The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.

htm

The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon

Part 6

Sachi Sri Kantha

[12 June 2001]

A Brando in the battle front

When I heard about the death of movie legend Anthony Quinn on
June 4, memories of my school days flooded my thoughts. It was
1967 and after I saw his signature performance in the movie ‘Zorba
the Greek’ at the Savoy theater in Wellawatte, his Zorba character
was a continuous presence in me for nearly two years. For solace, I
picked up his confessional autobiography ‘One Man Tango’ from
my bookshelf and scanned the pages.

One anecdote which Quinn had mentioned relating to the trainee

phase of his career where he met another movie legend Marlon
Brando captured my interest. What Pirabhakaran decided to carry
out on July 5, 1987 at the Eelam battlefront was in the same league
of what Quinn saw in Brando, while acting in Elia Kazan’s drama
troupe in New York.

First to Quinn’s anecdote:

“Brando was an instant legend among our group. He flouted

convention in Streetcar [named Desire] and in acting class -
and from what I could gather, in the rest of his life as well. His
improvisations in our Actors’ Studio sessions were prominent
for the way he managed to mock the process and still do
provocative work. Once, when he were asked to do a dance
and freeze our poses at the clap of the instructor’s hands,
Marlon wound up locked in a headstand. We were then
supposed to do a bit based on our frozen postures, and when
Marlon’s turn came he delivered his premise with deadpan
seriousness.
‘I have a stomachache’ he announced to the rest of the class
‘and I’m standing on my head hoping I can pass it out of my
mouth’. The others pretended at shock, but I thought the
insult was marvelous....”

1 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

I quote this passage from Anthony Quinn because the words and
phrases used by him to describe Brando’s action are apt for
Pirabhakaran’s action on July 5, 1987 as well. An ‘instant legend’
who ‘flouted convention’ ‘in the rest of his life’; ‘improvisation’ by
which he ‘managed to mock the process and still do provocative
work’ and ‘delivered his premise with deadpan seriousness’.

If Pirabhakaran was the Brando, my conjecture is that, his peers and

competing rivals to the Eelam leadership in mid-1980s (Uma
Maheswaran, Sri Sabaratnam, Pathmanabha, Varadaraja Perumal
and Douglas Devananda) turned out to be Rodney Dangerfields.
For those who do not know who Rodney Dangerfield is, it is suffice
to note that he is an American stand-up comic, in the same age
category of Brando, and who became noticeable with his
trade-mark quip ‘I don’t get any respect’. Though Dangerfield
couldn’t be a trailblazer in the movie kingdom, he did receive
notice for his self-parodying comic acts. Similarly, if we leave out
those who have left the scene, the acts of Varadaraja Perumal and
Minister Devananda provide comic relief to Eelam Tamils.

Now, to the event of July 5, 1987.

Suicide bombers: a counter-weapon for aerial terror

The authors of the Broken Palmyra, had observed: “During [the
first half of] 1987, the Sri Lankan use of airpower had a deliberate
vindictive purpose. Civilians were expected to get killed. Its main
effect was to keep the LTTE shifting houses...”(p.132). I would
infer that, as pointed by Emory Bogardus [see, The Pirabhakaran
Phenomenon - part 5] citing the examples of Japan’s Imperial
Army’s bombing in China and Hitler’s bombing in London, that the
main purpose of the aerial terror by the Sri Lankan army was to
deplete the morale of Eelam Tamils. Pirabhakaran showed
leadership skill to restore the battered morale by incorporating
suicide bombing as an unique weapon of his LTTE army.

The Broken Palmyra book records that landmark event in the

Eelam liberation war as follows:

“On July 5 [1987] the LTTE launched a suicide attack against

the Sri Lankan army camp at Nelliady Central College...
Miller, a member of the LTTE’s new Black Tigers drove a van
packed with explosives through the school gates into the front
building. The government claimed that 20 of its soldiers died.

