Quotes of the Day

The story of how Nurse Eelavany came to shoot 15 people with a machine gun begins when she was 12. It was 1990 and government artillery shells and helicopter gunships had been pounding her Tamil homeland for seven years. But they had somehow missed her and the people she cared for. She loved school and dreamed of becoming a doctor. Then one day she was playing in the street in front of her home in northeastern Sri Lanka when she saw an army shell blow her neighbor's head clean off. "I remember the hatred building up in me," says Eelavany. "I remember thinking, 'I should go and kill the person that did this'."

Two years later, without telling her parents, she marched out of school and went to a recruitment office of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). She traded in her school uniform for the Tigers' striped fatigues and a cyanide capsule on a neck string. "It was the happiest day of my life," she says. "The Tigers became my family." She trained as a medic—her school was the battlefield—and by 22 was a crack shot and veteran of eight years in combat. Then, on Sept. 17, 2000, her unit was called to support 30 comrades surrounded by 150 government troops in the northern Jaffna peninsula. Eelavany's unit attacked, and when the soldier next to her fell, Eelavany picked up his AK-56 and returned fire. Under a furious half-hour assault by the Tigers, the government troops ran. Although she'd never killed before, within 30 minutes Eelavany had cut down 15 enemy soldiers. "In training, we use birds for target practice," she says. "Soldiers are so much easier to hit."

It's not just the nurses who are different in Tiger territory. As Norwegian-brokered peace talks between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government begin this week in Thailand, the outside world is beginning to discover what 19 years of Asia's bloodiest civil war has done to the place. The causes of the fighting are well-known: since independence in 1948, the Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated government has concertedly discriminated against the Hindu Tamils of the north, denying them government jobs and money and making Sinhala the official national language. After decades of having their grievances ignored or violently suppressed, in 1983 the Tamil Tigers took up arms. But for most of the conflict, little more was known of the Tigers than that their shadowy hand was behind a series of devastating suicide bomb attacks across Sri Lanka's southern cities. What emerged in scattered reports from inside the northeast was a scarcely credible collection of tales of terrifying courage and ruthlessness. Bands of guerrillas wiping out entire army camps of 2,000 soldiers. Suicide bombs built into bikinis. Boys and girls as young as 13 pushing back not one, but two national armies. (In 1990, the Tigers beat off the Indian army—initially sent in as a peacekeeping force—when it tried to disarm them.)

Still less was known about the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. A plump, baby-faced, small-time smuggler turned guerrilla, the 47-year-old has lived as a recluse for the past two decades. But in hiding, his legend only grew. Southern Sri Lankan parents would tell their children Prabhakaran would get them if they didn't behave. Adults would whisper stories about sumptuous eve-of-mission feasts he hosted for suicide squads, his pious forswearing of cigarettes and alcohol, his pet leopard cub and his inconsolable grief after its slaughter by enemy troops.

Only now, since a ceasefire last Christmas Eve stopped the body count at around 65,000 and ended the northeast's isolation, has the world been able to steal a look inside Tiger territory. The central question of this weeks' peace talks is whether Tamil Eelam (the separatists' name for the territory they claim) should secede from Sri Lanka or simply be allowed a high degree of autonomy. But a glance at the region reveals that it is already a nation in all but law. The Tigers rule this land undefeated by the outside and unopposed within it. And what they have created may be the strangest nation on earth.

Nearly two decades of war have rid "Tigerland" of even a passing similarity to the rest of the country. Whole towns have been flattened, entire families wiped out. Eight hundred thousand refugees lived for years in camps or in the open jungle, eating leaves and grass and using sticky palmyrah palm fruit for soap. Hundreds of thousands are now returning to the ruins of their former homes. They talk of how getting food and water is still a daily—and often vain—struggle against minefields and crossfire. Scavenging has evolved into a primary skill. Old ammunition crates have become floorboards and flower boxes, fences are fashioned out of flattened oil barrels, and ripped up railway tracks are the building material of choice. Even the way people dress has changed. While civilians were slowly reduced to rags, the Tigers brought in a uniform of khaki stripes for combat, and short-sleeved checked shirts and dark baggy pleated pants back at base. For the women, gone are the little princess dresses, the long dark hair and silver ankle bracelets of old. Instead they braid their hair in stern looping buns and decorate themselves with dog tags and poison vials.

