by: Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai

By remaining firmly within a conventional military mindset, the LTTE may have missed – for good – an opportunity to make substantive political gains. 

Over the past three decades, the LTTE has been portrayed as a brutal organisation, with its structure, motivations and strategies all shrouded in secrecy. Some have rejected the force as politically bankrupt and irredeemably nihilist, while others have claimed (and continue to claim) it to be the only entity that has a chance of steering the political future of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Over the last few years, however, a greater degree of sober public analysis has emerged on the LTTE. This has been due to several factors: the internationalised Norwegian-led peace process; the no-war situation, in which dissident voices from within the Tamil polity were able to bring to light some of the inner workings of the Tamil Tigers; and also the split in the organisation, with its former Eastern Command being used as a paramilitary arm of the government against the LTTE. Few will disagree, however, that the Tigers have radically changed the security situation and the political landscape in Sri Lanka, mainly through its military strategies and guerrilla tactics. Indeed, the LTTE’s growth and survival over the last 30 years were solely dependent on its singular focus on militarism. In this context, the organisation’s weakening, caused by defeats on the battlefield over the last two years, become significantly more difficult to explain, as it is its subordination of politics to conventional military efforts that could well be the cause for its seemingly irreversible decline.