Senior Lieutenant Prasanna Chintaka Pathiraja spotted a man in difficulty a little distance from his Israeli-built Dvora Fast Attack Craft (FAC) patrolling the Mullaitivu seas one day in 1996.

As the bare bodied man approached the FAC, Pathiraja had ordered him to stop and then take off all his clothes before moving closer to the vessel as he feared the possibility of an LTTE suicide cadre targeting the vessel deployed off Mullaitivu town. Before being rescued by the Dvora crew, Pathiraja asked the man, who turned out to be a soldier who survivied the Mullaitivu debacle, struggling in choppy seas several questions to establish his identity.

Pathiraja’s boat had been among the vessels deployed off the north-eastern coast to rescue soldiers fleeing the area after the LTTE overran the isolated Mullaitivu base in July 1996. It was the first Brigade to collapse in the face of an LTTE offensive, humiliatingly captured within 48 hours. Reinforcements spearheaded by the elite Special Forces sent on an ill-fated rescue mission could not save the base, taking heavy losses themselves.

The battle now being waged on the Mullaitivu coast by the army is evidence that over the past two and half years the LTTE had lost its claim to be a conventional fighting force. The Tigers have been brought down to their knees - but at an unbelievably high price both in terms of men and material.

Pathiraja, now an officer holding the rank of Commander stationed in Trincomalee told The Sunday Island that Private Silva of the 6 VIR (Vijayabahu Infantry Regiment) was handed over to the then Commander Somathilaka Dissanayake, presently the Commander of the Northern Naval Area.

Pathiraja had been attached to Dissanayake’s FAC squadron. This writer had the opportunity to meet Pathiraja during a recent visit to Trincomalee. The VIR and 9 SR (Sinha Regiment) were almost wiped out when the LTTE took Mullaitivu in 1996.

Silva was one of the few survivors out of over 1,200 men deployed at the Mullaitivu base. He was called Ambalangoda Silva, Pathiraja said adding that he found a bundle of ten rupee notes in the rescued man’s pair of camouflage trousers. Before being transferred to another vessel, Silva had narrated how some personnel including an officer of the Vijayabahu Infantry Regiment (VIR) had been trapped on the beach.

A weeping soldier had said that the trapped men had nothing except a pistol and a few grenades. They had nothing to resist the marauding LTTE units, Silva had told the Dvora crew. The navy had picked up survivors amidst LTTE fire directed from the Mullaitivu coast.

It was the worst debacle experienced by the army before the loss of strategic Elephant Pass in April four years later. The loss of Mullaitivu revealed that the LTTE had been able to evacuate most of its trained cadres and heavy armaments before the army liberated the Jaffna peninsula. Had the army made a genuine assessment of the enemy’s strength in the wake of the liberation of Jaffna, the Mullaitivu debacle could have been avoided.

Commander Pathiraja said that unlike any other previous deployment, a naval cordon now in place off the no fire zone, north of Mullaitivu, was geared to thwart an attempt to rescue LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his chief lieutenants trapped on a narrow coastal stretch in the Mullaitivu district. "Now the positions had been reversed," he said.

Ironically, the army under Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka’s able leadership, after almost three years of non stop offensive action in the eastern and northern areas is on the verge of finishing off the enemy on the Mullaitivu coast. The army is waging its final battle with the LTTE, north of Mullaitivu town area, one-time base for two battalions of infantry plus a small navy contingent overrun in the third week of July 1996.

Had anyone bothered to study offensives carried out by the LTTE, the destruction of the Mullaitivu army base could be categorized as one of the critical phases of the Eelam War. It cleared the way for the LTTE to dominate the seas off Mullaitivu. This facilitated the Tiger efforts to bring in large shipments of arms, ammunition and equipment regularly from its overseas suppliers.

Had successive government taken adequate measures to strengthen coastal defences, the LTTE wouldn’t have lasted almost 30 years. The vast amount of armaments recovered by the army over the past two and half years was evidence of the pathetic state of affairs before corrective measures were taken.

The laxity on the part of successive governments allowed the LTTE to gradually build its strength. Although on and off offensives targeted the LTTE, the group always controlled a large extent of land both east and west of the A 9 where it maintained permanent bases with special facilities for families of top LTTE leadership.

