These guys are a real class act.

LTTE child soldier with cyanide capsule in hand. Courtesy of Asiaweek 26th July 1996

The above pictures are all of LTTE child soldiers. Courtesy of Dominic Sansoni

Novice Buddhist Monks from a rural monastry gunned down by the LTTE in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area of non-Tamils in order to carve out an ethnically pure state of "Tamil Eelam".

Children in South Asia
Amnesty International
Index 04/01/98
extract from page 38

Recruitment as Fighters
Fifteen year old Raja went to the Teaching Hospital in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, complaining of insomnia, aggressive outbursts and irrational abnormal behaviour in late 1994. He had joined the LTTE at the age of 11 and underwent extensive training. He told doctors that after one attack where he lost many friends he was shown a videos of dead women and children and told that his enemies had done this. Soon afterwards he was involved in attacks on several Muslim villages near Batticaloa. When recounting one attack, he described how he held a child by the legs and bashed its head against a wall and how he enjoyed hearing the mother’s screaming. He said they deserved to die.

LTTE Child Combatants by Rohan Gunaratna

Courtesy of Janes Intelligence Review of July 1998

In defiance of mounting international opinion against the role of children in warfare, guerrillas and terrorists are increasingly using children in their military campaigns. As under-aged combatants are proving to be effective spies, couriers, suppliers as well as backup and frontline fighters, children in conflict-ridden areas are becoming a target for recruitment.

International and domestic conventions define childhood as life up to the age of 18. Currently, there is a debate as to whether compulsory or voluntary recruitment to the armed forces should be 15 or 18. Child rights activists are campaigning at international, national and local level to raise the age to 18. However, there is no international organization or mechanism either to regulate or lobby against guerrilla and terrorist organisations recruiting children to their ranks.

Child units have featured prominently in international and internal conflicts in recent years, serving both state and non-state forces in countries such as Liberia, Cambodia, Sudan, Guatemala, Myanmar. They featured in at least a third of the 50 odd internal conflicts that were ongoing in 1997, most of which have continued into 1988 and many with increasing intensity. Armed conflicts during the last decade left two million children killed, one million orphaned or separated, five million disabled, 10 million children killed, one million orphaned or separated, five million disabled, 10 million psychologically traumatised and 12 million homeless.

Cutting edge
In the world’s deadliest conflicts, children feature most prominently in the protracted guerrilla and terrorist campaign of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) highlighted the Sri Lankan rebel group’s practice of aiming its propaganda specifically at schoolchildren.

The LTTE is a leading-edge rebel group fighting for an independent Tamil mono-ethnic state in northeastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE - estimated to be 14,000-strong - employs adults and children as rank and file. Both male and female fighters participate in guerrilla and terrorist attacks against military, political, economic, religious and cultural targets. Now in its 24th year of existence and 15th year of combat, the LTTE is assessed by the international security and intelligence community as the deadliest contemporary guerrilla terrorist group. It has built a tradition of senior personnel leading offensive operations and has a rapid turnover of new units. The LTTE is perhaps the world’s first rebel group with cadres drawn from a younger age range. Sri Lanka’s Directorate of Military Intelligence estimates that 60 per cent of LTTE fighters are bellow 18. Even if the figure is exaggerated, an assessment of the LTTE fighters that have been killed in combat reveal that 40 per cent of its fighting force are both males and females between nine and 18 years of age. Over the years, the combat efficiency, technological innovation, and leadership qualities of the LTTE have been integrated into the young fighting units.

Loyal to the last
The Sri Lankan experience reveals that children are receptive to high levels of indoctrination, willing to engage in high risk operations and obedience. Modern weapons such as M16, AK-47 and Type 56 are light weight, easy to fire, and require minimum training. Conventionally trained soldier and policemen are also less likely to identify women and children as threats. In the Same way that the media and the legal system is sympathetic to children, humanitarian and human rights organisations reserve different rules for when dealing with a potential threat from this source. Such factors and conditions make the child a perfect target for guerilla and terrorist recruitment. Today, the LTTE deploys these units in direct combat against Sri Lankan troops both in Jaffna and Wanni in the north and Trincomalee and Batticaloa in the east. In addition to gathering first-rate intelligence and participating in ambushes, they also form the first wave of suicide groups, assaulting across the minefields and razor wire that encircle Sri Lankan military installations.

