Bombshell (22 page)

Prabhakaran was personally credited with establishing the separate unit for female cadres. He was confident that women had the potential for military training and combat. Prabhakaran was determined that women should have equal opportunity for participation in all aspects of armed struggle and issued a statement of equal rights on International Women's Day, March 8, 1992:

Today young women have taken up arms to liberate our land. They have made supreme sacrifices to this cause, to the amazement of the world. I am proud to say that the birth, growth, and expansion of the women's military wing is a remarkable achievement, which marked a historical turning point in our struggle.
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Four years later, Prabhakaran further empowered Tamil women, saying, “For the awakening of a nation and the salvation of womanhood, the Tamil Eelam revolutionary woman has transformed herself into a tigress! Fierce and fiery, she has taken up arms to fight injustice.”
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The LTTE was adept at contextualizing the notions of martyrdom and selflessness into Tamil society. Peter Schalk, a professor of religion at Uppsala University, described the ideology
of self-sacrifice employed by the LTTE as
tiyäkam
or “abandonment (of life),” a rather specifically Indian form of martyrdom cultivated in both male and female fighters. The abandonment of life (
tiyäkam
), for the Black Tiger is not suicide, but a gift of self-sacrifice that has Christian nuances. “A martyr of the LTTE has not chosen like the Christian martyr to suffer. The concept of
tiyäkam
that has its roots in the last section of the Bhagavad-Gita was revived in the struggle for independence of India.”
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Peter Schalk considers that the LTTE ”martyr” is ready to get killed so that some others may be liberated.

Using these precedents for the concept of self-sacrifice, Prabhakaran established a special unit of the LTTE composed of specially selected individuals trained for suicide bombing operations.
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“Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's real genius was to build a culture of sacrifice and martyrdom around his guerrilla force, with himself as demi-god leader.”
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Prabhakaran stressed that he had “groomed his weak brethren into a strong weapon called the Black Tigers. They possessed an iron will, yet their hearts were still soft. They could perceive their interests to prevent their own annihilation. Yet they did not fear death. They eagerly awaited the day they would die. This was the era of the Black Tigers. No force on earth could suppress the uprising of Tamils who would seek freedom.”
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According to critics of the LTTE, Prabhakaran used women as cannon fodder. The women were segregated and had no real power. Detractors further allege that it was the practice of the LTTE leadership to use women cadres on the most vulnerable frontiers. Not so, according to Tiger supporter Adele Ann Wilby (who was married to LTTE leader Anton Balasingham): “Women such as these belong to a totally new world, a world outside a normal woman's life … They have taken up a life that bears little resemblance at all to the ordinary existence of women. Training and carrying weapons,
confronting battle conditions, enduring the constant emotional strain of losing close associates, facing death almost every day, are situations that most women not only wish to avoid, but feel ill-atease with. But not the women fighters of the LTTE. They have literally flourished under such conditions and created for them not only a new women's military structure but also a legend of fighting capability and bravery.”
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While the women fighters were exalted by their supporters, it remains the case that many of them had been the victims of abuse, assault, or rape. The LTTE explicitly used this fact as leverage, telling the women that they could either be victims of the state or join the organization and fight the aggressors. Large billboards that lined the dirt roads throughout the northern part of the island showed clearly that Sri Lankan soldiers were likely to rape Tamil women, whose only chance of maintaining their chastity was to become Tigers and fight back. Still other women, as we shall see, were not merely pressured to join but were actually kidnapped or sold into the organization.

Those who had not been coerced found other reasons to become Tigers. Peer pressure was a factor: young women and girls who were friends tended to join the Tigers in groups. Others were influenced by personal experience. Tamil sources recounted to me how one woman joined after her boyfriend was arrested, killed, and his corpse left in the village market for all to see. Another told me that one night she was alone at home thinking and listening to LTTE songs; the next day she and a few of her friends left their school to sign up. Once one girl in a village joined, there was a snowball effect of others wanting to join the organization too.
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Once in, members were in for keeps. Few ever betrayed the movement and escape was exceedingly difficult—and more than likely to result in death. It appears that it was also much more difficult for women to escape than it was for men. Two women
on the east coast who had been kidnapped by the LTTE ran away from the LTTE base camp and sought refuge at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugess (UNHCR); they were found dead days later, en route to an interview with this author. These women faced an impossible dilemma. Their initial disappearance from their village could mean only one thing: that they had joined the LTTE. If they escaped and returned to the village, they had to report immediately to the police station where, as members of an outlawed organization, they were subject to detention and the abuse that was sure to follow. If they returned (or were forced to return) to the LTTE camp, they would be branded as traitors, which would carry an immediate death sentence. For women, escape from the organization was dangerous at best.

IN TAMIL TERRITORY

Among the first things I noticed when I traveled in the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka in 2002 were the ubiquitous barbed wire and the signs, with images of smiling skulls and crossbones, that warned succinctly of the presence of land mines. Barbed-wire fences crisscrossed the lush green countryside. Corrugated-metal shacks riddled with bullet holes were visible evidence of the long civil war and the intense fighting that had scarred this place. The roads in Tamil Eelam were not paved. There was no running water or electricity and raw sewage ran freely in the gutters. The Sri Lankan government neglected the infrastructure in the Tamil areas, a fact that became even more obvious in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami, when international aid was distributed strictly along ethnic lines. The majority of the Tamils reside in the most basic rural settings.

As I traveled through the Vanni region, pictures of suicide bombers and martyrs were displayed everywhere. Everyone knew the bombers' names. Their images, printed up in slick pamphlets
and distributed at Heroes' Day celebrations, were collector's items. Glossy booklets listed the name, date of birth, and age at death of every martyr, along with the time of the attack, where the attack occurred, and a photograph of the bomber's face. Young Tamils knew their names the way American children know the names of sports stars. The organization had actually toyed with the idea of issuing trading cards of the martyrs. Young people looked up to them and wanted to emulate their heroic acts of courage.