Had the army failed in its current effort to bring the LTTE down, the photographs which revealed Prabhakaran double face would never have come to the public domain. The pictures of Prabhakaran, his wife Madivadini, children and some of his top ‘commanders’were evidence of the cushy life they led as thousands of forcibly recruited children were thrown into battle.

While the recovery of millions of USD worth of military hardware bared the extent of the LTTE overseas procurement network, the photographs of a smiling psychopath shed light on the life of the so-called ``Supremo.’’

While denying the Tamil speaking people of the northern and eastern provinces even the basic facilities in the name of waging a liberation struggle, the gang of baby-faced killers and their families had lived a life of luxury. The funds raised by the Tamil Diaspora for the acquisition of armaments, too, would have been definitely utilized by the LTTE leadership for their personal comfort.

Since the army had liberated Puthukudirippu, east of the A9, the advancing infantry found air-conditioned vehicles used by the top LTTE leadership, luxury abodes and a range of imported items. But the set of Prabhakaran’s family photographs recovered by the army on the Mullaitivu front took not just the cake but the whole bakery.

The Tamil speaking people had to struggle to make ends meet while LTTE leaders enjoyed the unbelievable luxury of having a swim in a private pool deep within the high security zones set up in the Vanni East in the midst of fighting. Had they been aware of the lifestyle of their so called liberator who was nothing more than a glorified bandit, they would have banished him before the army fought its way into the last LTTE stronghold on a ribbon of coast in the Mullaitivu district.

The bottom line is that the well-fed LTTE leader had never experienced the true horrors of war at least over the past decade. Although LTTE propagandists propagated the lie that every big battle was led by Prabhakaran, the man seemed to have lived a cushy life. Had the LTTE half a chance to destroy evidence of Prabhakaran’s duplicity as it rapidly retreated on the Vanni front before being surrounded by the army on the Mullaitivu coast, it would surely have done so.

The revealing pictures remind us of the images and video footage that came to light after the capture of JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera. The so called liberators of the down trodden obviously don’t practice what they loudly and repeatedly preach.

The ‘uniformed’ men serving Prabhakaran’s family, and his sporting a camouflage uniform with a beret similar to that worn by troops deployed under UN command, revealed the mentality of a demented man who cleverly exploited the weakness of his people, the Diaspora and the international community to his advantage.

On Friday (April 8) the army signaled that the ground offensive is entering its last and perhaps the bloodiest phase. As the 58 Division captured and consolidated LTTE earth bund at Karayamullivaikkal, army headquarters announced that as the troops were now in control of more than two thirds of the no fire zone, it had been re-demarcated. This strip is now restricted to the area south of Karaymullivaikkal including Vellamullivaikkal covering an area some 2 km long and 1.5 km wide.

The LTTE had abandoned the earth bund at Karayamullivaikkal after two days of fighting with 6 GW, 7SR and 9 VIR leaving bodies of 35 cadres along with 33 T-56 assault rifles, two light machine guns, four multi purpose machine guns, one 12.7 weapon, three communication sets, three T-56 magazines and two detonators. The army also found heavy earth moving machinery.

In the run up to the re-demarcation of new no fire zone, the army captured what Brigadier Shavindra Silva, the General Officer Commanding 58 Division called the LTTE leader’s ``underwater home.’’ The 58 Division troops, now in the final phase of operations on the Mullaitivu coast, had captured a 360-foot long and 25-foot wide submersible structure at Irattavaikkal, the last LTTE stronghold overrun by Brigadier Silva’s troops.

Silva, who had inspected the contraption early this week, told The Sunday Island that they wouldn’t really know its use until troops captured LTTE cadres involved in its construction.

"We may get the opportunity to question some of LTTE cadres involved in building it in the next few days," he said. Responding to our queries, he said that they had the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) footage of LTTE cadres busy welding the structure over a week before the army liberated the area. Contrary to initial belief it was definitely not a tunnel, he said.

He dismissed the possibility that it was to be used as an underground route to the sea. According to him, the structure, set on iron rails, had been compartmentalized into three major sections, and had been made of iron.

The army found a 300-ft-long, 30 -ft-deep launching Canal enabling the steel structure to be taken over water into the sea. The army also found several dismantled rotor blades. Brigadier Silva said that the launching area had been reinforced with iron sheets on both banks.