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[Mathivathanan]

Money, power and the rebellion in the LTTE
By Taraki

The Karuna story has been analysed with great glee from every possible angle in the Sinhala and English media in the south. Some Sunday papers carried ball-by-ball accounts, too, garnished of course with some juicily curious fabrications and falsities.

But the military and political implications of Karuna's decision lie buried under the swarm of wire stories, photos, stunning quotes and revelations.

First let us look at some of the straight facts of the split. <span style='color:#ff0051'><b>Signs of friction between the Wanni administration and Karuna's command came into the open after the intelligence/audit unit of the LTTE's finance division (FD) arrived in Batticaloa in October last year.</b>

Karuna was informed by traders loyal to him that operatives of the finance division intelligence unit from the Wanni were collecting information about all transactions between local Tigers and the business and farming community in Batticaloa.

Businessmen and other well-to-do contributors to the LTTE's coffers in the east were immediately contacted and warned by Karuna's men not to provide any information about their dealings to the finance intelligence unit from the Wanni.
It was clear that something was seriously amiss.

In the Wanni, all tariffs, taxes and other levies by the LTTE are paid to the Thamil Eelam Bank to prevent irregularities and corruption. The collections are handled by civilian employees under the supervision of members of the LTTE's finance division.

The monies to the various arms of the LTTE are released by the finance division through the Eelam Bank according to an annual budget for each section approved by the Chief Secretariat, which functions directly under Prabhakaran.
All the funds released thus are subject to audit by the LTTE's finance division.

In addition to the audit, the FD intelligence unit monitors all dealings between Tigers and civilians and the transactions between the many departments of the LTTE.
The Tigers found it difficult to implement the same financial discipline in Batticaloa when Karuna and his troops returned from the Wanni in 2001.

This largely owed to lack of a strong centralised regional administrative structure and leadership in the east. The difficulty was further compounded by the fact that the areas they controlled were not contiguous.

As a consequence several LTTE cadres who were in charge of finance in the district in the past ran away with collections. (Kousalyan was the only LTTE head of finance in Batticaloa who was not accused of irregularities.)

In 2002, the Tigers' FD appointed the one-armed Humson to regulate, centralise and manage all the finances of the Batticaloa-Amparai region. A finance intelligence unit was also established under Humson.

The LTTE's finance division gave Karuna's administration 10-12 million rupees a month to supplement the funds it generated in Batticaloa.

Three months after the arrival of the audit from Wanni, Humson was reported missing. It was rumoured in the areas-controlled by the Tigers that he had run away with more than 50 million rupees from the LTTE's coffers in Batticaloa.

The story gained further credence when Humson's relatives and associates were threatened and questioned by Karuna's men. Some of them were beaten up mercilessly. Later it was said that Humson had surrendered to the Tigers in the Wanni.

The fact, however, was that he had gone to the north without informing Karuna and had reported to his headquarters that the eastern commander had no accounts for more than fifty million rupees of LTTE funds in Batticaloa.

The Humson episode triggered the events that led to the split. But administrative/command related problems too were brewing since the ceasefire agreement was signed, contributing in some measure to the final break. Many writers in their eagerness for the juicier bits of the story miss this aspect of the split.

Karuna says that the LTTE's finance division and intelligence wing were conspiring to undermine his authority and credibility as the special commander for the Batticaloa region. Here one should have an understanding of the special command/administrative structure that Prabhakaran 'bestowed' on Karuna as an expression of gratitude for the crucial role of Batticaloa fighters in stopping Op. Jeya Sikurui and in the successes of Op. Unceasing Waves, particularly in the destruction of the Elephant Pass camp.

Under this special system, Karuna was put in charge of all the divisions of the LTTE in the region, including Pottu Amman's feared 'national intelligence'. The cadre in charge of each division in Batticaloa was selected and appointed with Karuna's approval and had to report to his respective head in the Wanni through him. (The man in charge of the LTTE's intelligence wing in the east, Keerthy, was handpicked by Karuna, not by Pottu Amman.)

