'India is our friend'
said the LTTE leader Parbhakaran in his Heroes' Day address in November
2008. 'At no stage did we ever consider India as an enemy force. Our
people always consider India
as our friend. They have great expectations that the Indian superpower will
take a positive stand on our national question'. The cornered Tiger chief
probably thinks we have a short memory.
The LTTE had a significant organizational set up in Tamilnadu
even when they were engaged in war with the IPKF! This set up looked after
their injured cadres who were treated in Indian hospitals in Tamilnadu and
Karnataka, had a massive public relations exercise attacking the Indian
Government of the day, and which ensured supply of a large number of banned
items to Jaffna from the Tamilnadu coast through their mechanized boats.
These supplies included explosives which were used against the Indian army.
Even grenade shells were manufactured in factories in Coimbatore, and supplied to their cadres.
When the IPKF was withdrawn in March, 1990, the LTTE were
virtually in full control of the north and east of Sri Lanka.
In an operation mounted by the LTTE in the heart of Chennai on 19 June
1990, Padmanabha and twelve other EPRLF (Eelam People's Revolutionary
Front) leaders were massacred in Kodambakkam. This case was solved during
the investigation of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
Around the time the LTTE planned to kill Rajiv Gandhi, they
embarked on a dangerous mission to train Indian Tamil boys in armed warfare
to wage war against India,
the object being secession of Tamilnadu from the Indian Union. An Indian
Tamil boy, Ravichandran, was the leader of the Tamil National Retrieval
Troops set up under Pottu Omman, the intelligence chief of the LTTE. He
took a number of youngsters to Jaffna
for training. Instructions given to him by Pottu Omman were to target
senior Indian leaders based in Tamilnadu and to assist Sivarasan in a big
operation in Chennai. From this it is very clear that the LTTE is no friend
of India, and would not
hesitate to use any stratagem to achieve their objective of getting Eelam,
including destabilization of India. Ravichandran is serving
life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi case.
There is evidence of the LTTE's links with the PWG (People's
War Group) and the ULFA. The PWG were reported to have been trained by the
Tigers in the use of improvised explosive devices in which they were past
masters. In fact, it was after this that the PWG started inflicting heavy casualties,
through improvised explosive devices on the Indian security forces from
1989 onwards. It is also possible that the LTTE were assisted by the PWG in
obtaining explosives from Andhra Pradesh, where they themselves had no
contacts. Even after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, there are reasons to
believe that the LTTE used Tamilnadu to store their arms and other
supplies, before taking them by boats to Jaffna. Their chief arms procurer,
Kumaran Padmananthan, is known to have several Indian contacts and passports.
The decline of the LTTE started with the split in their
ranks, when 'Col'
Karuna, their eastern commander began working with the Sri Lankan security
forces. In the latest war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan State, which
was indeed provoked by the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Army has achieved notable
successes. While the issue of the misery that the civilians undergo needs
to be squarely addressed, it has to be remembered that the LTTE have never
bothered about the Tamils while executing their project. The LTTE is known
to have fired on IPKF patrols from the Jaffna hospital to draw their fire on the
hospital, in order to project the deaths of civilians as human rights
violations in the return fire.
Several of their ships which used to ensure constant supply
of arms and other equipment to the LTTE were targeted and destroyed by the
Sri Lankan Navy and Air Force. In these circumstances, the LTTE would
become more and more desperate to get their supply lines in India
restored. They will need petrol, diesel, batteries; they will require
medicines to tend to their injured cadres, they will have to transport
their more severely injured cadres to better hospitals for treatment; they
will need explosives and other war materials to fight the Sri Lankan's in a
guerilla war, if they lose the current war. For all this, they have to have
access to Tamilnadu. They do have groups in Tamilnadu to support them in
this, as is evident from news of LTTE cadres being arrested in different
parts of Tamilnadu by the 'Q' Branch of the police. Moreover, their past
attempts to train Indian youth from Tamilnadu to fight for their cause at
the expense of India's
unity, makes it imperative for us to remain vigilant.
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