"The top leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Mr. V. Prabhakaran was killed in a shoot-out by the Mr. Mahattaya faction of the LTTE a few days ago".
That was the opening paragraph of a report carried in The Hindu newspaper on July 24, 1989 under the headline 'Prabhakaran reported killed in shoot-out'.
At that time Prabhakaran was only 35. In roughly a month he would turn 50.
The Tiger leader has been among the top world rebel leaders, including Osama bin Laden, to be killed several times over.
When Prabhakaran made the Mahaveerar Day speech from Wanni last year, hours after his controversial meeting with EU External Commissioner Chris Patten, he had his Eastern Commander and blue-eyed-boy Karuna organizing similar celebrations in the East.
Four months later Karuna has fallen out with his boss and even as Prabhakaran gets ready to celebrate his 50th birthday, his tormentor has started a new party and has had the audacity to call Prabhakaran a barbarian and had urged the Tamils to rise against the LTTE leadership.
Despite the regionalism call by the former Eastern Commander, the fact that Prabhakaran is still very much in control of the organization even his detractors would concede. But for how long?
The elusive leader made his way up in the eighties, reigned in the nineties and has been largely calling the shots even four years into the new millennium.
The reason behind this feat - apart from the steady flow of money and military hardware - is to state it in Prabhakaran's own words - confidence.
"Our strength - and our weakness - was our overconfidence", Prabhakaran once observed in an interview with Indian journalist Anita Pratap which appeared in a Time magazine in April, 1990.
"We were sometimes careless. But also because of our overconfidence our boys carried out some amazing tasks," he was quoted as saying.
However none of these would guarantee that things would be the same for him in the years to come.
Velupillai Prabhakaran is no more a 'young leader' in the organization once termed that of the 'boys' and even now is largely made up of youngsters.
On the other hand, as a result of the ceasefire, his 'young leaders and cadres' have got the kind of freedom and opportunities that he himself had never enjoyed as a rebel. Karuna is just one of many.
All this is taking place at a time when several development projects have been initiated especially by the INGOs, providing employment to local youth and also the kinds of facilities that were never available earlier.
There is a steady building up of capacities, especially in the North.
Could Prabhakaran sustain the momentum of the organization against the backdrop of these developments which are not at all complementary to the LTTE thinking? In fact these developments are fast changing the picture of the rebel-held areas shattering the very premises on which the Tiger ideology is based on.
A majority of analysts are of the view that the 'end' of Prabhakaran will also mark the 'end' or at least the decline, of the LTTE.
The only time the Sri Lankan forces managed to get close to him in the recent past was, during an operation in 2001 by the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) when its personnel managed to plant two Claymore mines along a road frequented by Prabhakaran.
However, the mines were later detected by Prabhakaran's security retinue and were destroyed.
The powerful Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) which has been targeting him since the late 1980s has so far failed to accomplish the task.
The LTTE's aversion to Indian de-mining teams is largely attributed to the organization's perennial fear that RAW members would infiltrate under the guise of mine clearing.
But, the biggest threat to Prabhakaran's life is still Karuna.
It is most likely that Karuna has intensified his resolve to exterminate Prabhakaran - a task which appears near impossible - espicially after the Wanni cadres gunned down his brother Regi.
Then there are several dozens of members and supporters of parties like the EPDP, the EPRLF and the TELO who continue to face the Tiger guillotine along with Karuna's men.
Given a chance, there may be thousands of people, among the Tamils alone, who would volunteer to gun down the LTTE leader for his atrocities.
It was only a few days ago that Karuna said that the LTTE supremo had killed over 20,000 Tamils.
However, getting close to Prabhakaran will always remain one of the most daunting tasks.
The withdrawal of the IPKF in March 1990 gave the LTTE leader an aura of invincibility and the years that passed by had only gone to prove this further.
This coupled with the element of mystery surrounding him with very little information about him reaching the media have made him an elusive character.
Prabhakaran however was demystified to a certain extent at the April 10, 2002 press conference and during meetings with several southern leaders, diplomats and international leaders.
But the million-dollar question is whether the LTTE leader is actually pushing forward the peace process? If not what are the plans Prabhakaran has for the rebel outfit after him?
He has not groomed a successor and the one that many thought would perhaps succeed him, had finally defected.
Leave alone grooming a successor, he has learnt the dangers of allowing other leaders to become popular.
The extra-ordinary fanaticism with which he had fought one of the most ruthless wars for nearly two decades and the killings that he continues to carry out, have left him with nearly fifteen thousand youth who are only trained to kill and destroy. Only a handful of youths are trained for administrative work.
What is he going to do with this army, in the years to come, with war gradually becoming an option of history despite the escalation of violence - which is largely restricted to the LTTE and other Tamil parties?
Narayan Swamy in his book 'Inside an Elusive Mind' has said that if the peace process fails, then "the destiny of Sri Lanka with its 20 million people would still be in the hands of one man: Velupillai Prabhakaran".
However, whatever decisions taken by Prabhakaran are very much influenced by the international trends on terrorism, the pulls and the pushes.
However much the Tigers deny the fact, it was all too obvious that the Tiger decision to come to the negotiation table had a lot to do with the post 9/11 situation, especially the hardened stance of the United States on terrorism.
Despite the outward composure in the face of a series of verbal attacks, the fact that the US reprimands hit raw nerves of the LTTE became evident by the manner the LTTE got the TNA to issue a statement on the controversial comments made by State Department Coordinator on Counter-terrorism J. Cofer Balck.
Just like hundreds of terrorist outfits all over the world the Tigers too must be praying that Senator John Kerry will beat President George Bush at next month's elections - a scenario which some feel would give global terrorism some breathing space.
Some have already predicted that the LTTE, with its South African connections, would get the black senators in the US Congress to allow its voice to be heard. With the LTTE gaining a foothold in mainstream politics in neighbouring Canada and clout in many other European states this is a possibility that one cannot rule out easily.
Twenty eight years after he formed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam with a couple of dozen youths at the age of 22, Velupillai Prabhakaran has managed to upgrade his organization to an international enterprise as he approaches his 50th birthday - killing tens of thousands of people including national leaders and fostering links with the bulk of the international terrorist groups.
With warrants hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, especially one from India, the freedom of movement he would be able to enjoy even after a negotiated settlement is reached, is likely to be very limited.
Prabhakaran most probably will live to celebrate his 50th birthday which is just a month away and for which grand preparations are already underway.
However, with the kind of cold-blooded atrocities he has committed, and judging by the kind of natural, inevitable punishments that awaited such fanatics in history, Velupillai Prabhakaran is very unlikely to see a peaceful end to his life, the day that he falls.