But even amid the rubble, the Tigers operated a functioning state. Until a few weeks ago, the northeast still had no post, no telephones, and precious little electricity. Yet the Tigers have set up their own government, hospitals, welfare system and courts, which judge according to Tiger law. (In one quirk, witnesses are required to look directly into the judge's eyes as they give their oath of truth. The judge then rules on their credibility.) The Tigers have their own language, Hindu culture and time zone (half an hour behind Colombo). They run their own police force, although the devastation means there is little to steal. In this cratered wasteland of deprivation and despair, the Tigers are the one thing to hold firm. "They are the Tamil people's only true champion," says the bishop of the Catholic church in Jaffna, Thomas Savundranayagam. "No one else has had the courage to stand up for their freedom."

There is no doubt the unquestioning love the Tigers have for Prabhakaran is genuine. The guerrilla leader's name inspires such awe that Tigers won't use it, referring to him instead as the "Leader." As in every Tiger's home, Prabhakaran's picture sits on Eelavany's desk where you might expect family photographs. "The Leader can do no wrong," she declares. Despite being granted only a few brief audiences, she says, "I could fill a thousand books with all the wonderful memories of him." Jaffna psychiatrist Daya Somasundaram says the faithful make pilgrimages to Prabhakaran's former home in nearby Valveddithurai to fill little boxes of soil "like a holy ritual, as though they are collecting water from the Ganges." He adds: "Many of my patients regard Prabhakaran as higher than their own god."

And if Prabhakaran is divine, then suicide bombers and hunger strikers join him in death. "I believe the martyrs are gods," says Eelavany. The notion of self-sacrifice, elevated above all other virtues, has a mesmeric, mystic hold over Tiger territory. Like Christian saints, famous suicide bombers and hunger strikers have their own days of remembrance. Tiger villages are often dominated by martyrs' graveyards with thousands of headstones, sometimes near purpose-built viewing halls where villagers can gaze at the bodies of dead battlefield heroes.

Discipline and virtue too have been taken to extraordinary levels. Under Tiger rule, crime has almost disappeared. Music is limited to revolutionary songs, drama to epics about the Tigers and films to action flicks, mostly homemade movies using real war footage. Life choices—such as selecting a husband or wife—are handed over to the LTTE, although most Tigers vehemently deny interest in sex or relationships. Many Tiger disciples were recruited in their early teens. In some areas, the Tigers conscripted a child from each family, ensuring that young minds were rigorously trained to be loyal to the movement. It is Prabhakaran's own zeal that inspires this high-minded devotion, says third in command and political head Tamilchelvan: "They love him and adore him as mother, father, brother or god."

Of course, the Tigers are no pussy cats. Like many rebel bands fighting for ostensibly noble causes, they are ruthless and undemocratic, and have not been above using terror. In the 1980s they mercilessly annihilated other Tamil groups foolhardy enough to challenge them, and residents of the administrative capital Kilinochchi say that until recently government spies were hung from lampposts in the town, a wooden board strung around their necks detailing their crimes. Petty offenders too were punished severely: the standard sentence for prostitution was 10 years in a sweltering underground Tiger jail. As for deserters, if caught, they were simply shot.

But the Tigers' claim to speak for a unified Tamil people has a palpable justification. They won favor for their intolerance of corruption and promotion of conservative Hindu values. And years of relentless suffering drew all Tamils together against a common foe, says 35-year-old prawn fisherman Paramasivam Sivarajalingam. "If someone is coming to kill me, I have to support my protectors. I can't just wait for my enemy to come." Adds Thanarajah, 56, a Kilinochchi education administrator: "If they had ruled only through fear, as many people think, they would not have lasted. But the LTTE looked after us. They showed us how to make bunkers, how to behave if bombers came above and you were caught out on a road, how to hide, what to do." As conditions worsened and food and medicine ran short, "the LTTE sent people round to villages to give cooking demonstrations, showing people how to collect and cook certain leaves that we don't usually eat."

