By N Sathiya Moorthy Courtesy Ceylon Today

In a way, there isn’t much new in the book, The Rout of Prabhakaran by M.R. Narayan Swamy, who had authored an ‘unauthorised’ biography of LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, Inside an Elusive Mind, way back in 2003, and two other books, one earlier and another latter, on the world’s most dreaded guerrilla force and its unpredictable leader, who had the uncanny knack of turning defeat into victory – and victory, or whatever remained, into sure defeat. In other ways, The Rout is an after-thought of an unemotional and impartial analysis of Narayan Swamy’s previous book, The Tiger Vanquished, published in 2010, a year after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which the Government and the majority – and at times ‘majoritarian’ – Sinhala media, dubbed the nation’s ‘war on terror’, like anything elsewhere.

The Rout is all of 113 pages, minus the end-notes and Index. But what makes the compendium, including 238 pages of the Elusive Mind, a compulsive buy and read is the fact that appended to it is the author’s much-longer and equally well-researched original, Inside An Elusive Mind. For the general reader, who may want to have a quick recap of it all, and the younger generation, who want to know it all, this is the book that tells all. After all, 15 years is a fairly long time in living memory, and given the other crises the nation has been facing over the past few years, on the political, economic and also security fronts (Easter serial blasts, 2019), there is a need for recalling and remembering what may otherwise fade away but should not.

Like all other books by the author,
The Rout is both fast-paced and well-researched, minus the foot-notes and end-notes that make any book on a subject, read and sound academic – taking it away from the general reader to that extent. Again, as the author has pointed out through the book, the focus is on the LTTE’s downfall and the attendant cause that Prabhakaran was.  He has kept other aspects of the ethnic issue, including the role of the Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism, out of the discourse, though that was the one that had triggered Tamil youth militancy, which in turn culminated in LTTE terrorism and conventional war, both.

Conventional wisdom projects Prabhakaran as a great ‘military strategist’ and one who brooked no challenge, within and outside. The former often ignores the possible contribution made by the inexplicable surrender of a mass of weapons by the troops, every time the LTTE encircled them. When Mahinda Rajapaksa became President in 2005 and later became the LTTE’s tormentor, one of the first reported decisions of his was to appoint a committee to look into the past and fix responsibility – as if to check if some of it was an insider’s work. As was to be expected, the outcome of the study never made it to the newspapers, but possibly the gaps that were identified seemed to have been fixed before the armed forces took the war to enemy territory.

Looking back, or even during the time, it was obvious that the Prabhakaran’s increasing sense of self-importance and more of insecurity were behind his various acts of terrorism that targeted fellow militants, both within the LTTE and outside, and also moderate Tamil leaders like Amirthalingam, or, Amir annae, or elder brother, to thousands of Tamil even today. Was this inherent insecurity, which he had developed first as a survival instinct, also behind his inability or unwillingness to accept Mahinda’s offer to make him the unelected yet officially-acknowledged leader of the Tamil people, which Narayan Swamy mentions?

It was known at the time that there were enough guns waiting to take him out, and hence Prabhakaran knew that he could not walk the streets of Jaffna as a popular leader – unlike a popular autocrat that he ultimately became. That way, despite the author repeatedly quoting ex-LTTE militants to argue the multiple failures of Prabhakaran that led to ultimate disaster, there is a vocal section of the Tamils from that generation, and possibly next, who want to be seen as swearing by him – but the numbers and commitment growing thin, as yet another new generation emerges, as now.

Decisive, conclusive

Narayan Swamy also credits the Mahinda-Gota combo for the ultimate success of the armed forces. It was true, yes. As brothers, they worked in tandem, sorting out issues and taking instant decisions over breakfast or dinner almost every day, without going through processes that were time-consuming, demoralising and at times leaking at the seams – thus preparing the LTTE for facing the next big assault.  What is not much known is the fact that before Elections-2005, the armed forces command had informally briefed Candidate Mahinda, too, on the state of the war and peace, the latter imposed by the Norway-facilitated cease-fire agreement (CFA) by the former’s rival, Ranil Wickremesinghe, until recently the Prime Minister who over-ruled President Chandrika Kumaratunga and got sacked in the process.

The armed forces had a suggestion/request. Whoever won the election, if they decided to pursue the peace route, then it was fine. After all, they too did not want their ‘boys’ to die and they too did not want ‘body bags’ back home in the Sinhala heartland. ‘So, give peace a chance, yes, but if war became inevitable’ – and they were sure that the LTTE would want it once they recouped as on previous occasions – ‘then and then only, the President and the Government should not hold them back, as used to be the practice throughout.’ From Brothers Rajapaksa, they got what they wanted, starting with Mahinda urging the Norwegians to revive the peace process through the Oslo talks, even as the LTTE launched ‘Eelam War IV’ that became decisive and conclusive.