Origins of Child Cadres
After the ethnic riots of July 1983, sparked by an LTTE ambush of 13 soldiers, there was a massive exodus of civilians to India. The LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran selected Basheer Kaka, an LTTE leader from the deep harbour city of Trincomalee to establish a training base in the state of Pondichery in India for recruits under 16. Initially, the child soldiers - affectionately referred to as "Tiger cubs" - received non-military training, mostly primary education and physical exercise. By early 1984, the nucleus of the LTTE Baby Brigade or Bakuts, was formed.

Until 1986, the LTTE had sufficient adult units in operation; as soon as a young recruit reached 16, he or she was put through the Tigers’ standard grueling four-month training course. Many children from the Pondichery batch reached battle prominence. After the Pondichery stint, Karuna, a native of Batticaloa, received military training in Establishment 22, Chakrata, north of Dehra Dun. From 1984 onwards, Karuna rose through the ranks and assumed the mantle of District Commander for Batticaloa after the introduction of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka in July 1987. Throughout, he displayed his loyalty to the LTTE leader Prabhakaran and showed a high level of commitment to the LTTE goal. With permission from Prabhakaran, he married an attractive LTTE female cadre Nira, and was thereafter relocated to the north to lead LTTE special groups in direct battle against the Sri Lankan forces. Several members of the Baby Brigade also served as bodyguards of Pottu Amman, the LTTE Chief of Intelligence responsible for planning the assassination of two world leaders.

The LTTE began to seriously recruit women and children to its ranks only after it declared war against the 100,000 strong-IPKF in October 1987. Hitherto, the LTTE had trained only one batch of children in Pondichery in 1984 and one batch of women in Sirumalai, Tamil Nadu in 1985. The LTTE had to boost its rank and file to engage an overwhelming force in the India-LTTE war that lasted for two years. As an example, the Batticaloa 13th batch - trained in the jungles of Pondugalchenai, Pulipanchagal, comprised children under 15, some as young as nine years old. The only time that the LTTE engaged in forcible recruitment was just before and after the withdrawal of the IPKF, both to replenish its depleted ranks and to prepare for an impending offensive. After the March 1990 withdrawal and the resumption of hostilities between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan forces in June 1990, the LTTE continued to recruit women and children in unprecedented numbers. Today, a third of all LTTE recruits are women, and they serve in all units. Children too, serve everywhere except in leadership positions.

The child fighters were originally a part of the Baby Brigade commanded by Justin, a Pondichery-trained fighter. However, after 1987 the LTTE integrated children with other units to offset the heavy losses. Today, the overwhelming number of children in the fighting units has generated concern among many Tamils in Sri Lanka and overseas. Since April 1995, some 60 per cent of LTTE personnel killed in combat have been children. These trends are supported by, Olivichu, the LTTE monthly video release which announces its death toll. Unlike the government, the LTTE is prompt and accurate in announcing the death of its "martyrs". A study by a UK-based Sri Lankan researcher Dushy Ranatunge reveals that at least 60 per cent of the dead LTTE fighters are under 18 and are mostly girls and boys aged 10-16. Ranatunge also reveals that almost all of the casualties are from Batticaloa, but since the escalation in the fighting, the dead also include those from Jaffna. It is likely that the LTTE needs control of the Eastern Province to replenish both its supplies as well as its wastage in rank and file numbers.

Indoctrination
The LTTE focused on the politicisation of its people through propaganda (public events, leafleting, print media, radio, TV etc) to encourage them to support the LTTE campaign for an independent Tamil state. Almost all of the public events are attended by parading LTTE unitds. School bands play at the funerals of dead LTTE fighters and the LTTE has established spectacular memorial parks and beautiful gardens with monuments of its "martyr’s." A striking features of these parks are the children’s see-saws with toy automatic weapons mounted on the handles. During the heroes’ week in October of each year, the LTTE invites families to attend the high-profile ceremonies in the graveyards of the "great heroes." The LTTE portrayed these functions as celebrations and the cemeteries as temples; attending children are welcomed and often leave with a strong sense of nationalism. The "great hero families" received a special status wherever the LTTE were in control. They paid no taxes, received preferential in job interviews, and were allocated special seats at all the public functions organised in LTTE-controlled areas. Economically deprived families thus did not object to their children joining the LTTE. "Sometimes, parents felt that they must let children go in order to be fed," according to UNICEF’s Colombo representative Brita Ostberg, who is critical of LTTE’s role. The LTTE has an unwritten rule that every family should give a son or daughter to the cause.

