The factors leading up to the LTTE’s loss of military control. Former LTTE members now living in exile in the UK, analysed the factors leading up to the LTTE’s loss of military control. Nirmala, the first woman detained by the Colombo government under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in the early 1980s, was subsequently freed from prison in a dramatic action by the LTTE. She eventually left the Tigers, however, due to what she felt was a lack of democracy within the movement, coupled with its human rights abuses. After ten years with the movement, Ragavan, a founding member of the LTTE, likewise parted ways, due to its increasingly authoritarian character and internal abuses.

Ahilan Kadirgamar: Many people now believe that the LTTE is on its last legs. If so, what were the factors that led to the collapse of an organization that enjoyed an army, a large territorial base and even an air force?

Ragavan: A major problem that the LTTE faces today comes from its authoritarian culture and militaristic structure, in which the political objective is subservient to the military goal. Initially, after 1983, when the LTTE was still a guerrilla force in need of the people’s support, it received considerable backing from the Tamil masses.

As it grew, the LTTE’s primary agenda gradually became the building of a conventional army with a repressive character and an absence of any libratory objectives. This alienated the population because it came hand in hand with harsh practices such as the forcible recruitment of children, taxation and other forms of control.

During the Norwegian peace process the LTTE, instead of using the resources and money allocated to support the people under its control, appropriated the funds and resources to build up its own infrastructure, such as its sophisticated arsenal and air-conditioned bunkers for its leaders. They became parasites who lived off the people without giving back anything to them. Ultimately, a contradiction arose between its original goal, of fighting for the rights of the Tamil people, and the reality of military control over those very people.

Nirmala Rajasingam: The LTTE proceeded to become more and more unpopular amongst the local population in areas where it garnered control. It also became less accountable to the people because of external support, initially from the Indian government and subsequently from diaspora communities in Europe and North America. Yet even within the diaspora communities that were funding its cause, the LTTE practiced intimidation through threats, physical assault and even murder.

The dissenting community has been campaigning against the absolute totalitarian command of the LTTE for quite some years now. Mahinda Rajapaksa may claim that the fall of the LTTE is due to the military powers of his armed forces, but I think that the political decline of the LTTE started some years before, in particular during the Norwegian-brokered peace talks of 2002. That is when the people decided that they were so worn out by the war that, just to live without the disruption and violence of war, they would even submit to living with the army’s presence. Continued here.....