Journalist M.R. Narayan Swamy’s The Rout of Prabhakaran is an exhaustive chronicle of the LTTE, its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and Sri Lanka’s long civil war. There have been several books on Prabhakaran and the LTTE, but Swamy’s book, which comes out 15 years after the war, is a thorough look at the LTTE leader, analysing his strengths and weaknesses. The author’s deep understanding of the civil war and the situation in Sri Lanka comes through in this work.
In the first chapter, ‘Mayhem in Mullaitivu’, Swamy looks at the last phase of the war. He tells how Prabhakaran always considered eight as an unlucky number and finally the war came to an end on May 17. Apparently, he never did anything that could even remotely land him in trouble on the 8th, 17th and 26th of a month―since each date added up to eight. He usually spent these days holed up in a hideout and would emerge only at dawn the following day. Swamy recounts the last days of the war, the moment when Prabhakaran might have been killed and how Colonel Kamal Gunaratne, who later became the defence secretary in Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s regime, found the remains of the LTTE leader in a lagoon.
The author travels to Valvettithurai, Prabhakaran’s home-town near Jaffna, and vividly describes Prabhakaran’s early days, how the LTTE was formed, its growth and how he transformed into a Tiger leader. But over a period of time, he started using wrong methods. His decision to kill Rajiv Gandhi and former Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa, and then the 9/11 attack turned the world’s attention on terrorism. After the 1990s, Prabhakaran had become a fascist leader who unleashed a reign of terror on his own people. He employed child soldiers, sent out Muslims from the Jaffna peninsula and got money from the Tamil diaspora across the world to fund the war.
As Swamy sums up, Prabhakaran was both the strength and the weakness of the Tamil struggle. He created one of the most powerful guerrilla forces, but the orgy of violence led to the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009.
Swamy describes two aspects about Prabhakaran―how he had a narrow horizon and how he never understood geopolitics. He says that Prabhakaran never ventured into the south of Sri Lanka and never interacted with the Sri Lankan leaders. He never thought of the consequences of killing the Indian prime minister and how the neighbouring country would react.
Swamy’s revelations about former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa are also mind-blowing. He writes that Rajapaksa recognised Tamil grievances as genuine and was willing to talk to Prabhakaran. He informed this to the peace negotiators and was ready to name Prabhakaran as the de facto ruler of North and East Sri Lanka. The only condition was that he wanted the LTTE to lay down its weapons. “Prabhakaran’s persona became, in some ways, his greatest weakness. In that sense, he was like Osama bin Laden,” writes Swamy.
Though the author is full of sympathy for the Tamils in this well-crafted book, he draws a clear line between the Tamil cause and the functioning of the LTTE. However, he doesn’t venture into the ways adopted by the Sinhalese army or the role of India during the final phase of the war. As a journalist who has extensively travelled and read on Sri Lanka and the Tamil question, Swamy’s book brings alive the other side of Prabhakaran’s story.
THE ROUT OF PRABHAKARAN
By M.R. Narayan Swamy
Published by Konark Publishers
Pages 238; price Rs895