In many ways, the Tigers' sense of duty may be as valuable in peace as in war. If the talks end the fighting, the journey back from the brink will require invincible resolve. Cadres like Eelavany say they are ready. She now runs a clinic on the east coast, the only one for 60 kilometers, where she sees about 100 patients a day. As well as scores of victims of landmines, malaria and snakebites, half her patients are also malnourished and anemic. "I work 24 hours a day for the people," she says. "I try to be like Florence Nightingale." Selvi Vairaperumal, 26, a former fighter who joined at 16 when army shelling killed her parents, says the rebuilding effort has given her new purpose after losing her leg to cannon fire in 1998. "At first I thought I should not be a burden to my comrades, so I left the LTTE," she says. But the Tigers then gave her a job at its women's rehabilitation center, looking after infants orphaned or traumatized by war, or abandoned by destitute parents. "I feel so happy coming to work," she says. "I suffered a lot in the past, but that helps me understand the children here."

But while the conviction of such women is not in doubt, their skills are. Eelavany's methods are rudimentary at best. After a few seconds' consultation, she tells a chronic migraine sufferer to bathe more regularly, while a fisherman with a stomach cramp is instructed not to ride his bicycle. It is this same eager, amateur spirit that recently persuaded former fighters to start a 10-year effort to clear minefields with hoes and rakes. So far scores have been injured—two losing their legs—and three have died.

Meanwhile, some question whether the lessons the Tigers learned in war are right for peace. Despite lofty assurances by Tiger leaders of approaching democracy, there are few signs of free thought or free speech. Asked about relaxing discipline and allowing dissent, Tamilchelvan says: "Our governance will contain all the norms of democracy." But he himself refers to other elected Tamil parties in the south as "moderate," and adds that the Tigers "are the only leadership to tell the people what to do."

The biggest handicap, however, may be the combined effect of both war and the Tigers on families. "In many cases the family unit has collapsed," says Kethesh Loganathan of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo. Education administrator Thanarajah says he gave up on the idea of being a true father to his three children years ago. "I remember many times when we heard the whirring sound of mortar fire my children would run into our room and throw their arms round us. They were looking to us, their parents, for protection and yet all we could do was say 'It's alright.' We couldn't protect them." Many children turned to the Tigers as "saviors," he says. Vijayaratnam Vytelingam, 58, says his daughter Sathiapriya Parwathi joined the Tigers at 16 as it was "the only way to get out of the house, to escape." She was killed by machine-gun fire four years later, three months before her 27-year-old brother was shot dead by a sniper.

The size of the task facing Tigerland is starkly visible at Elephant Pass, north of Kilinochchi. The narrow causeway spanning a turquoise lagoon was the most hotly contested war zone. In January 2000, 10 years after the pass first fell to the government, the Tigers sent five suicide bombers into an army camp on the north side. They blew up all the government heavy artillery and most of their ammunition. As the troops fled, other rebels cut them down. No villager who saw the crows and pelicans picking at the corpses afterward could dispute the Tigers' claim that they killed 2,000 soldiers for the loss of just 38 rebels.

It is here that Paramasivam Sivarajalingam and his family have returned after 12 years in a village 18 kilometers away, to rebuild their ruined hut beside the lagoon. It is almost impossible to imagine the scenes Sivarajalingam describes before the war, when his family made up to $100 a day selling giant prawns. Restaurateurs and exporters supplying the world's finest kitchens would drive up in convoys from Colombo, he says. "Sometimes they would fight each other on the road to buy our catch." Now, even if he has the money for nets, all Sivarajalingam would be likely to catch would be sea mines, or skulls.

A few hundred meters to the north of Sivarajalingam's shack in a barren sandscape of dunes and flats lie the scattered remains of the government troops that fought here. All around, there are helmets, boots and skeletons. Sandstorms whistle over the blown-out bunkers these men died defending. The name "Corporal Gunaratne" scrawled on a vest is one of the few that time has not worn away. Sivarajalingam says the men here were caught in crossfire after their commanders fled without alerting them. It was a battle fought by forgotten soldiers over nothing. That men died for this ghostly desert speaks bleakly of the nightmare from which this nation is emerging. Years may pass before Tigerland can achieve a semblance of normality. And first it will have to bury the dead.

• alex perry / Kilinochchi
• After 19 years of civil war and 65,000 deaths, the Tamil rebels are finally talking peace. In Tigerland a new and strange nation is being born