2 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

Publicising its action through notice boards as a ‘great

achievement’, the LTTE claimed 100 soldiers killed. Other
sources said the government figure was much nearer the
truth...” (p.134)

Even if one accepts the government’s mortality figures, by that

single daring penetration into the army camp, LTTE
demonstrated that they had in possession one powerful counter
weapon to the aerial terror perpetrated by the Sri Lankan
army. Commenting on the suicide bomb attack, the authors of the
Broken Palmyra had inferred that,

“with many people, the LTTE had redeemed its reputation

after running away in the face of Operation Liberation. This
again pointed to the fickleness of public opinion in Jaffna...”
(p.135)

One can very well argue whether the public opinion in Jaffna was
fickle as painted by the anti-Pirabhakaran propagandists or more
appropriately whether the authors of the Broken Palmyra lacked
basic knowledge on military maneuvers to analyze the strategy
adopted by Pirabhakaran.

Until I left Sri Lanka, I was also ignorant (like the authors of the
Broken Palmyra) of how an army has to function to achieve its aim.
That was 20 years ago. Then, during my graduate studies at the
University of Illinois, I had the good fortune to have three mentors
who were veterans of the Second World War and the Vietnam War.
These three touched my life in multiple dimensions.

My thesis advisor Prof. John Erdman (born 1945) served in an

engineering unit of the American army in the Vietnam War. My
host father Prof. Stan Stolpe (born 1912) was a corporal under the
command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Philippines during the
Second World War. My third mentor Prof. Upson Garrigus (born
1917) served the American army in the European theater of the
Second World War. While I was following graduate studies in
lecture rooms and laboratory, I also learnt some facets of military
life style (discipline, morale and punishment) from conversations
with my American mentors. Among the three, Prof. Stolpe was
most informative. Since he was my host father, I was invited to his
house every Sunday for lunch. While feasting on the lunch
prepared by my host mother Virginia, MacArthur stories were also
served to me in ample quantities by Prof. Stolpe for nearly four

3 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

years. I mention this detail to press the fact that I assess the actions
of Pirabhakaran and his army from what I learnt from my American
mentors, who served in the Second World War and the Vietnam
War.

Since 1987, Pirabhakaran’s use of suicide bombers has been a

staple for half-baked analyses of journalists, analysts and academics
in Sri Lanka and India. Like prostitutes plying the same trade at
different locations with varying degrees of make-ups for different
customers, some like Rohan Gunaratna earn their living by
re-hashing the once written script in umpteen seminars and
anti-LTTE pieces to the partisan press in Sri Lanka and India.
Regarding the suicide bombers of LTTE, these ‘seminar papers’ are
replete with details of ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’. But, they do not
describe or analyze ‘why’ the suicide bombers were incorporated in
the LTTE army. First, I provide two examples of such analyses on
LTTE’s suicide bombers.

The view of Rohan Gunaratna

The following is an excerpt from an article, ‘Suicide Terrorism:
Emerging Global Patterns’ authored by Gunaratna. Though the
same story is told, as provided by the authors of the Broken
Palmyra, the description of the motive and the number of casualties
reported falls between the 20 and 100, cited by Rajan Hoole and
his colleagues.

“...The first LTTE suicide operation was conducted on July 5,

1987, to stall the advance of the Sri Lankan military to
capture Jaffna town. An LTTE driver Wasanthan alias Captain
Millar volunteered to drive a vehicle full of explosives into the
makeshift army camp in Nelliady. Although the suicide
operation was not the reason to abort the mission to capture
Jaffna, the LTTE propaganda claimed that Captain Millar’s
success of killing 40 soldiers in Nelliady frustrated the
intentions of the government to recapture the heartland of the
Tamils. The LTTE did not conduct suicide operations during
the IPKF period but initiated a series of suicide attacks with
the political assassination of Ranjan Wijeratne and Rajiv
Gandhi in March and May 1991. These off the battlefield
strikes were developed in Eelam War III, when the LTTE
integrated suicide bombers into their land and sea fighting
forces.
“...The LTTE used suicide bombers to destroy the Joint
Operations Command, the nerve centre of the Sri Lankan
security forces; the Central Bank; the World Trade Centre; the

4 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

sacred Temple of the Tooth Relic, the most hallowed

Buddhist shrine in the world; and the oil storage installations
in Kollonnawa. The LTTE also used suicide bombers to kill
the navy chief Admiral Clancy Fernando, a Brigade
commander of the Jaffna peninsula Brigadier Larry Wijeratne,
and several others at the forefront of counter-insurgency
operations. For instance, Chief Inspector Nilabdeen, the head
of the anti-terrorism unit, in a suburban police station escaped
with injuries, but Razeek, a former Tamil militant integrated to
the army, was killed in May 1999...”
[The Colombo Chronicle, a Sri Lankan web magazine,
January 5, 2001]

