Despite setbacks, as has been its practice, the weakened LTTE has resorted to terrorist and guerrilla tactics and is far from being wiped out. It still retains the capacity to inflict significant damage in attempts to regain its declining control.
Further, according to estimates, more than 2,000 cadres were recruited or conscripted from this region after the 2002 Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA), in comparison to about 500 to 600 recruited from the rest of the North-East. With a total number of 255,000tsunami-affected persons and an extreme paucity of educational, social and economic resources, Batticaloa constituted the LTTE’s major recruitment base, despite the challenge created by its breakaway faction led by Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan @ ‘Colonel’ Karuna. The Batticaloadistrict cadres of the LTTE played a vital role in the war to safeguard the Wanni heartland and in major offensives againstgovernment troops in the North which led to the fall of Elephant Pass and other key garrisons in April 2000.
With an estimated population of 579,469 – including 426,896 Tamils, 151,487 Muslims and 1,162 Sinhalese – Batticaloa is the only Tamil majoritydistrict in the Eastern Province, with 71 percent Tamils, followed by Trincomalee (34 percent) and a still smaller minority in the Amparadistrict with only 20 percent of Tamils in its population. The LTTE had the support of a large section of the population in thedistrict, including some Muslims. Corroborating this, I.M. Ibrahim, Secretary of the Mosque Federations of Amparadistrict, while addressing senior LTTE leaders at a meeting between LTTE and Muslim community leaders of Batticaloa and Amparadistricts on February 21, 2005, had declared: "First they divided us. Then they divided you. Sinhala leaders will always deny our rights. Tamil Muslim unity should be the foundation of your liberation struggle." [Significantly, however, the LTTE was responsible of a complete ‘cleansing’ of the Northern areas of all Tamil Muslims in 1990].
Since its re-entry into the Batticaloa district after the withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in December 1989, the LTTE dominated the Batticaloadistrict, controlling four of the 14 Secretariat Divisions – Porathivu Pattu or Vellavely, Manmunai South West or Paddippalai, Manmunai West or Vavunathivu and Koralai Pattu South or Kiran – as well as part of Eravur Pattu or Chenkalady. Such was the LTTE dominance thatgovernment agencies in the area worked under the rebels’ instructions. LTTE often summoned meetings ofgovernment servants and blamed them for their inadequate support to the outfit’s activities andprogrammes.
The split in the LTTE in 2004 marked a turning point in the region, and in the LTTE’s history. With its Batticaloa-Ampara ‘commander’ ‘Colonel’ Karuna forming his own military front, the Tamil National Front (TNF), and later a political party, the Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), the outfit lost its supremacy in the East. As one commentator noted in May 2004, some 70 percent of the LTTE political offices in the Batticaloadistrict remained unoccupied and the bulk of its military and administrative organisation in the area collapsed following the split. The LTTE also started losing the people’s support and public confidence in its capacities to sustain its struggle to achieve a separate Tamil homeland.
The LTTE’s attempts to regain supremacy following the split have been countered by the Karuna faction, which has eaten into the LTTE base in Batticaloa. Since March 2004, there have been 43 reported clashes between the TNF and LTTE in the Batticaloadistrict, in which the LTTE lost almost 100 cadres, including its Eastern Political wing leader, Kaushalyan and his deputyNedimaran.
According to data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management, the LTTE has lost almost 2,923 of its cadres since January 1, 2005, in fighting across various theatres, of which 640 (approximately 21 percent) have been killed in Batticaloadistrict alone. The number of LTTE cadres killed in the district in 2005 was 33, rising to 348 in 2006. With 259 cadres already killed in the first four months of 2007, it is evident that the LTTE has lost its advantageous position in area region, asgovernment troops, with implicit support from the Karuna faction, secure the upper hand in the current ‘undeclared war’.
Ajit Kumar Singh is Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal