East comes full circle

It was July 13, 2004, less than two months after Karuna sought the protection of government controlled areas after rebelling against his erstwhile comrades of two decades. And Batticaloa was tense, the humidity was like poultice and the town’s dusty, crowded streets were perfect props to the drama that was being played out.

Cords draped with small red and yellow flags fluttered in the wind near the Arazadi roundabout close to the political office maintained by the Tigers in the town. They had been put up to mark ‘Heroes Week,’ but other elements had usurped the event to take centre stage most unceremoniously.

The Karuna Amman-Velupillai Pirapaharan battle for supremacy over Batti had taken its first, high profile victim. Ramalingam Padmaseelan alias Senathiraja, the political head of the Tigers in Batti had been shot near the Arazadi roundabout on July 5, and passed away at the Batticaloa Hospital eight days later. He was riding on a motorbike and suffered three gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen area.

The Senathiraja killing would herald the beginning of a fight to the end. Eight days later the Tigers hit back by murdering seven Karuna supporters at a house in Kottawa outside the suburbs of Colombo. Other high profile people who would pay with their lives include Karuna’s own brother Reggie who was killed somewhere in LTTE controlled areas near the border with Madura Oya, west of Batticaloa while leading a clandestine team in September 2004.

He was in fact the de facto military leader of the Karuna Group in Batticaloa when he was killed. Five months later, Kausalyan, the Tiger political head in the east was gunned down while on the main road east of Welikanda in February 2005. It was rumoured to be a revenge killing to avenge Reggie’s death.

At the initial stages the Karuna rebellion appeared to be floundering except for the man’s bravado, before it could assert itself. On April 10, 2004, the Tigers sent cadres from the Wanni under the command of Suwarnam (now placed somewhere north of the Madhu Church), to dislodge the renegades in Batticaloa.

They arrived by boat from the Wanni and set foot ashore near Verugal where the border separating the Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts falls. The fighting was intense and the Karuna loyalists suffered big time, forcing the eventual fallback to government areas by its leader. The clashes that took place on Good Friday, April 10, 2004 left 175 Karuna cadres dead on the shores of Verugal, according to Pillayan.

Others who were killed as the clashes intensified and targeted attacks increased, included former Ampara political head of the Tigers, Vasu Bawa (August 2004) and Ramanan (May 2006), an intelligence head in Batticaloa.

The Tigers initially put up a strong front against the mounting challenges posed by the Karuna Group. By March 2005, two of its top military wing members, Bhanu and Balraj were positioned on either side of the A11 Highway that bisected the Batticaloa District. They are now leading fighters in the Mannar and Welioya fronts according to available information.

During an election speech in Kathiraveli last month, Pillayan had said that the TMVP had lost over 600 members in the battle to gain power in the east.

The Tigers had also placed battle hardened cadres from the Jayanthan Brigade and the Charles Anthony unit in areas where the Karuna cadres were believed to be sneaking in. The Reggie killing was claimed by the Jayanthan Brigade which was placed near the Unnichchi tank, closer to the Maha Oya border during the time he was killed.

The Karuna Group organised itself into small bands that operated along the borderline areas that separated government areas and those under the Tigers. These locations were sparsely populated and covered with thick jungles.

They began attacking Tiger outposts closer to the line of control, like the one in Pillumalai, near the Maha Oya border soon after the Senathiraja murder. They gradually increased the tenacity of the attacks as well their intent and began taking out important Tigers like Ramanan and also attacking deep inside Tiger areas.

But the real shift in the balance of power came when government forces began dislodging the Tigers from their real-estate holdings in the east starting with Mawil Aru, Sampur then in Vaharai, Vavunathivu and Toppigala.

The Tigers also gradually moved out of the east as the army onslaught gained momentum. What remains of the Tigers in the east now operates in small groups from thick jungle areas in Peraru in Trincomalee and Kanchchikudicharu in Ampara.

As the Tigers moved out of their political offices, their successor naturally became the renegades who moved in to fill in the vacuum — first establishing offices without much fanfare, but gradually turning them into the sprawling compounds that they are now.

When they first started operating in Batticaloa, the Karuna loyalists were suspected to have used offices and camps belonging to other Tamil armed groups opposed to the Tigers as safe houses.

While the ground battles were on, the Karuna Group was also looking at creating a political vehicle for itself. There was a short-lived, close rapport with Minister Douglas Devananda and the EPDP.

That was followed by the re-emergence of the Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF) in Sri Lanka. A creation of the IPKF, it left the island with the Indians till some of its operatives resurfaced in 2004.

Its General Secretary, P. Rajarathnam alias Mano Master was in Colombo in November 2004 and told the press that he was looking at setting up a political office on behalf of the Karuna Group. He even took part in a press conference condemning the Tigers on October 29 in Colombo.

He went missing in Colombo on November 21, 2004 and has not been heard of since. He had gone out to look for a prospective building to use as a party office when he went missing and was suspected to have been kidnapped by the Tigers after being lured into a trap.

The Karuna Group thereafter settled on the TMVP, but was beset by internal rivalries. The simmering difference first came to light in mid-2007 when Karuna and Pillayan fought openly. A short-term settlement was that Pillayan oversees Trincomalee while Karuna loyalists remained in Batticaloa. The latter had in fact shifted to Trincomalee but returned to Batticaloa and launched an internal putsch late last year that finally put an end to speculation as to who was in control.

The Pillayan Group officially parted ways with Karuna in May 2007, and it was not until November when Karuna found himself in the custody of British police that Pillayan moved to take full control. It was finally done when his confidant, Pradeep Master, replaced Thileepan as the Batticaloa political head last November.

Thileepan had taken cyanide when Pillayan loyalists took over the offices. Some including TMVP Spokesperson Azad Moulana had said that he survived and was hospitalised. But nothing has been heard of Thileepan since November.

The TMVP coasted home at the local government elections in March and repeated the act last week during the provincial elections. Even during the local government elections observers had opined that the group had used coercion and intimidation, first to dilute any support for the TNA, its only real threat in Tamil areas, and this time also used the same tactics, and worse, to make sure that it got what it wanted out of the elections.

It has made some effort to rehabilitate its image. It released 42 child soldiers, and says that it has none under 16 within its ranks. UNICEF says that there are still 76 under the age of 18 within the ranks of the TMVP according to their database.

Pillayan and those close to him have opened a dialogue with those like UNICEF but have also indicated that there were some internal splits within the party that were delaying the release of all the children. They had said that sections of the TMVP that remain outside the Eastern Province appear to be still contesting Pillayan’s authority.

Then there is the factor of the armed cadres who TMVP said had been sent to jungle camps during the local government elections and the PC elections that followed. Some had remained in their office compounds in urban areas like the one on Lake Drive in Batticaloa, where The Sunday Leader witnessed around a dozen armed cadres getting ready for what appeared to be a drill on the eve of the March 10 local elections.

Now that the TMVP’s hold on the political-administrative machinery of the east, and especially in Batticaloa is secure, its armed wing would be even more powerful. They may not have run riot during the two elections, but it is the armed wing that gives the TMVP the edge in the east.

Its officials including Pillayan have said that they would only disarm once the Tigers are no more, and that appears to be nowhere in sight. During the split there were indications on how much the armed strength of the TMVP was like. The Pillayan faction said that it had the support of 600 members while the rival Karuna Group was about 400 strong.

The second elections in as many months in the east were heralded by two attacks, one in Ampara and the other in Trincomalee, within a span of 10 hours between May 9 early evening and May 10 early morning.

First a parcel bomb exploded in the City Café at Ampara town around 5.45 pm. The café located on D. S. Senanayake Road near the bus stand was left in shambles and 12 persons were killed and 30 injured in the attack.

Around 2.45 am, a navy supply ship that was anchored in the Ashraff Jetty in Trincomalee was blown up by an underwater explosion the next day. It has now come to light that the explosion may have been triggered by Tiger suicide cadre/s who would have swum to the berthed ship and detonated the explosives under its hull, under the cover of darkness. The cargo vessel formerly named MV Invincible but renamed A 520 by the navy sunk soon after the attack.

The Tigers said that the attack was carried out by suicide cadres aka Black Tigers from the Kangkai Amaran unit of the Sea Tigers but did not reveal further details.

The northeastern seas and the coast are becoming more and more important to the Tigers with the government military inching closer to the Vindalathivu bay area, north of Mannar island. The army was able to gain control of Adampan, a village located at a strategic junction southeast of Vindalathivu just before the eastern elections.

Troops from the 58th Brigade had moved into Adampan moving on a north-easterly direction from Tirukesteswaran, located west of Adampan. Troops from the 58th Brigade had been moving on Adampan since December 2007 and had been arrayed west and south of it. Troops were located at Palaikuli, south of Adampan, and the Kalaikulam area southeast of Adampan before the move from the west finally reached the junction.

In the days before Adampan was gained, fighting was reported from Kalaikulam and Palaikuli. Tigers had even reported that troops were moving north from Tirukesteswaran trying to reach the A32, Mannar-Pooneryn highway that hugs the northwestern coast.

"Sri Lanka Army units launched an attempt to move its troops from Tirukesteswaran towards Veaddaiyaamu’rippu (northwards) in Mannar Tuesday (May 6) morning from 5.30 am till noon with artillery barrage, but sustained heavy casualties, LTTE officials in the Wanni said," TamilNet quoted.

It was these troops that had moved east and captured Adampan. The fact that it took the military close to five months to gain Adampan shows the difference of the Wanni battle front compared to the east.

In the east the military used its overwhelming power and speed to launch into Tiger held areas which fell rapidly once the main defence bulwarks had been breached. The government’s advance on Vaharai began in earnest in December 2006 and by January 21, 2007 it had fallen. In March 2007, troops began operations to clear the western parts of Batticaloa that were held by the Tigers and by July it was completed.

Between January and July government troops were able to clear a stretch of 40 km of the A5 Maha Oya and Chenkaladi highway between Eravur and Pillumalai and areas that lay on either side of it as well.