Basically this system of command and administration was a replication of the structures in Wanni with some strategic exceptions such as Sea Tigers, Air Tigers, armour and artillery divisions.

Karuna was the only regional commander who was allowed to start his own daily, Thamil Alai, and printing press - parallel to the Eelanatham in the Wanni (He got his men to attack and close down the independent Batticaloa Tamil daily Thinakathir in 2002 before starting Thamil Alai).

According to sources close to Karuna, Prabhakaran had even granted him a degree of freedom for procuring weapons from abroad. The Tiger leader had never entrusted any other commander with so much power in the LTTE's history.

The LTTE's administrative structure in Batticaloa was so unique that it was the only regional command ever to be granted the right to carry out its own covert operations in Colombo through its special military intelligence wing.

The Batticaloa military intelligence wing of the LTTE was a semi-autonomous entity that functioned directly and under the sole command of Karuna. It was the only unit in the LTTE other than Pottu Amman's 'national intelligence division' to independently plan and carry out strikes outside the northeast.

All this was considered a mixture of implicit trust and gratitude that Prabhaharan had in Karuna. But the system started showing signs of strain since early last year as the Wanni headquarters of each LTTE division began to expand and regulate their operations in the Batticaloa-Amparai region.

Firstly, there were troubles between the military and political cadres who were working directly under Karuna and LTTE Police and courts in Batticaloa. Tiger Police officials reported the interference directly to their head of division in the Wanni.

Karuna told his loyalists that the various chiefs of divisions in the Wanni, particularly those of finance, intelligence and Police, were systematically undermining his command over the Batticaloa-Amparai District.

As the only commander in the LTTE who had been allowed to hold his position for 17 long years, and particularly after he was vested with unparalleled autonomous powers in 2002, Karuna got used to the idea of running the region as its sole military/political authority.

Prabhakaran had no objections to Karuna's unique power as long as it functioned as the cocoon in which the structures of the Eelam state could be evolved and be firmly established in the east.

But the LTTE leader's most trusted lieutenant could not accept this process whereby the Tiger army was going to eventually lose its power over civil society in the east. The powerful patronage network on which his influence among his people and his cadres in Batticaloa stood was ultimately going to be dismantled.

The structures of state being developed by the LTTE in the Wanni essentially mean one important thing in very practical terms - the separation of the military from civil society.

In other words, the structures emerging in the Wanni are predicated on the waning of the guerrilla who lived among his people and enjoyed a measure of influence and power over them on the basis of his individual personality and reputation.

Resistance to this process was minimal in the Wanni because of Prabhakaran's powerful and overbearing presence there. But in Batticaloa it was a different story. Karuna could not accept his role as a mere guardian of the Eelam cocoon in the east.</span>

மேலே இருக்கின்ற கட்டுரையில கருணாவோட நடவடிக்கைகள் பத்தியும் நிதி பிரைச்சனை பத்தியும் எத்தனை விடய்ம் எழுதி இருக்காங்க. இப்பிடி ஒரு கட்டுரைய எப்ப தமிழ் பத்திரிகையில பார்க்க போறோம்? தமிழ் பத்திரிகையாளருக்கு திறமை இல்லாமல் இல்லை. ஆனா நன்மை செய்யிறதா நினைத்து மூடி மறைக்கிறதால எல்லாமே இல்லாம போகுது.

இந்தக் கட்டுரை "
என்று கரிகாலன் கூறியதை குப்பையில போட்டுவிட்டது.. இதுவே பெரிய முன்னேற்றம்தானே.

தற்போது மிகப்பெரிய சக்தியென்று சொல்பவர்கள் நிச்சயம் பணக்கஸ்ரம் வரும்போது யாரோ ஒரு சக்தியுடன் (சேருங்காலத்தில்) தொடர்புபடுத்தி துரோகிப்பட்ம் சரியென நிரூபிப்பார்கள். அத்துடன் முடியுமா.. இல்லையே. மேலும் எத்தனைபேருக்கு துரோகிப்பட்டம் கொடுப்பார்கள்..?
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