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Behind Karuna's revolt

<b>Karuna's ire seems to stem from the perception that he was being sidelined following the ceasefire and the subsequent emphasis within the LTTE shifting from the military to its political unit.</b>

TWO YEARS years ago, when Velupillai Prabakaran addressed his first press conference in a decade, sharing the dais with him in that makeshift hall in Killinochchi were those he considered his closest confidantes. On his right, Anton Balasingham, who described himself as the "theoretician" of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, S. P. Thamilselvan, the leader of the political wing of the LTTE, and Balasingham's wife Adele. On his left, V. Muralitharan, better known by his nom de guerre Karuna, his military commander in Batticaloa and Amparai, and Paduman, the military commander in Trincomalee. Conspicuous by his absence was Karikalan, the political head of the LTTE in Batticaloa and Amparai.

The presence of the two military leaders at that event was perhaps the earliest sign of the recent developments within the LTTE in which Karuna, a "colonel" in the LTTE's military hierarchy, the topmost rank it offers, broke away from the group with an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 armed cadres. At the time of the April 2002 press conference, the ceasefire between the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE was barely two months old. In eastern Sri Lanka where the Tigers controlled large swathes of territory without a formal boundary, and where Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese each form one-third of the population, the truce had unleashed a new dynamic, particularly in Batticaloa. Using the no-war situation to advantage, the LTTE went on a recruitment spree, vacuuming Batticaloa's young, and intensified its "tax" collection, especially among Muslims, who control trade and business in the region.

Faced with an international outcry against the LTTE's unabashed recruitment of children and harassment of a religious minority, and under pressure from the ceasefire monitors, Prabakaran issued directives to the eastern leadership of the LTTE to stop but nothing changed. At the press conference, neither Karuna nor Paduman uttered a word, but their presence on the stage with Prabakaran seemed to be aimed at allaying suspicion that the LTTE's eastern military leadership was out of control. Prabakaran was also sending out the message that he considered them important enough to share the stage with him. Later Karuna was in the LTTE delegation for peace talks with the Sri Lankan Government. The exclusion of Karikalan from the event, on the other hand, triggered speculation that the eastern political leadership had taken the rap for embarrassing the firm, even though both he and Karuna must have worked in tandem.

Seen against this background, Karuna's recent "secession" from the LTTE seems to have been brewing for at least two years. While the tipping point for this unprecedented schism in the LTTE is still unclear, it is a safe assumption, at least for the moment, that Karuna's revolt does not represent an ideological break with the LTTE, as evident in his call for a "southern Tamil Eelam." Karuna's ire against the top leadership of the LTTE seems to be more about a bruised ego, the perception that he was being sidelined and not given the importance due to him as one of the LTTE's most successful military strategists in recent years.

Since 1995 until the ceasefire of February 2002, the Government and the LTTE were constantly at war, triggered first by the Tigers when they broke off from a ceasefire and a peace process with the then newly elected President, Chandrika Kumaratunga. President Kumaratunga hit back with an all-out war, promising to defeat the LTTE. By then Karuna was already an established military leader of the LTTE in the East. In the mid-1990s, his importance to Prabakaran grew in direct proportion to the escalation of the war. After the Sri Lankan armed forces wrested the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE in 1996, Prabakaran no longer had a ready-made territorial base from which to draw his manpower. He looked to eastern Sri Lanka, where his cadres controlled entire villages. Karuna was his pointman for this. When the Government launched a military operation to take control of a highway in northern Sri Lanka, Karuna moved thousands of cadres from the East for the counter-offensive, successfully thwarting the advance, inflicting hundreds of casualties on the Sri Lankan armed forces on what came to be known as the Highway of Blood. Karuna also led the LTTE's Unceasing Waves offensives through which the group regained all the territory it had lost to the Government in the northern Vanni mainland.

The LTTE too suffered huge casualties. Tamils in eastern Sri Lanka have always chafed against what they perceive as domination over them by northern Tamils. Even before the Tamil struggle in Sri Lanka turned militant, the top hierarchies of the Tamil United Liberation Front, the main political party of the Tamils, and its forerunner, the Federal Party, were packed with Jaffna Tamils. The LTTE was no different, and Tamils in Batticaloa resented that the group looked east only for cannon fodder without taking into consideration the political aspirations of the region. While engaged in battle, Karuna seems to have been untouched by this sentiment, employing ruthless tactics to recruit children as young as 10 or 11 years into the LTTE's fighting force. With the ceasefire, and the subsequent emphasis within the LTTE shifting from the military to its political unit, Karuna was no longer as important as other LTTE second-rungers such as Balasingham and Thamilselvan, and the eastern Tamil's resentment against the northern Tamil seems to have finally surfaced in him.

While the split has for the first time shattered the LTTE's monolithic image, how this drama plays out depends on Karuna's staying power. In the past, Prabakaran has physically eliminated anyone perceived as posing a challenge to his leadership. Mahattiya, his second-in-command through the war with the Indian Peace Keeping Forces, met with such a fate. But there are some aspects to the present challenge that are different from the Mahattiya episode and perhaps to the advantage of Karuna. For one, with Karuna deciding to take the feud to the press, it is all out in the open. In such circumstances, killing Karuna will not be as easy as killing Mahattiya. It is certain to burn a hole in the image Prabakaran has been trying so hard to build for himself as a safari suit-wearing, peace-loving, tolerant and democratic leader. The ceasefire too makes such elimination complicated, though by no means impossible.

Evidently, Karuna would not have taken such a bold step as to break away unless he was sure of his support. He is said to have the sworn loyalty of at least 1,000 cadres that he commands. Whether these cadres stay with him will depend on what resources are available to him to maintain them. That might mean an all-out fund-raising drive by Karuna's outfit. Among the people of the East, the response to Karuna's challenge to Prabakaran has been mixed, with widespread fear of a war between the two sides.

First reactions to the feuding within the LTTE have cast it as an unfavourable development for the peace process in Sri Lanka. But should Karuna survive, he may serve the purpose of making the peace process more inclusive on the Tamil side than it is at present. More importantly, Prabakaran will not be able to easily plunge into a war against the Government once more without the help of Karuna and his cadres. In that sense, there is perhaps no danger to the ceasefire between the LTTE and the Government. However, it is important to recognise that Karuna, no longer a member of the LTTE, may not consider himself bound by the 2002 ceasefire anymore. Although the Sri Lankan Government's first reaction was to dismiss Karuna's demand for a separate ceasefire agreement, it may have to acknowledge the need for such an agreement soon.

The infighting in the LTTE is bound to have repercussions for the April 2 parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka. Although not directly in the electoral contest, the LTTE is a participant in it through its proxy, the five-party coalition the Tamil United Liberation Front is its main component known as the Tamil National Alliance. Members of the Alliance have pledged allegiance to the LTTE and have bowed to its demand that they acknowledge it as the "sole representative" of the Tamil people. With the LTTE's help, the TNA hoped to make a clean sweep of all the seats in North-East Sri Lanka. It is early yet to predict the exact impact of the split in the LTTE for the TNA's chances. But it certainly poses a dilemma for candidates of the TNA contesting the election in the East where the situation on the ground is one of hostility to the LTTE.

Thanx: The Hindu