The LTTE in Crisis

In the past few weeks there have been many media reports that point to the prevalence of confusion and disarray among the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/Tigers) in the face of heavy losses inflicted by the armed forces of the Government of Sri Lanka. Apart from many references to injury sustained by the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in the course of an aerial bombardment in November 2007, there was some speculation that he may even have died.

[Claims of Prabhakaran’s death may be set to rest after Prabhakaran’s ‘public appearance’ at the funeral of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance Member of Parliament, P. Sivanesan, in the rebel-held Wanni area, of which the LTTE released photographs on March 9, 2008].

The specificities that embellish these reports, though ignored by spokesmen for the LTTE, have been refuted with disdain by several pro-LTTE writers. Given the questionable credibility of ‘news’ originating from either side of the great divide, it has seldom been possible to sort out the truth from fiction in the stories on the confrontational aspects of the Sri Lankan conflict.

What can, consequently, be attempted is, first, to contextualise the recent surge of media attention on turbulences in the shrinking Tiger habitat of the ‘Vanni’ in northern Sri Lanka, without speculating on whether its leader is dead or dying or hibernating prior to a deadly leap at the jugular, and then, to synthesise the information on what prevails at present, extractable from sources less contaminated by propaganda objectives.

Read the full article here,
http://www.ict.org.il/apage/1534.php