The Liberation Tiger of Tamil Elam (LTTE) is on the run. It is being encircled from all-round and its forces are fighting the last ditch battle. But this is not the first such crisis for them in the last 26 years of the blood-letting, which have taken thousands of lives – may be well over a lakh or two. This included President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and a former Prime Minister of India.
Two decades back many thought that the LTTE would be written off when it was made to fight both the Sri Lankan army and the Indian Peace Keeping Forces. However, they inflicted devastating blow on the IPKF leading to the death of about one thousand of their personnel and thus compelling India to withdraw its forces. The Tigers took revenge by assassinating Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991 and that too in the Indian territory. That was certainly not the first attack on the Indian soil – they had carried out some more such attacks in the past.
The issue is just not whether the LTTE would this time finally survive the Sri Lankan onslaught or not. The question is how it managed to survive since 1983. Who provides fund, who train their army, navy and air forces and who gives them so much arms to take on the well-organised Sri Lankan – and at one point of time Indian – army.
It is one of the most dreaded terrorist outfits of the world credited with killing many high-profile politicians and army, military and naval officers of the sub-continent. In the recent years the Tigers even used aircraft to bomb the Sri Lankan target, while the Sea Tigers have been using sophisticated vessels for the last many years. No non-state actor or terrorist group be it the Irish Republican Army in Great Britain, Maoist or Communist extremists in India or elsewhere or Hezbullah, Hamas in the Middle East or even Lashkar-e-Tayyaba or Hizb-ul-Mujaheedin in our vicinity managed to use all the three forces – land, navy and air to take on the organised army of a country.
Yet the biggest unanswered question is from where and how the Liberation Tiger of Tamil Elam has managed to procure these weapons, train their cadets and carry out operations. Before the Rajiv Gandhi brokered truce it was alleged that the India, because of the political compulsion in the Tamil Nadu, had been supplying the weapons and logistics support to them. But after the IPKF fiasco and the subsequent killing of Rajiv Gandhi the Indians stopped the supply of arms. The LTTE lost a lot of sympathy in Tamil Nadu, which they used as a launching pad. Yet they continued to grow strong.
The surprise aspect about the LTTE is that it continued to get all sorts of support even when the western countries like the United States and United Kingdom are keeping a close eye on their funding by the Tamil expatriates living in their countries. And unlike some Muslim or Communist underground outfits they do not have their support across the globe. Apart from Tamils nobody anywhere in the world sympathise with their cause. Apparently neither the United States nor the then Soviet Union or China ever stood for their cause.
Notwithstanding all these facts it remains a mystery as to how this organisation survived and managed to inflict blows on the Sri Lankan army. If some international secret agencies are really fishing in the troubled waters of Gulf of Mannar and providing all sorts of logistic and other supports to the LTTE then it should be probed and exposed. But the tragedy is that though India has suffered immensely because of the activities of the LTTE yet the people know nothing what is happening in the southern under-belly of our own country. After the recent reversal the LTTE has once again turned hostile towards India and may target some places in our country yet we appear to be oblivious of this development.