Summary
Contents
Subject index
This is the story of the man who defined the armed struggle for an independent Eelam for over three decades and who lived by the gun and died by the gun—Velupillai Prabhakaran. A home-grown guerilla who built the LTTE into a ruthless war machine and controlled its world-wide network from his hideout and ruled territories under his control with an iron fist; who defied the world and eliminated whoever came in his way, including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; who had fighters ready to kill and die in thousands for him … yet he failed, leaving the future of Sri Lankan Tamils a big question mark.
The book is a first-person account by the author based on his innumerable visits to Sri Lanka during its turbulent years. He looks at the Prabhakaran era, a critical phase in the country's history, objectively, without being judgmental.
The Battle for Jaffna
The Battle for Jaffna
On 11 November 1995, I was relaxing with the morning coffee and papers in my room in Taj Samudra, Colombo, overlooking the Sri Lankan army headquarters when I heard a loud explosion. It was a suicide attack by the LTTE that left 12 persons, 9 of them civilians, dead. A Taj hotel pageboy who looked out of the sixth floor window was mistaken for a sniper and shot dead. The hotel itself was encircled in the fear that militants might be holed up there.
India Today photographer Krishnaswamy, who was on his first visit to Sri Lanka, rushed to my room and the two of us, accompanied by Nirupama Subramanian, then with India Today and now with The Hindu, ...
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