Another feature that attracted the young minds to the LTTE was the glamour and the perceived respect it was paid by society. In the past, when a school teacher cycled in the narrow streets of the north, students would move to the side until he passed. Today, when a student who has joined the LTTE passes on a motorcycle or pushcycle, the situation is reversed. Interestingly, the appearanceof the young recruits was a strong factor in attracting youngsters to the movement. Tiger-striped uniforms, polished boots and automatic weapons acted as magnets to the children.

LTTE members regularly visited schools, addressed students of the need to participate in the "struggle" and screened films of their successful attacks against the Sri Lankan forces. Those fighters entrusted with indoctrination and recruitment would often ask that students supporting the struggle for independence raise their hand and, without giving them an opportunity to hesitate, would then drive them to a training camp. The LTTE system of maintaining everyone’s records would prevent a teacher from refusing the entry of enlisted children to a classroom. In their book "Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict" Guy Goodwin-Gill and Ilene Cohn (Oxford 1994) state: "Tamil children spend one or two hours per day out of school digging bunkers as a form of militarised civic duty and are eventually asked to join the LTTE. Enlistment is supposedly voluntary, meaning that no one is physically threatened. However, families are menaced with property confiscation or physical violence if they appear unwilling to contribute their sons for the cause." Other than projecting the military successes of the LTTE, a powerful image that attracted many youngsters to join the LTTE was the screening of films depicting Sri Lankan government atrocities. Although the state takes severe legal action against soldiers responsible for civilian atrocities, aerial bombing of LTTE public offices has damaged nearby churches, hospitals and schools. The LTTE has been partially successful in projecting these incidents as deliberate and calculated acts of genocide against the Tamil people.

In five years following the withdrawal of 100,000 IPKF personnel, the LTTE established its own administration in the Jaffna peninsula and in the Kilinochchi mainland. The Tamil Eelam Schools Board even introduced its own revised history. Separatist Tamil educationists, had a part to play in encouraging ethnic prejudice among children. The LTTE cultural section, headed by Puduvai Ratnadorai, supported the initiatives of the LTTE student wing - the Student Organisation of Liberation Tigers (SOLT) - giving a fresh impetus to its programs to build and sustain student support for the creation of an independent state. SOLT also set up branches overseas, producing an education syllabus and text books to teach Tamil and LTTE versions of history to all Tamil refugees, and also set up about 100 weekend schools, teaching traditional drama and dance, often with funding from host governments, local cultural and social bodies, and philanthropists.

Recruitment and Training
A typical unit of children is trained for four months in the jungle. Woken at 0500hrs they assemble, fall in line, and their leader raises the LTTE flag. Following this comes two hours of physical training, after which the recruits engage in weapon training, battle and field craft, and parade drill. During the rest of the afternoon time is spent both reading LTTE literature and performing more physical training. Lectures on communication, explosives and intelligence techniques continue into the evening. There is no communication between the camp and the children’s homes during the training period. There have occasions when parents have travelled been long distances, braving both Sri Lankan military and LTTE ambushes, in search of their children in LTTE jungle training camps. Having spent days waiting outside the camps for a glimpse of their children, parents have been sent back, told that the cadets have chosen not to meet them. During training, sleep and food are regulated to build endurance. Recruits receive crew-cuts to ensure that deserters may be easily identified. The LTTE code forbids liquor and sex and offenders are punished with death. Homosexuality, which also occurs, is a punishable offence.

