by Richard S. Ehrlich
(Richard S. Ehrlich recently returned from the Jaffna Peninsula war-zone where he spent three days with Tamil Tiger guerrillas behind Indian army lines, meeting rebel leaders, accompanying their guerrilla patrols, and surviving a two-hour mortar and machine-gun attack launched by an advancing Indian convoy. The following is his report):
Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich
Richard S. Ehrlich's Asia news, non-fiction book titled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" plus hundreds of photographs are available at his website http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent
June 1989
A Tamil Tiger Guerrilla Unreeled a Thin Braid of Blue and Brown Electric Wire Beneath Some Palm Trees...
JAFFNA PENINSULA, Sri Lanka -- A Tamil Tiger guerrilla unreeled a thin braid of blue and brown electric wire beneath some palm trees and onto a road, where he then hid a powerful land mine to destroy a convoy of approaching Indian army reinforcements.
A handful of other Tiger rebels silently fanned out among the lush foliage, crouching close to the walls of abandoned, single-story homes.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists had been alerted by their network of walkie-talkies that an Indian convoy was heading their way west from Elephant Pass in an effort to reinforce positions encircling rebel-held Jaffna town.
Suddenly, a guerrilla opened fire with his AK-47 assault rifle -- a loud staccato designed to draw the Indians towards the concealed mine.
But despite a few more bursts of bullets, the Indians failed to emerge.
So the Tigers gingerly reeled up their mine and carried it closer towards the convoys' suspected position.
The unknown number of Indian reinforcements, meanwhile, were apparently wary of falling into yet another trap and losing more men to the guerrillas' notorious giant landmines which are their deadliest weapon.
The Indians made their move about 45 minutes later to try and checkmate the Tigers' patrol.
Hardly any of us heard the whispers of twin shots off in the distant jungle.
"Down! Down!" screamed a rebel who, moments before, was displaying the decal on the butt of his M-16 assault rifle which showed a map of the northeast chunk of this island where they are fighting for independence.
Before anyone had time to look away from the decal's roaring tiger -- leaping through the map beneath the letters "LTTE" -- a deafening blast from the Indians' mortar hit the nearby sandy earth.
"Down! Down!" he screamed again.
We dove for cover as a second blast cracked with an even more horrific explosion, closer than the first.
"Move! Move!" he yelled.
We ran into winding, unpaved residential lanes, retreating towards Jaffna Lagoon.
For the next two hours, Indian mortars whispered and exploded in regulated pairs.
After the blasts of impact, the Tigers ran like hell for a few minutes, until someone heard another set of faint twin shots.
Then everyone cowered in the dirt for the more than 30 seconds it took for the two shells to fly towards the rebels and explode in random places, which grew closer and closer with each double volley.
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's army had turned the usually languid lanes near Mirusuvil, 18 miles east of Jaffna town, into a terrifying life-or-death maze.
Approaching machine-gun fire indicated a few Indian ground scouts were rapidly advancing towards the handful of rebels.
"The Indians are coming," said a 15-year-old Tiger who grabbed a hand grenade and assault rifle and disappeared towards the shooting.
Despite the 20,000 Indian troops' obvious overwhelming superiority in heavy weaponry and air support, Sri Lanka's overall 2,500 Tigers still enjoy several key advantages.
The ethnic Tamil rebels know the complex lanes and jungles here in the northern Jaffna Peninsula, because this is the heartland of this island's 2.7 million Tamil minority.
They are committed guerrilla fighters with experience dating back to 1972.
Any rebel captured alive bites a vial of white cyanide powder each wears around his neck.
More damning for the Indians is the almost universal sympathy, and in many cases active support, the peninsula's 850,000 Tamils offer the insurgents in their fight against Gandhi's troops.
The Indians, in contrast, are fighting in a foreign land, hurriedly invited by the Sri Lankan government because it could not crush the insurgents despite the past four years of repeated offensives.
"This is an alien territory for the Indians. We are staging a very good rebel war," said the Tigers' Political Theoretician Anton Balasingham, stroking his black goatee during an interview.
"One of our most deadly systems is the landmine. This they have never experienced.
"Every lane and every road is landmined."
As a result, Gandhi's soldiers in Jaffna town and much of the surrounding peninsula have entered a deadly, exploding spider web of mine wires.
"For more than 14 days, a superpower has tried to take over a small town," Balasingham said, referring to Gandhi's attempt to overrun rebels holding Jaffna town.
India claims to have killed 607 insurgents at a cost of more than 200 Indian soldiers' lives since Gandhi began his offensive Oct. 10.
Senior Sri Lankan military and intelligence officers, however, say the Indians are playing a numbers game and only 60 rebels have been killed.
The Marxist Tigers agree.
The Sri Lankans and the rebels also agree Gandhi's offensive killed more than 500 innocent civilians.
They say Gandhi's army is counting every dead civilian as a dead guerrilla.
India denies the charge but refuses to detail civilian casualties in its offensives which relies heavily on mortar and artillery bombardment across much of the now-ravaged peninsula.
Gandhi's bombing was so intense, half a million Tamil civilians fled their homes, officials said.
The Tigers admit they will not be able to defend their strongholds in Jaffna town and the surrounding peninsula for much longer, because India can pour an unlimited amount of troops into the area.
So, like rebels throughout the world, they are retreating from superior forces and rising up elsewhere in the jungle-covered northeast of the island.
The Tigers also plan to deploy "Black Tigers" who have vowed to conduct devastating suicide missions against the enemy, rebel leaders said.
"We are not a match for the massive Indian army. Jaffna is systematically being taken over by them," the LTTE theoretician said.
"It is true that the fall of Jaffna will have an impact on the psyche of the Tamil people, but that doesn't mean an end to the Tamil resistance.
"It will take years and years for the Indian army to crush us," Balasingham added.
Morale among the Tigers, meanwhile, is high.
"If the LTTE has enough weapons, if any country can give them to us, we can beat the Indians," said a Tiger commander deployed in a residential lane behind Indian army lines near Kopay North, three miles northeast of Jaffna town.
Code-named Kanti, the 21-year-old rebel was nursing his bandaged left forearm which was punctured by a bullet on Oct. 13 -- his first injury in four years of being a Tiger.
"Two hundred very young youths joined the Tigers during the past two weeks," said another guerrilla, code-named Puddan, shouting above distant pairs of mortar explosions.
"They are 10 to 15 years old."
The Tigers warn India will learn the same deadly, wasteful lesson the U.S. learned in Vietnam, and the Russians are experiencing in Afghanistan, by entering a no-win war.
The LTTE also expects international opinion to soon turn against Gandhi as more innocent Tamil civilians are killed by his troops.
"The Indian army does not fight very good," said Nandhan, 20, who dropped out of math class two years ago to become a Tiger.
"They are using shells as if on the Pakistan or Chinese border," he added before warning his comrades to hide under trees to avoid an approaching helicopter.
"The Indians are not prepared to fight guerrillas."
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