Gunaratna, while providing information on ‘what (victims)’ and

‘when’ components related to the LTTE’s suicide bomb attacks,
conveniently hides the ‘why’ component in the military story.
However, he conceded in the concluding segment of this article
that, “There are distinctions between the LTTE and Hamas suicide
attacks. While all the LTTE suicide attacks were aimed at
destroying a political, military, economic or religio-cultural target,
the other groups used it as a tool of terror.”

I would also like to stress that, though Gunaratna has attributed the
assassination of Ranjan Wijeratne to an LTTE suicide bomber,
other sources in Colombo and India have expressed differing
conclusions. If one agrees to the view that Gunaratna’s opinion is
accurate, LTTE’s consideration of Ranjan Wijeratne (who was then
a ranking member of President Premadasa’s Cabinet) as a legitimate
military target was no different from the position held by the
American army regarding the elimination of Japan’s Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto in 1943.

The view of Sabil Francis

Sabil Francis is identified as a research scholar at the Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi. I located his article entitled, ‘The
uniqueness of LTTE’s suicide bombers’ [article number 321, dated
February 4, 2000] in the website of the Institute of Peace and
Conflict Studies, New Delhi. I quote excerpts from the sophomoric
analysis of Francis.

“...Though the LTTE was founded in 1974, suicide bombing

was only accepted as a tactic in the late 1980s. The first
instance of a suicide bombing was on July 5, 1987, when
Captain Miller of the LTTE Black Tigers drove a van full of

5 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

explosives into a military camp at Nelliaddy. More than 128

soldiers were killed. [Note: this number exceeds even what
was cited by the authors of Broken Palmyra!]
“...What are the motivations of the Black Tigers, who regularly
indulge in ‘Dry Runs’ that could terrify normal person? None
of the classical theorists on guerrilla warfare like Mao, Lenin
or Che have advocated suicide bombing. The only comparable
instance are Islamic militants in the Middle East. Their
ideology believes that they will go straight to heaven. The
LTTE is officially atheist and the cadre, being Hindus, believe
in reincarnation of the soul....”

Francis attributes the motivation of LTTE suicide attacks to “mass

cult hysteria that the LTTE consciously cultivates by rituals” and
“judicious use of symbols rooted in Tamil myth”. Here I would say
that this Indian ‘research scholar’ misses the woods for the trees.
The LTTE is being led by Pirabhakaran, who is now recognized as a
military leader of repute to be born in the post-Second World War
period. Suicide bombing has to be considered as one of the arsenals
he uses to annihilate his adversaries. He developed this counter-
weapon to boost the morale of his troops he led.

If classical theorists of guerrilla warfare like Lenin, Mao and Che

have not advocated the use of suicide bombing, there are valid
reasons. The circumstances faced by Lenin, Mao and Che Guevara
differed markedly in Russia, China and Central-South America
respectively. Lenin’s forces did not face aerial bombing in the first
two decades of the 20th century. Che Guevara, though a brilliant
theorist of guerrilla war, couldn’t succeed in the field (excluding
Cuba) with his strategies. It may be true that Mao may not have
employed suicide warriors against his adversaries, though this need
verification from authentic Chinese sources. However, Mao had
stressed strongly in his manual for guerrillas, that the success of a
protracted war depends on taking factors into consideration which
reveals the weaknesses of the enemy.

I would also mention that Vo Nguyen Giap (who received guerrilla

training in Yenan, North China under Chinese communists in 1940)
used suicide bombers in his confrontation with the French army in
the early 1950s. Here are the relevant passages from John Pimlott,
written to the reference book War in Peace (1945).

“... Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap were proponents of

Mao Tse-tung’s theory of revolutionary war and to understand
that it is to understand much of their success. Mao emphasized

6 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

the factors of time, space and will in his writings; the

revolutionary should trade space (territory) to gain time and
use that time to mobilize the political will of the people...
“... Once the Viet Minh emerged from rural areas and tried to
take their enemy on in open battle, however, French military
superiority should have tilted the balance. Indeed, when Giap
entered this phase too soon in 1951, his forces were roundly
defeated at Vinh Yen, Mao Khe and Phat Diem by a
combination of French defensive measures - prepared,
entrenched positions surrounded by barbed wire and
minefields - and superior weapons.
“Giap’s favoured tactics were to send in small suicide
squads to break through the defences and follow up with
wave upon wave of infantry attackers. These tactics were
countered in 1951 by artillery (often firing on to predicted
target areas), machine guns, aerial strikes (particularly those
using napalm) and, of equal importance, the tenacity of
French defenders. But when these advantages were
undermined, as at Dien Bien Phu where artillery was useless
against Viet Minh positions in the surrounding hills, aerial
supply and support was curtailed by the deployment of
Chinese anti-aircraft weapons and French defences were
weakened by a policy of encroaching entrenchment, the Viet
Minh could, and did, prevail. The French were, in the final
analysis, out-fought.”
[War in Peace: Conventional and Guerrilla Warfare since
1945;
Edited by Sir Robert Thompson,
Harmony Books, New York, 1985, pp.68-69]

I’m not sure whether Pirabhakaran would have checked military

source-books like the one quoted above. Considering the
deployment of suicide squads and ‘wave upon wave infantry
attackers’ used in the battles by LTTE since 1987, my inference is
that Pirabhakaran followed the steps of legendary Giap, in
establishing a battalion of suicide warriors to counter the aerial
terror perpetrated in Jaffna.

Mervyn de Silva’s Observation

Among the many commentators on Pirabhakaran, I consider
Mervyn de Silva as the one who had a grasp in reading
Pirabhakaran’s mind. He recognized Pirabhakaran for what he is; a
different type of leader and a rarity in the South Asian politics.

7 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

Eleven years ago, when the cordial bonhomie between President

Premadasa and Pirabhakaran came to a dead-end, Mervyn de Silva
wrote the following perceptive commentary entitled, ‘Prabhakaran
makes his move’.

“... Mr. Prabhakaran, for he is a militarist, meaning a man who

uses military means for political ends. And by military means,
in this unconventional war, we do not mean set-piece battles.
Creating chaos and division in the rear of the enemy is a
military tactic...
“Upto the IPKF’s pullout, the central concerns of President
Premadasa and Mr. Prabhakaran converged. For different
reasons, of course. The LTTE leader wanted the IPKF off his
back and his men out of the jungle. President Premadasa
wanted to disarm the ultra-nationalist JVP by grabbing its
principal ideological-propagandist weapon what the JVP
called ‘Occupying Hanuman (monkey) Army’.
“After that, politics took command for both. This meant for
Prabhakaran, ‘Eelam’ ideally, or regional autonomy as close
as possible to an independent state. Before that he would like
things done - such as the repeal of the 6th Amendment, which
makes the espousal of any separatist cause, illegal. More
symbolic than anything else but yet it is also a test of the
government’s (and the Sinhala-dominated Parliament’s) bona
fides.
“And then, the Provincial Council - its dissolution followed
by elections. Both have been delayed. And a condition laid
down - surrender of arms before the polls. In his eyes, delays,
conditions, uncertainties. So, he decides to do something
about it, a warning to the government, to the Sinhala
Establishment, perhaps even to his own negotiators. Start a
fight, which is what he knows best. By this, he can also
achieve something else - have his raw, teenage recruits
bloodied, test the responses and fighting skills of the Sri
Lankan security forces.”
[Lanka Guardian, June 15, 1990, pp.3-4]

Unlike other commentators who puff their commentaries with

verbiage, Mervyn de Silva was a writer with relevant words. I
considered that his above assessment of why Pirabhakaran ended
his truce with President Premadasa was faultless. Premadasa was
also a politician with ‘fire-in-the-belly’ and ‘street-smart’
toughness. In the same issue of the Lanka Guardian, following his
commentary, Mervyn de Silva had printed the answers provided by

8 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

Premadasa’s then lieutenant Ranjan Wijeratne, with the caption

“Fighting Ranjan on Tigers”. After a passage of 11 years, the
pomposity shown by Wijeratne is worth re-reading.

The incomplete mission of Ranjan Wijeratne

The seven-part question directed at Minister Wijeratne was as
follows:

(a) Whether the government has promised the LTTE not to

move out its forces without notifying the LTTE?
(b) If so promised, who was responsible for ordering the said
soldiers to move out, thereby subjecting them to injuries?
(c) From this incident it is clear that the LTTE maintains illegal
checking points in the North and the East. Has the
government empowered them to do so?
(d) If no such powers have been granted, will the government
take steps to do away with these checkpoints?
(e) Will the government adopt legal action against the LTTE
with regard to the said attack?
(f) Will the government compensate those injured and the
dependents of the killed?
(g) What steps will the government take to prevent the
repetition of similar incidents?

Minister Ranjan Wijeratne was then in an euphoric phase,

following his liquidation of JVP elites. His bombastic responses to
the above questions were as follows:

(a) I have given a pledge to get at their (the LTTE) necks.

(b) The said troops were traveling from one point to another.
The LTTE met them and opened fire. We have been making
every effort to avoid bloodshed. At this stage I ask Amnesty
International to follow the LTTE’s doings and not to accuse
us of genocide. Taking note of the LTTE’s actions we will
deal with them accordingly.
(c) Now they are running with their shoes out. Very soon their
pants will go too.
(d) There will be no LTTE or watch posts soon.
(e) We are not going to courts. We will use the barrel. That is
what they use on us.
(f) We will do that.
(g) Flatten the LTTE.

This response was delivered in June 1990. Six months later, when
the global attention was fixed on the Gulf War, the Sri Lankan

9 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

army played its card in the Colombo’s political table. This is how
the Economist magazine reported the scene in January 1991.

“...Sri Lanka’s generals began pressing to resume the fight

once it became clear that the ceasefire was not sticking. For
perhaps the first time, the army really flexed its political
muscle. That, it seems, was decisive. The army says the Tigers
are now vulnerable. They have been weakened by a
clamp-down on their activities in the Indian state of Tamil
Nadu, from where they used to get much of their arms and
fuel.
“The army has been promising to wipe out the Tigers ‘within
six months’ for at least the past five years. It has grown
dramatically in size, from some 12,000 in 1984 to 60,000-plus
today. But it is still fighting against a guerrilla force that most
people think can hold out almost indefinitely. The Tigers still
command a good deal of support in the north and east of
the country, which may have been increased by the
government’s policy of bombing suspected guerrilla
targets from the air. Sympathy for the Tigers, the
government claims, is beginning to fade. It will have to fade
much more before the Tigers’ days are
numbered....”[Economist, January 19, 1991, p.34]

As if to corroborate this report of Economist, at the height of the

Gulf War, Vadamarachchy region was bombed by the Sri Lankan
army on January 20, 1991. Two months later, I sent a short letter to
the Lanka Guardian captioned ‘Valvettiturai Bombing’, and
Mervyn de Silva in his wisdom, did not publish it. I wish to bring to
light this unpublished letter.

“While I perused the 72 cumulative pages of the three issues

of the Lanka Guardian (Feb.1, Feb.15 and March 1) I
received lately, I could not find any reference to the
Valvettiturai bombing carried out by the Government’s Air
Force between Jan.20 and 23 of this year. None of the regular
columns mentioned about this bombing which occurred in the
Northern region. However the 72 pages I read were replete
with material on Trotsky (by Regie Siriwardene and
S.Pathiravitana) and on the Gulf War (by Robert O’Neill,
Bertram Bastiampillai and Izeth Hussain).
“The Lanka Guardian also published a four page account on
the destruction and damage to Iraq between Feb.2 and 8, as
seen through the eyes of Ramsay Clark, a former Attorney

10 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM
The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 6 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part6.htm

General of the USA. I wonder why none of this type of

reporting has been published on Valvettiturai bombing. Is
damage to Valvettiturai, of less topical interest to the Lanka
Guardian and its readers than Iraq and Trotsky?”

Two weeks before I mailed this letter to Mervyn de Silva on March

22, 1991, I also had come to learn that Minister Ranjan Wijeratne,
who was spearheading the fight against the LTTE, had died in a
mysterious bomb blast in Colombo. [Continued.]

11 of 11 12/12/2008 5:34 PM