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Sri Lanka Insurgent Groups
The largest and most influential of the Tamil insurgent
groups was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Eelam is the
original Tamil name for Sri Lanka). Founded in 1972 as the Tamil
New Tigers, the group changed its name in 1976 as it accelerated
its violent campaign for Tamil independence. The growth of the
insurgency in the late 1970s brought with it an increasing
fragmentation as personal, caste, and tactical differences
divided the original movement. One of the earliest groups to
break away was the People's Liberation Organization of Tamil
Eelam (known variously as PLOT or PLOTE). The group was formed in
1981 by Uma Maheswaran, a disgruntled member of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who had major disagreements with
LTTE leader Prabhakaran. The new group claimed to represent a
purer form of Marxist orthodoxy. Although ideological disputes
may have been involved in the split, caste also seems to have
played an important role; LTTE members were largely from Karaiya
and low-caste urban backgrounds, whereas PLOT contained mostly
Vellala, a high-caste rural group
(see Sri Lanka - Caste
, ch. 2).
A host of other groups emerged in the early 1980s. Like the
LTTE, most of these organizations espoused a Marxist ideology
that appeared prominently in their publications but seemed to
play only a minor role in their activities and indoctrination.
Chief among these new groups were the Tamil Eelam Liberation
Organization (TELO), the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation
Front, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Army, the Tamil Eelam Army, and
the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS). Known
collectively as "Tigers" or simply "the boys," these groups
operated in changing patterns of competition and cooperation,
forming a variety of coalitions (such as the Eelam National
Liberation Front and the Three Stars). Through a series of armed
attacks, the LTTE eliminated TELO, a major rival, and by late
1986 had established itself as the dominant, if not the sole,
spokesman of the Tamil insurgency.
Financial and technical support for the Tamil movement came
from a variety of domestic and foreign sources. Internally, the
Tigers relied on "taxes" either willingly donated or extorted
from the local populace which were supplemented by a number of
bank robberies. External support came from Tamils overseas, most
notably in southern India, North America, and Western Europe.
Many of the insurgent groups maintained headquarters and training
facilities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where the state
government and a predominantly Tamil population were sympathetic
to their insurgent brethren in Sri Lanka. Official Indian support
was curtailed sharply, however, following the signing of the
Indo-Sri Lankan Accord in July 1987. There were also unconfirmed
reports that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had
provided training at its installations in the Middle East.
Data as of October 1988
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