'Tiger' changes stripes to roar at rebels

Once a battle-hardened underground guerrilla, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, more popularly known by his nom de guerre Colonel Karuna Amman, now rubs shoulders with members of parliament as part of Sri Lanka's political mainstream.

The erstwhile eastern commander of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was recently appointed an MP, supported by the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance led by President Mahinda Rajapakse.

At one point, he was a favourite of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, a frontline commander in its most difficult battles and effectively second in command in the Tamil Tigers military organisation.

But in 2004, citing differences with Prabhakaran, he broke away from the LTTE to launch a mainstream political party called the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikkal (TMVP). After defecting, he began fighting alongside government forces against the Tigers. His fighters helped the security forces recapture parts of the eastern region from the LTTE.

In an exclusive three-hour interview at an undisclosed location, Colonel Karuna spoke about everything from his reasons for breaking ranks with the LTTE (“I want to liberate my people from the hands of the liberators''); to his political ambitions (“I am in the race to convert a bullet to a ballot''); to why he still maintains his private army (“I'm at the top of the LTTE's hitlist'').

The interview was arranged through a set of intermediaries. This reporter was blindfolded and his mobile phone confiscated. He was driven to a plush resort in a village abutting Colombo by Colonel Karuna's personal bodyguard.
Colonel Karuna was this month appointed to the 225-member parliament to fill the vacancy of a lawmaker who quit recently to contest local polls.

But like his chequered career, his new appointment has also stirred controversy. Sri Lanka's Sinhala nationalist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna party has challenged his appointment in the Supreme Court, arguing the vacancy he took up belongs to an MP of their political outfit.

Moreover, human rights group Amnesty International has strongly criticised Colonel Karuna's appointment, accusing him of crimes against humanity, including torture and the use of child soldiers. Colonel Karuna, however, seems unruffled.
“The Tamil people can now have faith in solving their own problems through parliamentary democracy.

We should forget the bitter past and work to win the trust of the Tamils,'' he told the Sri Lankan parliament as he was nominated as an MP recently.

Talks of democracy might be an anachronism for a fierce guerrilla fighter who once struck fear in the hearts of Sri Lankan soldiers but Colonel Karuna says his path is akin to the Maoists of Nepal.

“No one believed they would lay down arms. No one believed I would either. But I did,'' he says, sitting in an air-conditioned room, wearing a crisp striped shirt, looking every bit a lawmaker as opposed to a guerrilla commander. “Here I am.''
When Colonel Karuna turned renegade in 2004, it seemed unlikely that he could have challenged Prabhakaran to this extent without some assurances from powerful patrons.

Few Tiger dissidents have survived Prabhakaran's wrath in the past. There was even speculation that external forces — RAW [Research and Analysis Wing, India's intelligence agency] or the CIA — might be behind Karuna's rebellion.

Asked about this, Karuna smiles knowingly. “Wouldn't I be sitting in America or India if they had helped me? I live in virtual hiding because I am at top of the LTTE's hitlist.''

Karuna says he joined the ranks of the LTTE in 1983 because he believed the “war against Sinhala hegemony'' was a just one.

Over the years, he was dismayed to see Prabhakaran ignoring the interests of the eastern Tamil people and that angered him. It was the main reason for his break-up with the Tigers.

He vehemently denies the LTTE allegation that the real reason for his betraying the Tigers was because its intelligence wing was closing in on him for corruption and violation of the LTTE code of conduct.

At the moment, the Tigers are at their weakest and on the cusp of defeat, if Karuna is to be believed. “The Sri Lankan government cannot afford to call a ceasefire,'' he says. “He [Prabhakaran] has to be crushed. You cannot trust that man.''

Karuna alleges that Prabhakaran intentionally dragged out peace talks so that the rebels could use the cessation in hostilities to re-arm for further combat. “This is a battle to liberate the Tamil people from the liberators,'' Karuna says.
Over the last two decades, he says, the Tigers have been able to sustain the world's longest-running insurgency because Prabhakaran directed his efforts towards a building up the military. “He built a military office of the Tigers in Tamil Nadu [in India] in 1983. He bought books on military hardware and armaments and appointed translators to translate them into Tamil.

He focused his efforts on building ground cadres, a naval wing, and later an aerial wing. Cadres were sent to the Middle East and South East Asia to train with other rebel groups,'' Colonel Karuna says. “The LTTE's military capacity was not built overnight. It took many years of sustained effort.''

