The LTTE chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was thought to be a military genius and invincible by most Sri Lankan and international analysts. Admittedly, he did hold the Sri Lankan state to ransom for three decades, and performed many military feats. But ultimately, he completely failed.
Asked to explain the dramatic turn of events in the course of 2008-2009, Prof. Rohan Gunaratna, Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological Universityin Singaporesaid that Prabhakaran made two strategic mistakes: One was to transform his guerilla and terrorist outfit into a conventional armed force. The other was to believe that the Sri Lankan state could be militarily defeated.
“Turning the LTTE into a conventional army was the single biggest mistake Prabhakaran had made,” Gunaratna told Express over the phone on Tuesday.
“If the LTTE had remained a guerilla force, the Sri Lankan military could never have defeated it,” he added.
What finally sealed the fate of the intrepid guerilla leader was the bid to match the Sri Lankan conventional army in numbers by forcibly recruiting civilians and putting them on to the battlelines with little or no training.
“In the final stages, 60 per cent of the cadre had been forcibly recruited. These had no will to fight. This is why 11,500 of them surrendered, something which has never happened before,” Gunaratna noted.
The LTTE was flush with weapons, even to the last day, but it had no men to use them.
Prabhakaran completely misjudged the Sri Lankan state and military under President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka under the latter was a totally different kettle of fish from what it was in the past.
“In the last few years, after Balasingham’s death, Prabhakaran had surrounded himself by people who did not give realistic advice. These were Pottu Amman, Castro, Nadesan and Puleedevan. On external matters there was Ponnaiah Anandarajah, the chief arms procurer, and KP, after he was brought back from seculsion. These people kept telling Prabhakaran that the struggle could not be crushed and escape was possbile,” Gunaratna said.
“Till the last moment Prabhakaran believed that Tamil Nadu would save him, and that the West will intervene effectively. But he did not know that Tamil Nadu and New Delhithought alike on the LTTE. Both saw the LTTE’s brand of politics and nationalism as being dangerous,” Gunaratna said.
“The West too had changed after 9/11. It would not bend over backwards to rescue the founders of the suicide bombing technique, though it had to speak up for human rights, which is its new religion,” Gunaratna noted.
Prabhakaran was viewed as a strong, self willed, ruthless leader, who was uncompromisingly committed to his cause. People submitted to him, out of a mixture of admiration and fear.
But the organisational structure which he gave to the LTTE had a major flaw.
“Being a totalitarian and monolithic structure with everything resting on one individual, his thinking and his decision, it collapsed like a house of cards, the moment he, the supremo, died. The LTTE met the fate of the Nazi party after Hitler killed himself,” Gunaratna said. – (Express News Service)