The LTTE training curriculum is frequently reviewed and modified to meet the changing nature of battle. After 1990, when children were pitched into battle against Sri Lankan forces, the LTTE made training tougher. The military office of the LTTE headed by Wedi Dinesh developed a training programme that would make the child fighters more daring than the adults. This included the screening of Rambo-style videos in which the daredevil approach is invariably successful.
The trained young fighters are prepared for battle by attacking unprotected or weakly defended border villages. In these attacks, several hundred men, women and children have been killed by LTTE child combatants armed with automatic weapons guided by experienced fighters. The raids on these soft targets no police-defended forward defence lines. Thereafter, the trained fighters are deployed in camp attacks.

The performance of the LTTE Baby Brigade, under the command of senior commanders, has become increasingly dramatic. The daring and bloody attacks to capture weaponry and strategic ground produced heavy fatalities and injuries. The Tigers have built their expertise over a period of time, developing measures to eliminate failures and maximise successes.

Operations
The first major operation in which the LTTE deployed child combatants came after LTTE suicide bomber, Pork, rammed an explosive-laden lorry into the Mankulam army camp (north) on 22 November 1990. The pre-dawn LTTE attack from all flanks was initiated with indigenously produced Pasilan 2000 mortars, standard mortars, RPGs, machine guns and small arms and was followed by successive waves of LTTE fighters drawn from the Baby Brigade. The intensity of the attack led the commander to evacuate the camp at 1600hrs on 24 November. Of a total strength of 313 government troops, at least a third were killed and a few were taken prisoner. The LTTE lost 62 of their number, mostly child combatants.

The second major operation involving LTTE child fighters occurred on 10 July 1991 when the LTTE attacked the Elephant Pass Military Complex, located on both sides of the causeway linking the northern peninsula to the mainland. Improvised tanks - bulldozers plated with armour - were followed by waves of LTTE cadres drawn from the Baby Brigade attempting to penetrate the forward defence lines. The LTTE attempted to isolate the camp by building bunkers, trenches and other forms of strong defences around it. For the first time the child combatants who witnessed heavy casualties became reluctant to move along the open ground their positions and the target complex. The LTTE commanders shot their feet and humiliated them. At one point the camp defences were breached but the troops within the complex repulsed the LTTE by counter-attacking. The complex was then reinforced by a sea landing of troops. The LTTE lost 550 personnel, most of whom were children.

After the attack on the Elephant Pass Complex, the LTTE analysed their successes and failures. They then decided to develop small contained units for long-range reconnaissance and deep penetration to generate sound and timely intelligence on troop deployment and combat readiness. Equipped with this surveillance data on Sri Lankan government base complexes and detachments, the newly established LTTE map and model-making department built near life-size models of the targets to be used as practice ecercises for their troops. To gain greater stealth, speed and surprise, the LTTE mixed Black Tigers - psychologically and physically trained-suicide units - with the Baby Brigade. The outcome shocked the Sri Lankan government, particularly when the LTTE overran two fortified base complexes in 1993 and 1996, killing 1800 troops and removing weapons worth about US$ 100 million.

On 11 November 1993 the LTTE launched an amphibious strike, destroying the Poonaryn army/Nagathevanthurai navy base complex. In preparation, members of the Baby Brigade were trained for night combat, swimming long distances and striking forward defence lines. Seaborne Tigers assaulted Sandupiddy pier and the Nagathevanthurai naval positions before dawn using improvised floats and weapons wrapped in polythene. At the same time a land group staged a concentrated frontal assault, penetrating the forward defence lines, while a third group infiltrated the camp perimeter, creating confusion and overrunning artillery and mortar positions.
On 28 July 1995 LTTE units simultaneously attacked five camps in the Weli Oya military complex. Based on battle indicators, the Brigade Command alerted its troops to an impending attack. The predawn raid comprised at least 3000 Tigers, almost all from the Women’s Wing and the Baby Brigade. Only one soldier and one home guard were killed and 22 soldiers injured. The military recovered 10 light machine guns, five light guns, four RPGs, 118 automatic weapons and ammunition. The aborted plan was to have concluded with LTTE vehicles and boats retreating with arms, ammunition and other equipment removed from the camps.

