Tiger Country
Whatever the outcome of peace talks between Colombo and the separatist Tigers, a Tamil nation in all but law already exists in Sri Lanka's battle-scarred northeast
Breaking Off the Battle
Is an end to hostilities possible in post-Sept. 11 Sri Lanka? (Feb. 2002)
Tiger Country
Whatever the outcome of peace talks between Colombo and the separatist Tigers, a Tamil nation in all but law already exists in Sri Lanka's battle-scarred northeast
The story of how Nurse Eelavany came to shoot 15 people with a machine gun begins when she was 12. It was 1990 and government artillery shells and helicopter gunships had been pounding her Tamil homeland for seven years. But they had somehow missed her and the people she cared for. She loved school and dreamed of becoming a doctor. Then one day she was playing in the street in front of her home in northeastern Sri Lanka when she saw an army shell blow her neighbor's head clean off. "I remember the hatred building up in me," says Eelavany. "I remember thinking, 'I should go and kill the person that did this'."
Two years later, without telling her parents, she marched out of school and went to a recruitment office of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). She traded in her school uniform for the Tigers' striped fatigues and a cyanide capsule on a neck string. "It was the happiest day of my life," she says. "The Tigers became my family." She trained as a medic—her school was the battlefield—and by 22 was a crack shot and veteran of eight years in combat. Then, on Sept. 17, 2000, her unit was called to support 30 comrades surrounded by 150 government troops in the northern Jaffna peninsula. Eelavany's unit attacked, and when the soldier next to her fell, Eelavany picked up his AK-56 and returned fire. Under a furious half-hour assault by the Tigers, the government troops ran. Although she'd never killed before, within 30 minutes Eelavany had cut down 15 enemy soldiers. "In training, we use birds for target practice," she says. "Soldiers are so much easier to hit."
It's not just the nurses who are different in Tiger territory. As Norwegian-brokered peace talks between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government begin this week in Thailand, the outside world is beginning to discover what 19 years of Asia's bloodiest civil war has done to the place. The causes of the fighting are well-known: since independence in 1948, the Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated government has concertedly discriminated against the Hindu Tamils of the north, denying them government jobs and money and making Sinhala the official national language. After decades of having their grievances ignored or violently suppressed, in 1983 the Tamil Tigers took up arms. But for most of the conflict, little more was known of the Tigers than that their shadowy hand was behind a series of devastating suicide bomb attacks across Sri Lanka's southern cities. What emerged in scattered reports from inside the northeast was a scarcely credible collection of tales of terrifying courage and ruthlessness. Bands of guerrillas wiping out entire army camps of 2,000 soldiers. Suicide bombs built into bikinis. Boys and girls as young as 13 pushing back not one, but two national armies. (In 1990, the Tigers beat off the Indian army—initially sent in as a peacekeeping force—when it tried to disarm them.)
Still less was known about the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. A plump, baby-faced, small-time smuggler turned guerrilla, the 47-year-old has lived as a recluse for the past two decades. But in hiding, his legend only grew. Southern Sri Lankan parents would tell their children Prabhakaran would get them if they didn't behave. Adults would whisper stories about sumptuous eve-of-mission feasts he hosted for suicide squads, his pious forswearing of cigarettes and alcohol, his pet leopard cub and his inconsolable grief after its slaughter by enemy troops.
Only now, since a ceasefire last Christmas Eve stopped the body count at around 65,000 and ended the northeast's isolation, has the world been able to steal a look inside Tiger territory. The central question of this weeks' peace talks is whether Tamil Eelam (the separatists' name for the territory they claim) should secede from Sri Lanka or simply be allowed a high degree of autonomy. But a glance at the region reveals that it is already a nation in all but law. The Tigers rule this land undefeated by the outside and unopposed within it. And what they have created may be the strangest nation on earth.
Nearly two decades of war have rid "Tigerland" of even a passing similarity to the rest of the country. Whole towns have been flattened, entire families wiped out. Eight hundred thousand refugees lived for years in camps or in the open jungle, eating leaves and grass and using sticky palmyrah palm fruit for soap. Hundreds of thousands are now returning to the ruins of their former homes. They talk of how getting food and water is still a daily—and often vain—struggle against minefields and crossfire. Scavenging has evolved into a primary skill. Old ammunition crates have become floorboards and flower boxes, fences are fashioned out of flattened oil barrels, and ripped up railway tracks are the building material of choice. Even the way people dress has changed. While civilians were slowly reduced to rags, the Tigers brought in a uniform of khaki stripes for combat, and short-sleeved checked shirts and dark baggy pleated pants back at base. For the women, gone are the little princess dresses, the long dark hair and silver ankle bracelets of old. Instead they braid their hair in stern looping buns and decorate themselves with dog tags and poison vials.
But even amid the rubble, the Tigers operated a functioning state. Until a few weeks ago, the northeast still had no post, no telephones, and precious little electricity. Yet the Tigers have set up their own government, hospitals, welfare system and courts, which judge according to Tiger law. (In one quirk, witnesses are required to look directly into the judge's eyes as they give their oath of truth. The judge then rules on their credibility.) The Tigers have their own language, Hindu culture and time zone (half an hour behind Colombo). They run their own police force, although the devastation means there is little to steal. In this cratered wasteland of deprivation and despair, the Tigers are the one thing to hold firm. "They are the Tamil people's only true champion," says the bishop of the Catholic church in Jaffna, Thomas Savundranayagam. "No one else has had the courage to stand up for their freedom."
