Why life today is a struggle of a different kind for former Sri Lankan LTTE fighters

Like many other former LTTE fighters, mostly settled in the island nation’s northern and eastern regions, Amudan slaves for hours every day to pay off debts incurred in the years since his surrender and to meet his family’s basic needs. Even a day’s rest means additional worry.

The thought ‘how long would he be able to cope with life like this’ leaves him brooding and bitter. Often, he wonders whether this was why he had quit school at age 13 to sign up with the Tamil Tigers, with the ambition to carve out an independent state for Sri Lankan Tamils.

“Our life is an unending struggle,” he tells The Federal in a telephonic interview from Kilinochchi. The small bustling town was the LTTE’s administrative hub just before it was militarily crushed in 2009. His voice betrays distress and trauma.

Like thousands of rebels, Amudan surrendered to the Sri Lankan military in 2009. By then, he had suffered shrapnel wounds in the head and waist and lost a leg, preventing him from taking up any hard manual work. He served three years in prison before being officially ‘rehabilitated’. He is also diabetic.

Even with a Jaipur foot fitted in 2014, he found it difficult to get a job. More so, since he had not even completed school education when he became a ‘boy’ guerrilla. He tried his hand at carpentry and odd jobs before taking a loan to lease the auto-rickshaw.

The 44-year-old explains that he must pay the financier nearly Rs. 30,000 a month for another one-and-a-half years before the vehicle can become his. This means he has to somehow earn more than that amount to manage expenses for his family, which includes a wife — also a former LTTE fighter — and a school-going son.

With Sri Lanka appearing to be in a perennial economic crisis since 2022, all he earns seems to exhausted after paying the monthly loan repayment and taking care of basic needs.

“We have gotten used to this tough post-war life,” Amudan says in resignation. “What we can never get over is that the Tamil society seems to have simply forgotten us and the taunts we face at times.”

Also read: Professional milestones to personal moments — what Umar and Sharjeel have lost since 2020 arrest

Amudan’s is not a unique story. Across Sri Lanka’s Tamil regions, where a bloody separatist struggle raged for a quarter century, thousands of former LTTE guerrillas — men and women now mostly in their 40s and 50s — lead a life far removed from what they had dreamt of when they embraced militancy. It is a distress story not widely known, rarely highlighted.

Another such Tamil, known by his nom de guerre Rangan, started selling kerosene and engine oil in Kilinochchi this January, after struggling with painful physical labour for years.

With eight wounds received in his years with the LTTE, he had earlier tried his hand at running a garments store, which his friends had helped open, but it had to be shut down during the Covid pandemic.

Rangan, now 55, had taken part in innumerable clashes against the Sri Lankan military during his two decades with the Tigers. After surrendering in 2009, he spent 63 months in prison.

Freedom, when it came, did not bring peace, he claims. Intelligence personnel allegedly hounded him for a few years, repeatedly asking what he was up to and how he earned money. “Remember, we could have killed you,” an officer would purportedly tell him.

Rangan, who lost his first wife to artillery shelling during the insurgency years, says he undergoes severe physical distress every now and then owing to shrapnel pieces embedded in his head and hand, making heavy physical work near-impossible, as in the case of Amudan.

“At times I get splitting headaches,” says the man who joined the LTTE just after the Indian army deployed in Sri Lanka in 1987 (under the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987) withdrew in March 1990. “I also get needlessly angry. When I worked as a mason earlier, I could not cope owing to the physical torment.”

Also read: How in Haryana villages, dreams of a foreign job are landing young men at Russian battlefields

An estimated 12,000 fighters from the LTTE gave themselves up in April-May 2009 as one of the longest-running insurgencies in the world ended in a rout for the Tigers. All were jailed for varying periods. Since most had not even completed school when they joined the separatist campaign, willingly or otherwise, the lack of education and skills other than fighting guerrilla warfare came in the way of finding gainful employment.

This forced most former fighters to embrace any manual work they could find because they were desperate to make a living.

“You won’t believe it, there have been days when we could afford only a little rice, buttermilk and salt as food,” says Rangan, who married for a second time — another ex-guerrilla —after walking out of prison. “It is thanks to my wife’s small job with the government that I got into the oil business on a small scale this year.”

According to Rangan, the LTTE’s defeat meant that the world turned upside down for those who survived decades of bloodshed.

“Today, we lack dignity. The same Tamil people for whom we fought now look down upon us. Nobody gives us decent jobs, either in the government or the private sector.”

