Karuna's Travails

When the Sri Lanka security forces' successfully swept the east and regained control, act two of the theatre of the east opened. There are three actors on the stage – the government and the army, the political parties, and Karuna's Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), made up of disenchanted members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). There is a fourth actor, the LTTE chucked out of the cast, hovering on the wings ready to spoil the act now and then.

The security forces, determined to prevent the LTTE staging a comeback, have continued with their follow up actions to round up the dispersed LTTE elements in the jungles north of Trincomalee and in parts of Batticaloa-Amparai. The security forces dogged search of areas around Thoppigala and other pockets of LTTE have unearthed huge quantities of small arms, mortars and rocket propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, ammunition, rockets and mortar bombs. Every piece of such recoveries and every LTTE cadre killed or arrested in the east are making the LTTE's comeback in the east a little more difficult. Of significance is the failure of the repeated LTTE efforts to land cadres in area Pulmoddai to link up Wanni and the east. This would indicate that the LTTE had not yet given up staging a revival in the east, though its hopes for that might be fading.

Karuna and his TMVP cadres have been a great help to the security forces' success, though of late the security forces are chary of acknowledging it publicly, perhaps for political reasons. Actually, the world over use of renegades in the fight against insurgents is one of the accepted methods. The renegades are useful as spotters to identify militants and their local helpers, in locating hideouts and caches, and in providing vital information. Their help in organising intelligence networks and special operations is even greater. In India's own counter insurgency experience, I have seen while employing renegade militants along with troops there is suspicion, and at times opprobrium, both within the armed forces and among policy makers. The experience is the same the world over. So understandably, security forces always tend to underplay their usefulness in operations. And Sri Lanka appears to be no exception.

Karuna has a diminishing value to the government and troops as the LTTE activity is curbed more and more. This evident from the progressive marginalisation of Karuna and his cadres during the security forces operation in the east, particularly after Vakarai.

As this is happening, more and more complaints against the TMVP and its cadres are coming from the public, the NGOs, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and political leaders. These include the TMVP's acts of omission and commission – child recruitment, kidnapping, extortion, killing, intimidation, and attack on Muslims. These are attributed to the local TMVP warlords and their gun totting cadres. Many of these reports have been verified by international bodies which found the footprints of TMVP in them. So TMVP continues to be in the national media limelight for all the 'wrong' reasons and not for the help it rendered for the security forces' operations in the east.

Though as a body Karuna and his cadres appear to be losing their clout with the government and the security forces, the talk of disarming Karuna and his cadres in response to the pressures of UN bodies, international and local NGOs, SLMM, and political parties, has to be taken with a pinch of salt of strategic compulsion and military realism. This appears to be in the mind of policy makers in Sri Lanka, though they have started uttering more frequent homilies on the question of disarming the TMVP.

Moreover, given the option the security forces would have the TMVP fighting alongside rather than against them, at least till they have done away with the LTTE. And even in the east, the LTTE should not be written off as it has a great resilience and reservoir of strength in the north which could activate the remnants in the east. Of course, there is always the danger that any hasty use of force to disarm Karuna's cadres could provide trained local recruits for the LTTE revival. In all probability, Karuna's cadres in individual capacity will continue to be employed by military intelligence, even if a political rationale is found to disarm them at a future date; of course these will be disowned in public as intelligence agencies the world over do. So the government response to the demand for disarming Karuna and his cadres will be to buy time till it completes its operations in the north. And probably the Co-chairs of the Tokyo Donors Conference and India are also aware of this.

The LTTE fatwa on Karuna's head has prevented him providing visible political and military leadership to his cadres. Usually the physical absence of the leader results in the rise of other satraps who try and takeover the leadership mantle. One such leader Pillaiyan who tried to grab the leadership chair, appears to have come to some sort of understanding now with Karuna. But the more embarrassing feature for Karuna is the reported the presence of TMVP cadres defiantly flaunting their arms and muscle power as an extra legal power in Tamil areas and indulging in show of force in Muslim areas in the east. To compensate for his diminishing value as a military ally and points man of the security forces, Karuna has no other choice but to increase his image as a political persona. For this to happen he has to do three things urgently - show his ability to control his cadres, establish himself politically without the help of armed cadres, and provide an ideology that would appeal to Tamils at large and in the east in particular. But to make this transition he has to shed his halo as a militant leader. This is more easily said than done, particularly when he runs the risk of losing his life at the hands of LTTE.