From October 1995, the Sri Lankan military launched a series of operations to deprive the LTTE of territorial control of the Jaffna peninsula: the Tamil heartland. The LTTE northern command engaged in a tactical repositioning of its troops, withdrawing the bulk of fighters to the Wanni mainland. The Baby Brigade was temporarily dismantled and its units were placed under the LTTE military intelligence directorate. The child forces were given training in small businesses - selling ice creams, newspapers, fruits, lottery tickets, and working in cafes and restaurants - and re-infiltrated into the peninsula. After a while, many of them began to live with the parents, relatives, and families of LTTE sympathisers, thus becoming the eyes and ears of the LTTE. With intelligence provided by members of the dismantled Baby Brigade, LTTE sparrow teams struck, killing Tamil informants and supporters of the government as well as Sri Lankan troops. Initially, it was difficult for counter-intelligence operatives to believe that the LTTE was using children to gather its intelligence on troop movements and dispositions. It was even harder for them to apprehend and prosecute children who were under 16 years of age. From late 1995 to mid-1996 the LTTE recruited and trained at least 2000 Tamils largely drawn from 600,000 Tamils displaced in the wake of the operations to capture the peninsula. About 1,000 of these were between 12 and 16 years old and they were dispersed among the other fighting units.

On 18 July 1996, the LTTE launched an amphibious assault on the Mulativu military complex. The LTTE operation, codenamed Oyatha Alaikal (Ceaseless Waves), deployed between 5,000 and 6,000 personnel both to strike the complex and to fight reinforcements. After fighting began, screaming waves of the Baby Brigade began to attack the complex. During the initial attack, to create confusion, many senior LTTE fighters were dressed in military uniform. Amid the fighting, an army major commanded his troops to surrender to the LTTE leader; after the Tigers had disarmed about 300 troops, they were gunned down by the child combatants. The fighting killed 314 Tigers and injured at least 1,000.

Of the government forces, only two officers and 67 other ranks survived the attack. In addition to the loss of 1,173 officers and men, 37 elite troops engaged in a rescue operation were killed and 61 injured. An LTTE suicide boat rammed Ranaviru, a Shanghai class gun boat, killing 31 crew and vessel’s captain.

Enter the Leopards
The physical and psychological war training of children as a formidable lethal weapon is an innovation of the LTTE. The high point of LTTE achievement in this direction was the formation of the elite Sirasu puli, or Leopard Brigade. The members of the brigade were children drawn from LTTE-managed orphanages. Within the LTTE ranks, this brigade is considered to be its most fierce fighting force. All LTTE recruits swear an oath of allegiance to the LTTE leader once every morning and evening but, Leopard fighters have a incomparable loyalty to Prabhakaran. Most see him as a fatther figure and equate a request from him to a directive from heaven. On 4 December 1997 the LTTE leopard Brigade encircled and killed nearly 200 elite Sri Lankan forces in Kanakarankulam in the Wanni, suffering heavy casualties themselves as well. Through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the army accepted 113 bodies of soldiers from the LTTE; the LTTE buried 20 decomposed bodies. Uptil this point Sri Lankan infantry had been relied on elite troops - special forces and commandos - as its vanguard. The unprecedented loss severely demoralised whole sections of the government’s frontline troops. The mutual annihilation also impeded the advance of Sri Lankan troops trying to open a main supply route linking the Jaffna peninsula with the South in time for the golden jubilee celebrations of Sri Lanka’s independence on 4 February 1997.
The LTTE Baby Brigade lost heavily in two attacks: at the Weli Oya complex in July 1995 and during an assault on the Wanni defences on 1 February 1998. The Weli Oya victory, according to Sri Lanka’s National Intelligence Bureau, was the biggest defeat the LTTE had suffered. Major General Janaka Perera, the then Brigade Commander of Weli Oya, said that all of the LTTE casualties, apart from the leaders, were teenagers. Perera, trained at Sandhurst and at the Royal College of Defence Studies in the UK, believe that LTTE suicide wave attacks can only be fought by developing advance intelligence and preparing to meet an impending strike. 5 August 1995 an Economist story entitled "Sri Lanka’s under-age war", commenting on the attack, stated: "There was little rejoice by the army. Most of the dead were women and children, sent in by the Tiger generals as cannon fodder. The Tigers said 128 women had been killed, but they did not mention their child soldiers."

