HOW FORMIDABLE ARE THE TAMIL TIGERS?
Sri Lankan Presidents and Prime Ministers come and go, but L.T.T.E. leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has been around for 30 years. Born in a far-north village known as a smugglers’ haven, he started young, allegedly killing the mayor of Jaffna, Sri Lanka’s northernmost city, at the age of 20. Prabhakaran has displayed a genius for guerrilla warfare, forging the Tigers into what is widely acknowledged as the world’s most ruthlessly effective rebel army. Extraordinarily disciplined, the Tigers make an art form of suicide attacks. They hide explosives around or even inside the body, and rig them to motorbikes, cars or boats. Prabhakaran’s masterstroke, one that prefigured jihadi terrorism, was to instill an almost religious reverence for sacrifice and martyrdom in his armyall his fighters wear cyanide capsules around their necks. For the Tigers, many of whom are recruited as children, Prabhakaran is akin to a demi-god. Photographs of his chubby, affable-looking image hang on almost every wal
