SRI LANKA:Despite major military setbacks in recent weeks, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger separatists are determined to step up their offensive, Tom Farrell reports from their base in Killinochchi
The deputy leader of Sri Lanka's rebel Tamil Tigers has predicted that a major military victory last week by government forces will ultimately be pyrrhic.
Speaking to the Irish Times in the rebel-held town of Killinochchi, Selvakumar Paramoorthy Thamilselvan says that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), whose four-year ceasefire begadisintegrating last year, will henceforth adopt an "offensive posture". Last week, the Sri Lankan military overran Thoppigala, a swathe of jungle territory that was the nerve-centre of the LTTE's eastern operation since the mid-1990s.
When the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement (CFA) was signed in 2002, the Tamil-dominated north and east, claimed as an independent "Eelam" by the Tigers, was divided into a patchwork of government- and rebel-held areas.
The fall of Thoppigala theoretically brings the island's east entirely under government jurisdiction. The LTTE is now backed into a triangle of land in the north known as the Vanni.
But SP Thamilselvan, a 40-year-old former guerrilla whose pronounced limp is from a shrapnel wound, is defiant: "The five years saw the LTTE with all its power restrained because the CFA bound them," he says.
"But now we see that one party has visibly failed and therefore the leadership's thinking is that we need to go into an offensive posture and then retake our positions so that the people will be free of
military occupation. Then a political resolution can be talked about."
The LTTE's military spokesman echoes this defiance. Rasiah Illanthirayan - nom de guerre "Marshall" - says the LTTE will use traditional guerrilla tactics to combat government forces in the east.
"The government controls a very large part of the east," he says. "We still operate there as we have operated for 25 years."
Indeed, within days of Thoppigala's fall, the secretary of the Eastern Province, Herath Abeyweera, was shot dead in Trincomalee, although the Tigers denied responsibility.
SP Thamilselvan welcomes visitors at the LTTE's "peace secretariat", a spacious, air-conditioned building whose sumptuous furnishings contrast with the rest of Killinochchi, a sprawl of shanties and bullet-chipped buildings without electricity.
He is protected by heavily armed bodyguards and he himself was formerly a bodyguard to the seldom seen LTTE leader, Vellupilliai Prabhakaran.
He speaks warmly of an October 2003 European tour which included some days at the Peace and Reconciliation Centre in Glencree, Co Wicklow, and talks in April 2005 with the then minister of state for overseas development, Conor Lenihan.
"The rapport that we built with the foreign ministry officials and the various ministers and dignitaries was very interesting and very helpful, very educating," he says.
"We were very unfortunate that we couldn't continue with the process, developing further ties with the people of Ireland." He is also highly appreciative of Martin McGuinness's criticism of the ban on the LTTE last May.
Having visited the peace secretariat last July, Mr McGuinness told local reporters that it was a "huge mistake for the EU leaders to demonise the LTTE and the political leaders of the Tamil people".
"He appeared for all purposes as a most realistic and pragmatic person who had acquired, over time with Irish politics, a wider experience of conflict resolution," Thamilselvan says. "The Tamil perception was that there at least was one sensible person who was able to make the world know that this was a wrong step in the wrong direction."
Day and night the thump of artillery fire echoes around Killinochchi and the roughly 450,000 residents of the LTTE-controlled Vanni live with the fear of air strikes.
At a nearby co-operative shop, S Jegatherasaram weighs foodstuffs using old-fashioned scales. There are sacks of rice and chillis propped up against the counter but his shelves are empty.
The army checkpoint at the village of Omanthai, about 80km to the south, opens three times a week. Foreign NGOs along with a convoy of government- approved trucks are allowed up the A9 highway.
"A 400g packet of milk powder has gone up from 169 to 195 rupees since last year," says Jegatherasaram. "The price of rice is still low because it's produced locally. I only get a quarter of the goods from the convoy I got in 2006. Turnover is so low, there's no incentive to work."
But for all the hardships imposed by renewed war, the Tigers run a strict regime. Their territory is a one-party state with Tiger-run courts, police stations and banks.
Embargoes and inflation aside, alcohol and tobacco are available only to foreign NGO staff and women dress in traditional garb. Such asceticism is reflected in the behaviour of the Tiger cadres who have renounced alcohol, tobacco and sex.
Killinochchi fell to the Tigers in September 1998 when the Sri Lankan army camp there was overrun by multiple human wave attacks that left hundreds dead on both sides. Most of the Tigers' casualties came from the Sunthantira-p-paravaikkal (Freedom Birds), the movement's female wing.
They can be seen on the streets, distinguished by their black pants, belted shirts and tightly braided hair. In battle, they wear green fatigues, banded like a tiger's hide.
Like their male counterparts, they carry cyanide capsules on a string necklace to be taken if captured.
In late 2005 the presidential elections brought to power Mahinda Rajapakse, committed to a more hardline approach towards the Tigers.
The LTTE ordered an election boycott in the north and east, which few Tamils dared defy. In the process, the opposition "peace candidate" lost by 180,000 votes.
"The boycott can be defined as a mandate for the Tamil people," says Thamilselvan.
"Invariably, the Tamil people have learned the hard way that these people are not the people who will deliver. We have to get our own independence."
A new front in the conflict opened in March with the first attacks by the Vaan Puligal (Air Tigers).
In what were the first ever air raids by a non-state insurgent group, bombing raids were launched on a Sri Lankan airforce base near the Katunayke International Airport, a military bunker in the northern Jaffna peninsula and a fuel storage facility in Colombo.
The Air Tigers are believed to comprise about four Czech- designed Zlin-143 light aircraft and at least two airstrips within the Vanni.
"During the ceasefire they brought in the parts. Then they got trained pilots elsewhere," says Sri Lankan army spokesman Brig Prasad Samarasinge.
"It's another threat to the world. This is the only terrorist group that has the capability to drop bombs from the sky."
Although there have been no Air Tigers raids since April, they may form part of the "offensive posture" that Thamilselvan speaks of.