When the LTTE assaulted the Kilinochchi, Paranthan and Elephant Pass defences on 1 February 1998, at least 200 child fighters were killed assaulting near impregnable defences with 10-foot bunkers. An LTTE-captured South African buffel armoured vehicle, laden with 800kg of high explosives procured from Ukraine’s Rubezone chemical plant, toppled before it reached the target. The LTTE was not keen to accept the bodies offered by the northern commander, Major General Lionel Balagalle, via the ICRC, and so the Sri Lanka Army buried the dead children. The LTTE could sustain a loss up to 200 personnel not because the leadership considers child fighters dispensable, but because from every debacle the LTTE learns a lesson and improves. However, LTTE domestic and international thinkers, using computerised databases, have alerted Prabhakaran to the possibility of having insufficient members of both adult or child combatants to continue the campaign without expanding LTTE’s geographic influence. To prevent the exodus of youth from LTTE-controlled areas, they effectively enforced a law to regulate departures. Prabhakaran also directed that his eastern commands both expand their territorial control and recruitment. There are virtually no studies conducted by the government or foreign think tanks on LTTE kills and injuries as well as its potential for recruitment.

The International Response
The LTTE has been able to conduct its under-age campaign away from the international gaze. Like their adult counterparts in the LTTE, child fighters are required to consume a Phial of Potassium Cyanide either when capture is imminent or when injured in the field. Enforcing the cyanide rule has, understandably, been difficult with children. John Burns of the New York Times, a regular commentator on Sri Lanka, highlights instances in which LTTE child fighters have failed to commit suicide. Acknowledging that the LTTE has been using "Tamil boys as young as 10" to counterattack the advancing government troops, Burns states: "Although the Tigers send their fighters into battle with cyanide capsules strung around their necks, many of the youngsters did not swallow the poison, as instructed by Tiger leaders, when shot." Burns also cites instances where LTTE units have withdrawn under fire "leaving wounded boys and girls lying in no-man’s land, crying for help." As a result, there are more teenage than adult LTTE fighters in government custody.

The exposure given by Burns and an anti-LTTE web site by Umberto Gui has hurt the LTTE most. However, on the whole, there has been no international response to the LTTE attitude towards children. For example, when the LTTE expelled Muslims from the north and staged a series of massacres of Muslim civilians in the east, there was no outcry even within the Muslim world. Before launching their anti-Sri Lankan Muslim drive, the Tigers butchered all the Eastern Muslim units, including the child children - some as young as 9 - in July/August 1990.

The UN has repeatedly expressed concern over the misuse of children but without an impact at ground level. The UN Special Rappoteur on Violence Against Women - Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan Tamil - has been a critic of the LTTE for its use of women and children in warfare. After reviewing statistics of LTTE injured personnel, Garca Machel, former first lady of Mozambique and adviser to the UN secretary general, stated that 20 per cent were between the ages of 10 and 14 during recruitment. London-based representatives of LTTE fronts - the International Federation of Tamils, UK, and the Tamil Centre for Human rights, France - attempted to lobby Machel during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edinburgh in October 1997, but she evaded them. The LTTE has a vibrant global network neutralising anti-LTTE stances and promoting Tiger propaganda.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Sri Lankan Tamil, believes that an entire generation of young Tamil children are being systematically destroyed by the LTTE. In response to Kadirgamar’s impassionate plea to the 52nd UN General Assembly in September 1997, Olara Otunna, the UN Secretary General’s special representative for children and armed conflict, sought to persuade "foreign governments not to tolerate the activities of the LTTE in their countries due to the heinous crimes committed by the LTTE against children." To give the issue an international profile, Kadirgamar travelled to the US twice in a month and briefed the US first lady, Hilary Clinton, on 29 October 1997. The designation of the LTTE as a terrorist group by the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright on 8 October, placed Kadirgamar, along with the Sri Lankan President and Deputy Defence Minister Ratwatte, high on the LTTE hit list.

Meanwhile in the Sri Lankan press, the use of child fighters is not a serious issue. Sri Lankan propaganda, soliciting Western opinion, argues that the LTTE uses Tamil children as cannon fodder. However, the overwhelming success of the LTTE, means that the Sri Lankan state is failing against a ruthless adversary.

