Tamil dream will not die
Down but not out. Reports of the death of the Tamil Tigers have always been greatly exaggerated. The dramatic spectacle of Tiger aircraft strafing Colombo’s colonial-era Fort sends a stark message that the fight is far from over.
Militarily, the Tigers are at their lowest ebb in two decades, their key strongholds of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu firmly in government hands.
Hundreds of rebel fighters have perished and much of its military hardware has been captured in the lightning advance that has led them to being boxed into a tiny patch of land in the north.
Yesterday it was their planes, which few thought they would be capable of launching, that led the counter-attack. Today, two potent last-resort defences remain: the civilians trapped alongside them and the Black Tigers, their home-grown suicide squad.
The Tigers began their fight in the Seventies as a guerrilla force before they captured enough territory to transform into a battlefield army. But their guerrilla roots remain and territorial defeat may reinvent them as a rebel force across the entire island, using suicide and roadside bombings to wage a war of attrition.
The loss of Prabhakaran, their cult-like leader, would strike a blow but dreams of a Tamil state will not die with him. The Tamil diaspora in the US, Canada, Australian, Europe and Asia has raised large sums of money for the cause, which is unlikely to dry up. The discovery of homemade weaponry in the offensive has demonstrated the Tigers’ innovative technical skills in getting round the international arms embargo.
Recent human rights outrages blamed on the government, including the murder of a journalist, have darkened the mood among even the Sinhalese over military successes. Tamils are not the only ones aggrieved and the battle is not only a military one.