So, when Mahinda Rajapaksa became President, it was clear to an unemotional observer — and this Reviewer was possibly the only one — that if it was war, ‘this man will finish it off in three years with some help from overseas, and five years, without it’. The reason was not far to seek.  Like the LTTE, the armed forces, throughout the CFA period, was also preparing itself for the war, keeping it at a low key. Two and the most important of them all, unlike what Prabhakaran had begun with, the armed forces were not a ceremonial troop of 15,000 men in all as in the early eighties, but a much larger troop battle-hardened personnel. Their commanders did not any more come only from the Colombo elite, whose main pre-occupation used to be partying and more partying. Also, through the CFA years and afterwards, the Army check-points in capital Colombo and elsewhere came to be manned by young troops, who were both informal and jovial, thus winning over the citizenry for the Government,.

Incidentally, it is time to disabuse the belief that but for Prabhakaran’s diktat for Tamils not to vote – yes, against substantive monetary consideration, to which the author too has alluded — Ranil would have won. Looking at the possibility, had the Tamils been allowed to vote, there was more than a fair chance that more and more of Sinhala voters, going beyond the traditional ‘majoritarian, nationalist’ kind would have voted for Mahinda more than already. Yet, Prabhakaran voluntarily took the blame, thinking that he had out-smarted the Sinhala-Buddhist leadership, was what he had deserved, he had earned without much thinking and without much effort, either.

Tragic event

Where did Prabhakaran falter the most? He was so full of himself and like Narayan Swamy points out, all those new-generation second-line leaders too were full of himself. What the author points out partially but extended to the second-line leadership, like their leader, they too were living in holes in the walls in the Vanni jungles, with next-to-nil exposure to the outside world, which only Anton Balasingham had, and whose sage advice Prabhakaran began to increasingly neglect or over-look. Bala annae was possibly the only one who knew and who had the access (even if only up to a point) and courage to tell Prabhakaran that the Rajiv Gandhi assassination was much more than a ‘tragic event’ (or, thunbiyal sambavam, as they explained away at Prabhakaran’s famed Kilinochchi news conference of 2002).

Prabhakaran did not say anything new at the news conference other than to demonstrate to the outside world as to who the boss was and who controlled the Tamil areas and whose writ alone ran. It was pathetic at the time to see Balasingham refer to Prabhakaran as ‘national leader’, in the place of thambi, or younger brother, as he had always addressed the maverick killer all along, earlier. To a discerning observer of the LTTE, it became clear that the days were numbered, even if it would take seven more years. Hence, when 9/11 happened, and the global mood on terrorism changed overnight, Prabhakaran did not understand it, and Bala was in no place to convince the other man, any more. That the Kilinochchi news conference happened after 9/11 would have only irked international players, and not frightened them or encouraged them to take a positive view of the LTTE, at least not any more.

The greatest of strategic military blunders that Prabhakaran committed in context of war was his inability to notice the swift reprisal by the armed forces after an LTTE suicide-bomber had targetted Army Chief, Maj-Gen Sarath Fonseka, now a Field Marshal. Full of himself still, Prabhakaran failed to notice that when the orders for the suicide-attack had gone from his lair in the North, the SLAF attack had commenced in the East, where already the ‘Karuna rebellion’ had weakened the LTTE three years earlier. The armed forces were working to a game-plan, to clear the East first, before moving to the North, for the ‘kill’. It was a professional operation, for once, which became visible by the addition of a hundred thousand soldiers, even rookies, to meet the 10: 1 text-book ratio of soldiers to guerrillas in such unconventional wars, where the other side was not a State player.

Inevitable end

If only Prabhakaran had consulted veterans even in his camp – most of whom, he had already sacrificed as suicide-bombers, if only to celebrate their martyrdom, as a motivation for young recruits – maybe, some of them with certain text-book knowledge, if at all, would have waved the red flag at him. That was not to be. The end was inevitable, and inevitable became the end. At the end of all the human sufferings that the Tamils especially went through and are still carrying on with the remnants, and the economic reversals that the nation had suffered since, the question arises if this was all Prabhakaran’s achievements or legacy to his people – a people, whose only problem initially was being more educated and employable than their Sinhala counterparts.

Today, education is not as much a Tamil forte as it used to be, employability and employment, neither are. In their place, the Tamils who refused to learn the majority Sinhala language, have gone all across the world, learning French, Spanish and Italian, among other world languages, to make a living – as a second-class citizen, however rich they may become, in another country, and of course, not in their own. In effect, Narayan Swamy’s The Rout says less than this, yes, but makes more sense than most, triggering hopes of a comprehensive and equally unbiased account of the whole saga, from his powerful pen, one more time!