The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, have been fighting a civil war in Sri Lanka for 25 years, and as of today are about to be finally defeated by the Sri Lankan military. The leader of the tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, has not yet been captured, but the entire Tamil guerilla army is now hiding out in a swath of jungle that’s about nine by twelve miles long. At one point they controlled a vast region of Sri Lanka, and had an administrative presence in the large city of Kilinochchi, providing psuedo-government services for the quarter-million ethnic Tamils who inhabit Sri Lanka.
The Tamil Tigers are Marxist revolutionaries, and were the earliest practitioners of the now-ubiquitous suicide bomb attack. Apparently, Prabhakaran and all of his followers wear a cyanide capsule around their necks, so they can choose death before capture by the enemy. They had quite a bit of international sympathy before the 9/11 terrorist attack in the U.S. flipped the script on all radical insurgency movements; and after Prabhakaran’s alleged role in the suicide-bomb assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, then Indian prime minister, any support from India also dried up. For an interesting time line of events in the region, check out this Al-Jazeera article. For a fascinating and detailed history of Tamil culture which dates back at least 3000 years, check out Tamil Nation.
Here’s some video:
