With President Mahinda Rajapaksa pressing ahead with advantages on the battle front, it is almost end of the road for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its charismatic leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.  Chali, a key base of Sea Tigers for loading and unloading of weapons fell to Army’s 55 Division led by Brigadier Prasna Silva on Thursday, Feb 5 ( 2009).

The National Day celebration held at Pooneryn

 
The European Union, Japan and Norway for immediate negotiations with the LTTE to facilitate their surrender and to working out political solutions) and by the Tigers who are known to prefer death by cyanide pill to either capture or surrender.
From all accounts Sri Lanka armed forces are moving at a slow pace in the Eelam War IV, though they are fighting to finish the Tigers. So much so, the present operation may last another 15-20 days to mop up the top leadership and formally declare the end of 25-year long fight for a separate Tamil homeland. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict, and hundreds of civilians have been killed in the most recent round of fighting.
There is an animated discussion in Jaffna, Colombo, Chennai, Delhi and beyond on what Prabhakaran would do and what the LTTE cadres would do if he is dead.  At present, VP is still very much there in the ‘Eelam’ which has now shrunk to about 85-square-kilometers. His family – wife and two children are also in the forests though not with VP. They are unlikely to runaway. Land routes are blocked. The last of seven airstrips controlled by the rebels were run over on Tuesday, Feb 3. And sea lanes are under constant observation.

There has been a talk of some submersible boats with the LTTE and the speculation is that top brass could escape on them. Defence experts however rule out the possibility. In their assessment, LTTE has no submersible boats. It has few dinghies that can remain afloat even as the ‘occupants’ bend down to hide their faces. With such dinghies, they cannot sail too far. So there is little chance of Tiger bosses escaping by the sea. Cyanide pill alone offers the escape route to Prabhakaran and the elite commandos who have placed a protective ring around him.

 Prabhakaran had lost his hold by the time Kilinochi fell. His strategic vision came in for severe criticism. He was charged with committing tactical blunders.

Prabhakaran had lost his hold by the time Kilinochi fell. His strategic vision came in for severe criticism. He was charged with committing tactical blunders. Finances too offered room for brickbats. These murmurs of dissent, discontent and discord became loud by the time Mullaitivu was captured by the government troops. If he still managed to remain elusive it was because there was no clear cut second line.
What will happen once he disappears from the scene? One possibility that is no longer a conjecture is that LTTE will disintegrate. The surviving cadres/leaders will become the rallying point for emergence of new but small armed groups.  They will not be effective in derailing Rajapaksa plans. Still they will create enough headaches. The success of these groups will be inversely proportional to the speed with which President Rajapaksa undertakes devolution of political power to the Tamil dominated provinces in the East and the North.  If Rajapaksa fails to deliver on his promise, these splinter groups can gain in strength.
Surprisingly, in his single minded pursuit of military option, President Rajapaksa has missed some opportunities to emerge as a darling of Tamils as well. Tigers have lost ‘popular’ support from Northern Tamilians quite a while ago. What had turned against the Tigers was the LTTE policy of recruiting children. Except in the initial years, no family was willing to send its children to the war front. And the forcible recruitment did not endear the LTTE to the locals. If there was no public protest it was primarily because of a sense of fear and also because of Colombo’s failure to step in quickly to fill the ‘vacuum’.
“President Rajapaksa has also lost some sympathy with the army shelling civilian areas and even hospitals.  At least 12 persons including children were killed when artillery pounded a hospital, in the rebel-held village of Puthukkudiyiruppu. International Committee of the Red Cross helps run the 500-bed hospital. The pediatric ward and the surgery ward were not spared”.
President Rajapaksa has also lost some sympathy with the army shelling civilian areas and even hospitals.  At least 12 persons including children were killed when artillery pounded a hospital, in the rebel-held village of Puthukkudiyiruppu. International Committee of the Red Cross helps run the 500-bed hospital. The pediatric ward and the surgery ward were not spared. Accompanied by 18 staff members of the Red Cross, more than 300 patients took refuge in a community center in Puttumatalan, an area that lacks even clean drinking water.
Puthukkudiyiruppu is also believed to be the LTTE’s main communication centre. The Lanka air force carried out more than 15 air strikes in support of the ground troops, The New York Times said the attack signals a particularly ruthless turn in Asia’s longest-running civil war.
There is always a possibility of LTTE cadres sneaking into the Indian territory particularly southern Tamilnadu. But the Indian Home Minister said (Feb 5) that the Tamil Nadu Government had been sensitized. ‘The (Tamil) refugees will be dealt with according to the extant policy’, he said.  LTTE is banned in India was a banned organization in India.
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, had marked a decisive change in the relations between Tamil Nadu’s Tamils and the LTTE. Until then, support for the ‘Tamil Eelam’ dream had been considerable in Tamil Nadu, continuing even when the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was battling the LTTE.  The assassination of Gandhi changed that. The lukewarm response to the (Feb 4) call for general strike in support of LTTE is a visible manifestation of the popular mood.