After a pause, he adds: “I ‘died’ in 2009 when I surrendered. Now, I ‘die’ every day owing to the way people shame us as a defeated lot. Believe it or not, I have even been told on my face: ‘Why didn’t you die?’,”

Rangan says he was born and brought up in the northwestern district of Mannar but shifted to Kilinochchi, about 80 km away, after the surrender because Tamil folks made fun of him. Not many knew his background in Kilinochchi.

“The same people who addressed us affectionately when we were armed would look at me and taunt, ‘So, you got your (Tamil) Eelam?’ I could not take this. It was shameful. So, I quit Mannar for good.”

Tamil sources in Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Batticaloa claim 50-60 per cent of all those who surrendered in 2009 continue to face difficulties, although insurgency ended almost 17 years ago.

SR (identified by initials only), who was recruited into the LTTE in 1985 and who remained a fighter till 2009, works as a “coolie” at Paranthan in northern Sri Lanka. He, too, had a lament.

“A member of the Tamil diaspora promised some 10 years back to help build a toilet in my house,” SR claims. “I am still waiting for that pledge to be fulfilled… When I hear the diaspora and Tamil Nadu politicians talk about Tamil aspirations and so on, I get furious. They have all let us down.”

A woman from Mullaitivu speaking on the condition of anonymity says she does not allow her husband, who was an LTTE fighter for many years, to step out of the house because he gets into a fight if someone makes fun of him. There were days when he returned home with bruises, she adds.

According to a Tamil source, life is most harsh and painful for those former guerrillas who were severely wounded, suffer from multiple health issues, have lost limbs or partial or full eyesight, or are completely bedridden.

A group of Tamils, some based in the West and some in Sri Lanka, including former LTTE members, have been regularly caring for those who cannot manage on their own owing to physical constraints or health-related problems.

The Sri Lankan government gives modest monetary support to disabled guerrillas and some ex-rebels, leaving the vast majority to fend for themselves, say those The Federal spoke to. “Imagine, we now take money from a government which we fought for so long,” says a former female Tamil Tiger.

However, a majority of former guerrillas claim they struggle to make both ends meet. No one knows what will happen to all these men when they cannot work anymore.

Comparing their condition with those of some former insurgents in India and Nepal, Rangan insists that the ex-LTTE fighters got a far more raw deal than the others. "Naxalites who surrender in India receive rehabilitation packages. This is also the case with the Maoists in Nepal," he says. "Why are we deprived of dignity and respect?"

Also read: Emergency era to Nepal agitation: Decoding youth protests and what puts these movements at risk

Former militants and Tamil sources claim that while a section of the Tamil diaspora spread across the world does help, unscrupulous middlemen in the Tamil society often steal a part of the monetary support provided.

One ex-LTTE member in Mullaitivu alleges: “If someone sends, say, 100 pounds, we get 40 or 50. We know we are being cheated, but we can’t do anything. Those who know the diaspora members take our signatures or ask us to record a video presentation thanking them. All this is very disgusting.”

Another Tamil source added: “Many in the diaspora generously funded the LTTE war. But many among them now don’t care for those who actually fought the war.”

Some time back, one former LTTE woman guerrilla became so desperate after plunging into poverty that she purportedly moved into the Sinhalese-majority Anuradhapura district and entered prostitution.

Sources say, fortunately for her, a well-meaning former LTTE activist rescued her and arranged her marriage with another former guerrilla living in a European country.

Another ex-woman fighter in Mannar — a single mother — says she was forced to sell off one of her kidneys some months back to pay off her mounting debts.

Tamil sources claim professional moneylenders exploit the former Tigers, aware of their desperate need for money and their failure to access the banking system, owing to a lack of educational and professional qualifications.

The best placed among the ex-guerrillas today are those who were senior in the Tiger ranks but did not get killed or those who were with the LTTE’s ancillary units and never picked up a gun, say sources.

“There is one former LTTE leader who is known to own three houses in Jaffna and Kilinochchi,” informs a journalist in the eastern town of Batticaloa. “Some 10 per cent of ex-fighters lead comfortable lives. The majority battles penury.”

“It is a terrible life,” says Amudan. “Since I have diabetes, I keep getting boils on my legs, making even walking a daunting task some days. But what can I do? Where can I go?”

A former decorated fighter of the LTTE’s Charles Antony Regiment says he has been forced to take up physical labour in a northern Sri Lankan town to make ends meet.

Rangan scornfully questions a section of Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka.

“They use us on emotive nationalist issues. If they win elections, they forget us. If they lose elections, they simply say: ‘I could have helped had I won. What can I do now?’. We know we are being exploited.”

For the former Tigers, life has not just been a shattering of the dreams that had once propelled them into becoming separatist guerrilla fighters; it is daily living with and walking on the shards of that dream.