He claims that the LTTE lost 70 per cent of its fighting capacity after his group parted ways. “I broke away with 6,000 cadres — 4,000 of them were battle-hardened fighters,'' he says. “The LTTE recruited most of their suicide cadres from the east. Moreover, my group had the potential to carry out offensive attacks.''

Colonel Karuna refused to share the details of his present military collaborations with the Sri Lankan army. However, the Sri Lankan government has made some unprecedented gains against the Tigers in recent months, in large part because of his support.

His fighters joined the Sri Lankan government in its offensive against the rebels and helped the security forces recapture the eastern region from the Tigers last year.

In the Wanni battle zone in northern Sri Lanka, he is believed to have shared intelligence with the Sri Lankan army about Tiger hideouts.

Hitting back

A military commander posted in Jaffna, a battle-scarred peninsula in northern Sri Lanka, recently disclosed in an interview that he eliminated several hundred LTTE infiltrators in government-controlled areas in Jaffna after he was tipped off by Colonel Karuna. “In the present fighting in the Wanni, you notice the LTTE are only launching defensive attacks. They don't have the potential to launch offensive attacks,'' Colonel Karuna said. “That's why they are losing.''

Several military analysts say that even if Kilinochchi falls, the de facto capital of the LTTE where the Tigers are engaged in combat with Sri Lankan forces, the Tigers will pull back into the jungles and a low-level insurgency will continue to simmer.

Colonel Karuna doesn't agree with this perspective. “War depends on territory,'' he says. “From the jungle, they can only manage hit-and-run attacks but that will hardly make a dent. The LTTE will be crushed once you push them out of their strongholds.''

In the recent fighting in South Ossetia, Colonel Karuna says, the international community insisted the civilian population be given safe passage; until then the warring factions should not exchange fire.

“Why is the international community quiet about Sri Lanka?'' he asked. “Two lakh (200,000) Tamils are trapped close to Kilinochchi, trapped by Prabhakaran and used as human shields. If he were a true liberator of Tamils, he would let them go. He must be pressured to give the civilians safe passage.''

Colonel Karuna was arrested in November 2007 in the United Kingdom and served half of a nine-month term for entering on a forged diplomatic passport. He was released in early July this year.

There was speculation that his passport and visa were arranged for him by the Sri Lankan government. Karuna would not comment on who arranged the documents for him. He said he entered the UK on forged documents because of “security reasons'' to be with his wife and children.

There are other serious human rights allegations against him.

Colonel Karuna was the LTTE head of the eastern province in 1990, when 600 unarmed police officers were massacred.
To this allegation, he shrugs. “I wasn't present in Batticaloa but in Jaffna at that time,'' he says, adding he isn't aware who was behind that massacre.

Even now, after laying down arms, he is accused of forming death squads to muzzle journalists and silence those who oppose his point of view and of being involved in the disappearances of civilians.

Unicef and Human Rights Watch also accused him of recruiting child soldiers. “The Sri Lankan government has failed to take action against the abusive Karuna group, a Tamil armed group under the leadership of V.

Muralitharan that split from the LTTE in 2004 and now cooperates with Sri Lankan security forces in their common fight against the LTTE.

The group also expanded its operations, engaging in extortion and abductions,'' Human Rights Watch says in a report.

Colonel Karuna has denied these allegations, claiming that the LTTE is trying to discredit him.

“I have given arms to only a few cadres — 200 or 300 — for our protection,'' he says. “LTTE infiltrators in the eastern province are waging a campaign to wipe out TMVP cadres. We need to protect ourselves.''

He accepts he was involved in recruiting child soldiers when he was with the Tamil Tigers but denies that he still continues to do so.

“We just disbanded an army of 6,000 cadres. Why would we now engage in recruiting children? That's an absurd allegation,'' he says.

But he doesn't deny that some of his cadres, used to an ominous gun culture for two decades, could be involved in some violations.

“Fighting is all that the cadres have seen for two decades. It will take some time for their thinking to change,'' Colonel Karuna said. “A lot of them still don't have jobs. We are trying to integrate them into the Sri Lankan defence forces.

But morally, Tamils of the east hate war. We've suffered enough.''

Anuj Chopra is an independent writer based in India.

A chronology of key events in the island nation of Sri Lanka