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The leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers will give his annual policy speech from a jungle hideout this week, with observers predicting a rallying call to arms as the island slides back into all-out war. The reclusive Velupillai Prabhakaran will be speaking at the end of a difficult year for his separatist guerrillas, who were ejected from the east in July and lost their political chief in an air raid earlier this month.
The rebels' fleet of gun-running ships has also been decimated in a string of naval clashes and their fundraising activities abroad severely curtailed, meaning Prabhakaran -- who turns 53 on Monday -- has little to celebrate.
The last year has seen 950 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters killed, a massive figure given the modest size of armies involved in the conflict. The mood in the rebel-held north will also be especially sour at the end of "heroes' week", commemorating the deaths of nearly 20,000 Tamil fighters in Asia's longest-running civil war.
Prabhakaran's speech to mark this event, due to be broadcast on Tuesday at 6:00 pm local time (1230 GMT), is likely to see a renewed declaration of war and underscore that a Norwegian-brokered peace process is well and truly dead.
"He will probably say the only way out is war. He will not say anything about peace," said Dharmalingam Sithadthan, a former LTTE member who now leads a Colombo-based Tamil party opposed to the rebels. "The speech will be hardline. For all intents and purposes the peace process is dead," he told AFP.
The Sri Lankan government blames the LTTE for the collapse of a 2002 truce, but Sithadthan said the Tigers are equally firm in their belief that it is the ethnic majority Sinhalese politicians in the south who are responsible. With the rebels feeling hemmed in, he warned they may shift the focus of their attacks towards Sinhalese civilians. The Tamil Tigers will also be determined to 'bust out' of their mini-state and reassert their claim for an independent homeland that includes the Jaffna peninsula in the far north and the eastern coastline, both of which are currently in government hands.
"They might say the Sinhalese people in general are responsible... and even go for a big civilian target in the south, or not care about hitting civilians," said Sithadthan. "In the north they will try for a big victory." "From the outside it looks like they are on the defensive. But the LTTE has trained a large number of civilians -- some say 40,000. They still have a large number of hardcore fighters, about 4,000."
Despite the setbacks over the past year, the rotund Prabhakaran has previously shown that he is resourceful. Using second-hand, Czech-made single-engine propeller aircraft smuggled into the island in bits and on boats, the LTTE now boasts an air force which has conducted a string of night raids against economic and military targets.
Last month a group of at least 21 suicide bombers also attacked the Anuradhapura military base north of Colombo, virtually wiping out the government's fleet of spy planes.
The government -- apparently convinced it can win the war -- has responded by stepping up security across the country to suffocating levels, investing in expensive radar equipment and once again boosting its defence budget.
Emboldened by its killing of LTTE political wing leader and negotiator S.P. Thamilselvan on November 2, Sri Lanka's military has also vowed to go "all out" to target Prabhakaran and bomb the north of the island into peace. "Prabhakaran will probably say the government has killed a hero of peace (Thamilselvan)," said Chulawansa Sirilal, editor-in-chief of the Lankapress news agency.
AFP
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