the North and East in ships.
So the North and East of SL has been seen as a Tamils State also by the government of SL. Why not give the Tamils a Federal state? We have got to find a solution to the problem and not to dwell in the past anymore. If any one really cares about peace in SL, then let us get together in finding a peaceful solution to this bloody war which has killed more than 100,000 lives since independence.
Let us give the people in SL a taste of what we enjoy in the name of freedom here in England.
Every time subsequent Srilanka govt tore off the agreement which signed between tamils and sinhalese leaders .Banda selva accord , Dudley Selva accord all refuse by SL govt.what about 1982 peace deal infront of Norway ,thrown in to Bin by current SL president.
I love peace and don't call me LTTE
- Nava, London UK
