Sri Lanka Closes in on Leader of the Tamil Tigers
TIME, by Amantha Perera / Colombo Monday, Apr. 06, 2009
For more than 30 years, Velupillai Prabhakaran has been Sri Lanka's most wanted. And the authorities now believe that that they have cornered the elusive commander of one of the world's deadliest and most resilient insurgencies. Sri Lankan military officials said Sunday that more than 500 cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam had been killed in fighting over the weekend, and that the Tamil separatist fighters are now confined to a narrow costal stretch a little over seven miles long in northern Sri Lanka - a far cry from the vast swathes of eastern and northern Sri Lanka controlled by the insurgents just two years ago. And eight military divisions with as many as 50,000 personnel backed by air support are going in for the kill, with escape and supply routes by sea blocked off by a naval blockade.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has staked his political future on achieving a military victory over the Tigers, following the collapse of a 2002 cease fire. The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 to establish a separate homeland in the island's ethnic Tamil-majority areas, a conflict that has claimed more than 70,000 lives. To capture Prabhakaran - dead or alive - would symbolize the successful conclusion of a military offensive that began late in 2006, but has since dragged, despite the capture of nearly every town under Tiger control. Rajapaksa had one message for the Tiger leadership - above all Prabhakaran - in a speech at Temple Trees, his heavily guarded official residence in Colombo: "The option for the Tiger leadership is to lay down arms and surrender and save the lives of the remaining cadres."
Prabhakaran, known among his acolytes simply as "the Leader", has been sought by the Sri Lankan authorities ever since the 1976 murder of Alfred Duraiappah, the then mayor of the northern city of Jaffna. But until now, he has eluded capture in his jungle hideaways and, reportedly, on occasional clandestine trips to other parts of the region. "He is surrounded by the army," says Vinayagamorthi Muralitharan, previously known as Colonel Karuna when he had served as the LTTE's eastern military commander. "It is now almost impossible to escape undetected. All the top Tiger leaders are still very much in the Vanni [the region where the fighting is taking place]." Muralitharan defected from the Tigers in 2004 and formed a breakaway faction that supports the government.
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