Karuna's problems were not unexpected, at least by this author. In my article "Karuna in no win situation" on Nov 12, 2004 (available at Karuna In A No-Win Situation) written after he broke away from the LTTE I had pointed out six factors that could affect Karuna's political fortunes in the east. Karuna's performance on the six parameters in the last three years presents an interesting picture:

1. Lack of an ideology: When he started, Karuna had two issues in his appeal to the people for support – denouncing the larger than life image of Prabhakaran, and the LTTE's discrimination against Easterners. Both are negative concepts.

Karuna's intention "to relieve the liberation struggle of the Tamils from the cruel clutches of Prabhakaran," remains unfulfilled. The complaint of discrimination of easterners by Jaffnaites is an age-old one. This lost much of its relevance in the current situation when one third of the eastern Tamils have been displaced in the war during 2006-7.

2. Winning popular Tamil support : It is not clear how popular Karuna is now in the east. His make over from a militant leader to a political leader is still not complete. His rare public appearances and lack of specific political campaigning perhaps due to personal security the constraints are sure to eat into his popularity. The reported activities of extortion and recruitment by TMVP cadres would not endear him to the local population. Though a TMVP political wing has been created and political statements are made they have not created the political space for them.

3. Political leadership: The internal squabble with Pillaiyan and the spat with the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) have exposed the deficiencies in Karuna's political leadership skills. Perhaps he needs to focus on situational leadership skills such as flexibility in approach, ability to meld with people and places, accepting diversity, and the ability to appeal to the common man and the intellectual, to strike a better political equation with the public.

4. Political support from the non-Tamil parties: The two major political parties - UNP and SLFP – appear to be avoiding any visible involvement with Karuna. Perhaps the ruling SLFP want to avoid the fall out such association would bring after the UN Human Rights circles raised a storm over child recruitment by Karuna. The beleaguered UNP might not find it useful now to be seen with Karuna due to TMVP's abrasive relations with the Muslim constituency. Moreover, many Sinhala politicians might share the views of Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga on Karuna. She had said, "Karuna is as much a terrorist as Prabhakaran, and supporting one terrorist against another will only lead us into a vicious cycle." As far as Tamil parties are concerned he would be poaching in the same grounds for Tamil votes. And naturally they are wary of his emergence as yet another force. Thus as of now, Karuna continues to be a lone ranger.

5. Winning over Muslims: For successful politics in the east a favourable equation with Muslims is crucial. When Karuna broke away, he brought with him the baggage of anti-Muslim record of LTTE in the east. Far from mending fences with the Muslims, TMVP cadres have been accused of harassing and even killing Muslims. In fact, Muslim leaders have given a call for curbing the TMVP activity.

6. Organisational structure and financial support: Political party needs an organizational structure to maintain contact with people and influence their thinking on an ongoing basis. These activities need financial resources also. The other Tamil political parties, though small, have been in the scene a little longer. The national parties have favours to dispense, apart from bank rolling their campaigns. Karuna will need enormous financial and material resources. Answer to this question will ultimately decide Karuna's sustainability.

With the impending local and provincial elections in the east, Karuna's cup appears full. On top of it, he has the king size problem surviving the LTTE threat to him and his cadres that could disrupt his political activity, unless there is the protection from the security forces. He has to give up arms to become a politician as his operation as an armed political party would not be acceptable to either the government or other parties. However, he has proved himself a great survivor so far and thus should not be underestimated to emerge an important factor in the political horizon of the east. For that he has to do some clever tightrope walking to strike a balance between militancy and political polemics. That would decide his future. But undoubtedly Karuna's travails appear to have begun with the fall of the LTTE in the east.

Col. R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90.