Forget about India, US or Sri Lanka. Visit any peaceful country and meet a group of people. Show the following photograph to them and tell them the two guys in the black uniforms were suicide attackers. Once they heard the phrase “suicide attack” one of the first things which will comes to their mind would be 9/11 and similar attacks.
After sometime add the fact that this group had carried out 100+ suicide attacks. Now they will start thinking that 100+ suicide attacks so 1000s of innocent people must have been killed by this group.
This is how common people will think. Being a non-state force nobody is going to buy your argument that you never targeted civilian target directly.
The whole truth
Unlike Islamic militant groups LTTE never used suicide attacks to terrorize civilians. More than 95% of the LTTE suicide attacks were carried out on battlefields.
Eg. The following guys didn’t attack civilian target but destroyed Navy Gunboats.
On 19.04.1995 LTTE’s four combat divers(suicide) penetrated highly secured Triconmalee Harbour and sunked two Navy Gunboats Suyya and Ranasuru[1] .
Image: Thanigaimaran(L) and Kathiravan(R) along with two other combat divers sunked Surya and Ransuru Gunboats and died in the process.
1st Gunboat: Ranasuru
2nd Gunboat : Suriya
Now in the above suicide attack no civilian was injured or killed.
Why suicide attack??
Throughout the Civil war LTTE was severely outnumbered. The strength of Government forces always fluctuated between 1,00,000 - 2,00,000. On the other hand the strength of LTTE always fluctuated south of 10,000.
Now just imagine LTTE fighting the above Gunboats head on.
These gun boats had multiple cannons and high calibre guns onboard. Fighting these with home made fiberglass boats is nightmare. LTTE would have faced huge casualties without any guarantee of success.
But LTTE got rid of these two monsters by “losing just 4 cadres”.
In short LTTE used suicide attacks to compensate their weakness.i.e. getting outnumbered.
Why misunderstood??
As I already mentioned being a militant group you cannot convince the whole World that your suicide attackers never targeted civilians directly.
What was the alternative??
There was no alternative.
But I feel that LTTE must have acquired short range missile technology. So that instead of sending suicide attackers they could have just launch couple of missiles after every Kafir raids on Tamil Eelam.
Eg. Houthi rebels[2] in Yemen Civil War always retaliates to the Saudi air raids by launching missiles deep into Saudi and UAE territories. The recent Houthi drone attack on Saudi pipeline, deep inside the country had sent panic waves across Saudi and UAE[3] .
But the fact here is that Houthis are directly helped by World’s most powerful militant group,i.e. Hezbollah[4] , World’s only force which defeated the mighty Israel(IDF). Hezbollah is directly helped by IRGC[5] , World’s deadliest paramilitary group. In short all these forces are supported by a military super power called Iran.
Isolated Group:
LTTE was an isolated group with no country supporting it.
Image: Santha, another combat diver(suicide) who took part in the above mentioned suicide raid on Triconmalee harbour in 1995.
It was nothing less than a miracle that LTTE fought all alone for more than 20 years(after India stopped its support) against overwhelming odds. Most of the credits goes to these so called suicide attackers or Black Tigers. It is also a fact that 30+ powerful countries were required to gang up and kill a single man exactly 10 years ago.
Footnotes
!["මේරි නම් වූ මරියා" [මංජුල වෙඩිවර්ධනගේ තහනමට ලක් වූ කෙටිකතාව] By Manjula Wediwardena](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjksN8c9M2VdbDoOktH03ktpZaOEZLz4Wa6tTOByRDvfFVafDlv_5ItqKK7F47GsVSDbB2x8W19MSSrqnhLPz6BZQwORKKbEFBVVr0P11jG4VmZhU_TYSMcYPBoyixcSZpkCO-OzIvphOU/s72-c/Bannedart-03.jpg)
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