Among the people I spoke with, most were inspired by an extreme ethnic nationalism and complete dedication to Velupillai Prabhakaran. Others told reporter Francis Harrison, “We are given moral support by our leader and we have reached this position only because of him.”
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Prabhakaran was well aware of his charisma and his superstar impact. One of the highlights of a suicide bomber's preparation for his or her mission was the last meal he or she enjoyed with LTTE leaders. In some cases, the would-be bomber had dinner with Prabhakaran himself, who at the end of the meal offered to do the dishes, a symbolic act of great significance in a society where men rarely perform menial chores.

The question remains: Were the women in the movement brainwashed or did they join willingly? The answer is, likely a bit of both. In the pages that follow, I introduce three female combatants, Darshika, Puhalchudar, and Menake, all of whom were groomed to follow in Dhanu's infamous footsteps. All three were members of the Tamil Tigers' elite suicide bombing squad, the Freedom Birds division of the Black Tigers. Darshika and Puhalchudar awaited their final orders for a suicide mission, while Menake languished in prison after a failed suicide bomb attempt.

DARSHIKA

Ultimately, the women of the LTTE were motivated to join the organization and to fight the Sri Lankan state for a mixture of
political and personal reasons. One suicide bomber defined the combination of factors that drove her to act succinctly: “The harassment that I and my parents have suffered at the hands of the army makes me want to take revenge … It is a question of Tamil pride, especially after so much sacrifice. There is no escape.”
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Darshika joined the movement as a result of personal loss and from a firm belief that the Tamil Tigers was the only group that could provide her with security. She was twenty-four when she was interviewed by Norwegian filmmaker Beate Arnestad, but had left home to join the Malathi regiment of the LTTE when she was twelve. She was eventually promoted to the Black Tigers.

Darshika's father was killed in the center of Jaffna, at the junction close to the bus station. According to Darshika's mother, he had not been a man of influence, was not politically involved, and never discussed politics at home. He was a minor official at the post office who just minded his own business. One morning after he had left for work the Sri Lankan air force began bombing and strafing the town. A bomb fell near the bus station and Darshika's father was one of twenty-six people who were killed. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Darshika was devastated by the loss. According to her mother, she ceased to have any feelings whatsoever. She became numb. Darshika made up her mind then to join the Tigers and aspire for a place in the suicide squad. Darshika's account agreed with her mother's. Since the enemy took her father, she said, she had witnessed murder with her own eyes. She said that the government routinely killed civilians in the Tamil areas. They even attacked areas that would be considered sanctuaries elsewhere. People ran to the churches for safety, even people who were not Christians, assuming that the government would never violate the sanctity of the house of God. But they bombed the churches too. Even when it was well known that villagers were taking shelter in the churches,
the churches became a target of choice. The blood flowed freely in the churches, Dharshika said.
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Darshika remembered being harassed by the Sri Lankan military when she was very young. The army would turn up suddenly in their vehicles when the children went off to school. The girls were singled out for special attention, and not the kind that made them feel safe. They were afraid. Even the ten-year-old girls were scared of what the soldiers might do to them. Darshika and the others felt defenseless.
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Her mother said that the military regularly targeted women. When they mounted house-to-house searches, the soldiers would touch them unnecessarily. Even when the women tried to hide, the soldiers would find them. In the end, Darshika could not go to school or church. She felt like a prisoner in her own home.
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While Darshika was prompted by the loss of her father to join the organization, this was not necessarily what made her stay or what made her willing to kill others.
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She also had a political motivation of her own. Darshika explained that she and her friends were fighting for their homeland: “A country where people can freely live. That is why our leader is carrying on this struggle, and we are proud to be part of it. Outsiders have not seen our true face. That is why they call us terrorists. To be a terrorist we fight for true justice.”
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Darshika did not seek to kill the man who had killed her father—which would be a normal vengeful response. Rather, she joined an organization that sought to bring down the corrupt and evil government that was responsible for Tamil oppression.

As a fully committed member of the Black Tigers, Darshika was thoroughly imbued with the notions of death and sacrifice that were part and parcel of the organization. Darshika said that neither she nor the other girls cared about death. That's just how it was. As Black Tigers, they would be told how and when they would die.
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In a perverse way, the women saw this as a form of empowerment. Their certainty gave them a kind of inner strength. Darshika's
fatalism was reinforced by her intense loyalty to the LTTE's cause and specifically to Prabhakaran. She was raised a Catholic and initially aspired to join a religious order and devote herself to God, but after her father's death, her passion and devotion switched to the “cult of Prabhakaran.” Her faith may come as a surprise to those who saw the conflict as one between Hindus and Buddhists; many Tamil Tigers were Christian and the organization reflected the ethnic and religious demographics of the Tamil population as a whole. Most Tigers were Hindu, but the LTTE's ideology was secular and nationalist. Yet the worship of Prabhakaran matched the religious dedication of any jihadi to Islam.

Time
magazine's Alex Perry understood this dynamic. For him, there was no doubt that that the Tigers genuinely loved Prabhakaran and never questioned anything he did or said. His name was so revered and inspired such awe that Tigers would not actually use it. Instead they referred to him as “the Leader.” In every Tiger's home, Prabhakaran's picture sat on a desk where you might expect family photographs. Daya Somasundaram, a Jaffna psychiatrist, alleged that the faithful made pilgrimages to Prabhakaran's former home in Valveddithurai to fill little boxes of soil “like a holy ritual, as though they [were] collecting water from the Ganges.” For many of Somasundaram's patients, Prabhakaran was higher than their own god.
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