IPKF and LTTE

IPKF:

The Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War was the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka intended to perform a peacekeeping role. The deployment followed the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord between India (Rajiv Gandhi) and Sri Lanka (Jayawardhane) of 1987 which was intended to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between militant Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists, principally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Sri Lankan military.

While most Tamil militant groups laid down their weapons and agreed to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict, the LTTE refused to disarm its fighters. Keen to ensure the success of the accord, the IPKF then tried to demobilize the LTTE by force and ended up in full-scale conflict with them. The three-year-long conflict was also marked by the IPKF being accused of committing various abuses of human rights by many human rights groups as well as some within the Indian media. The IPKF also soon met stiff opposition from the Tamils.

The original intention was that the IPKF would not be involved in large scale military operations. IPKF was supposed to protect Tamil's interest who are of Indian origin. However IPKF lost its direction and took the side of Sri Lankan army instead of LTTE. The Jaffna University Helidrop was the first of the operations launched by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) aimed at disarming the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) by force and securing the town of Jaffna,  operation ended disastrously. However, after a few months, the IPKF engaged the LTTE in a series of battles and liquidating Tamil cadres. Although casualties among the IPKF mounted, and calls for the withdrawal of the IPKF from both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict grew, Rajiv Gandhi refused to remove the IPKF from Sri Lanka.

Nationalist sentiment led many Sinhalese to oppose the continued Indian presence in Sri Lanka. These led to the Sri Lankan government's call for India to quit the island, and they allegedly entered into a secret deal with the LTTE that culminated in a ceasefire. But the LTTE and IPKF continued to have frequent hostilities. In April 1989, the Ranasinghe Premadasa government ordered the Sri Lanka Army to clandestinely hand over arms consignments to the LTTE to fight the IPKF and its proxy Tamil National Army (TNA).

However, following Rajiv Gandhi's defeat in Indian parliamentary elections in December 1989, the new prime Minister V. P. Singh ordered the withdrawal of the IPKF, and their last ship left Sri Lanka on 24 March 1990. The 32-month presence of the IPKF in Sri Lanka resulted in the deaths of 1200 Indian soldiers and over 5000 Sri Lankans. The cost for the Indian government was estimated at over ₹10.3 billion.

Rajiv Gandhi's Assassination:

The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the ex-Prime Minister of India, occurred as a result of a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, India on 21 May 1991. At least 14 others were also killed. It was carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, alias Dhanu. The attack was blamed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant organization from Sri Lanka; at the time India had just ended its involvement, through the Indian Peace Keeping Force, in the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Support for the LTTE in India dropped considerably in 1991, after the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide bomber named Thenmozhi Rajaratnam alis Dhanu. The Indian press has subsequently reported that Prabhakaran decided to eliminate Gandhi as he considered the ex-Prime Minister to be against the Tamil liberation struggle and feared that he might re-induct the IPKF, which Prabhakaran termed the "satanic force", if he won the 1991 Indian general election. In 1998 a court in India presided over by Special Judge V. Navaneetham found the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran responsible for the assassination. In a 2006 interview, LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham stated regret over the assassination, although he stopped short of outright acceptance of responsibility for it. India remained an outside observer of the conflict, after the assassination.

During UPA regime, Sonia Gandhi wanted Colombo to decimate LTTE without finalising a Political Solution. In its attempt to pamper Rajapaksa to serve the agenda of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, India had betrayed the cause of Sri Lankan Tamils who have been struggling for equal rights with the majority Sinhalese. While the DMK, an important constituent of the UPA, remained passive content with amassing wealth, even as India extended military, material and moral support to Sri Lanka in its war on its Tamil citizens in the crucial 2008-2009 period, the AIADMK, voted to power in the Assembly election held in April, and its leader Jayalalitha, have chosen a proactive role in rescuing fellow Tamils across the Palk Bay who have been progressively reduced from second class citizenship they enjoyed since independence in 1948 to serfs of the Sinhalese.

David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, former foreign ministers of Britain and France respectively, after a recent visit to Sri Lanka, wrote: “Tamil life is treated as fourth or fifth class citizens. If foreign policy is about anything, it should be about stopping this kind of inhumanity.”

“Killing fields of Sri Lanka” showing naked Tamil prisoners shot in the head, dead bodies of women who had been raped and dumped on a truck, the immediate aftermath of shells landing on a hospital in a ‘no fire zone’ and the atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the final moments of the brutal civil war have left the people nauseated and shell-shocked. Tamil Nadu is on the boil for India’s contribution to the genocide Sri Lanka.

A small four-member group from India unanimously agreed that a military victory for one side without a political strategy to address the grievances of the Tamil community was unlikely to produce a lasting solution to the ethnic crisis. President Rajapaksa fully endorsed the group’s opinion that the solution to the crisis should emerge from within Sri Lanka and refined through international opinion, particularly from India.

The Indian government put Sonia Gandhi’s interest above national interest and actively assisted the brutal Sri Lankan genocide thus creating the quagmire Sri Lanka finds itself in. This is evident from the fact that while the whole world is seething at what they saw in the documentary, the government of India is deafeningly silent.

Murder of Prabhakaran:

President Rajapakse got the much needed opportunity to launch a military offensive against the Tigers in August 2006 when the LTTE blocked the sluice gates of an irrigation canal in the east over a dispute with the government on execution of a development project in the province. What began as a fight between the government and the LTTE over the canal issue escalated into a full-fledged war. It was the beginning of the end of the LTTE with the military notching one victory after the other.

On Monday May 18, 2009, Government commandos stormed into the last tiny patch of jungle held by the guerrillas, killing Tamil Tiger founder and leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his two deputies as they tried to flee the onslaught. Prabhakaran's son and heir apparent, along with the entire leadership Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were killed, the defence ministry said. The final battle marked the end of one of Asia's oldest and most brutal ethnic conflicts which left more than 70,000 dead from pitched battles, suicide attacks, bombings and assassinations. Authorities had been determined to capture or kill Prabhakaran amid fears his escape could have led to an attempt to rebuild the LTTE and usher in a new cycle of violence. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerged in the 1970s, with all-out war breaking out in the early 1980s as they pursued their struggle for an independent Tamil homeland on the Sinhalese-majority island.

Interestingly, polling for General Elections in India were completed on May 16, 2009 and results announced on May 19, 2009 in which Sonia Gandhi's Congress and UPA emerged victorious. Thereafter the death of Prabhakaran was announced by Sri Lanka despite the fact he was killed few days ago.

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