Domestic Response
Successive governments have failed to stem the exponential growth of the LTTE. To date, the LTTE’s rate of recruitment of children is higher than its level of fatalities. The LTTE has concentrated on politically controlling, or at least militarily dominating, Tamil areas in order to recruit. Government troops have lacked the right training and quality leadership to deprive the LTTE of this territorial control. Similarly, Sri Lankan defence decision- and policy-makers, as well as military planners and strategists, have failed to understand the importance of psychological operations (psy ops) to drive a wedge between the Tamil public and the LTTE. Although there have been proposals to broadcast in Tamil and to leaflet Tamil areas, exposing the use of children as cannon fodder, lack of priority to psy ops continues to draw in children to join the LTTE. The only study on the role of the children in the LTTE is a sociological analysis by Peradeniya University’s sociology student Chamarie Rodrigo. Her thesis, based on published literature and interviews, confirms the failure of the state to address the "misuse of children by power-hungry leaders."

The Sri Lankan Government has failed to take on the LTTE on child recruitment both domestically and internationally. The failure is integral to the overall inefficiency of a politicised Sri Lankan security and the intelligence apparatus of the government. The replacing of intelligence and security professionals by novices to intelligence, along with the dismantling of the training branch of the National Intelligence Bureau, has prevented the state from correctly assessing as well as combating the LTTE. The bulk of the operatives posted overseas have lacked either the influence or the motivation to prevent LTTE propaganda, fundraising, procurement and shipping.

According to a foreign intelligence agency monitoring LTTE money transfers, the bulk of the LTTE funds raised under the banner of humanitarian and children’s welfare organisations has been channelled to fund the LTTE war effort. Unlike the Hamas rehabilitation and reconstruction programme, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) engages in large-scale projects to alleviate the suffering of 600,000 displaced Tamils. Despite the US designation of the LTTE as terrorist, the TRO raises funds there. In permitting funds raised for humanitarian purposes, Washington has earned the criticism of its own operatives because of the difficulty of monitoring how the money will be used in the affected areas.

In most cases, the hard currency is not transferred but instead buys weapons and domestically raised money is used in humanitarian activity to show that the funds have been used properly. Since no mechanisms are available for monitoring expenditure in the affected areas, the US decision is perceived as naive. The TRO, registered as a charity in most Western states, has massive fund-raising campaigns in France, UK and Canada. Inadvertently, the German Government provided a substantial grant to the TRO. Similarly, only a fraction of the funds raised by other LTTE front and cover benign organisations - including those in support of San Cholai and Kantha Ruban child orphanages - have been channelled for humanitarian purposes. These two orphanages, founded and managed by the LTTE, received frequent visits by Prabhakaran himself.

In many Sri Lankan Tamil shops and ethnic restaurants throughout the world, the LTTE has placed charity donation boxes, ostensibly used for funding orphanages. In response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombo released a book in January 1998 entitled "LTTE in the Eyes of the World" in which they request donors to channel their humanitarian aid through Oxfam, Save the Children’s Fund, CARE, The ICRC, UNICEF and so on. One of the few respectable Tamil organisations that has fought LTTE infiltration and funded orphanages and other children’s projects in the war-ravaged north and east of Sri Lanka is the London-based Standing Committee of the Tamil Speaking People (SCOT) founded in 1977.

In the history of the Sri Lankan conflict, 38 Tamil groups and three Sinhala groups that has advocated or used terrorism to achieve political goals. The LTTE remains the only rebel group to use children in warfare, stemming from the innovative capability and potential capacity of this resource. Those children captured in combat has been effectively transformed into non-combatants. The Sri Lankan Government has established a number of homes to provide education and vocational training. After a period of time, they are released to their parents. Unlike the constraints precluding the transformation of criminals and adult rebels, child fighters can be rehabilitated.

The fear invoked by the LTTE prevents the criticism voiced by the Tamils against the LTTE leader Prabhakaran from being heard. Prabhakaran’s unwillingness to bring his son Charles Anthony and Dwarka, his daughter, into the ranks of the LTTE is hurting the image of the supremo domestically and internationally.

The LTTE has fought the criticism at home and abroad by stating that these are the sacrifices the current generation of Tamils will have to make so that the future generations can live in peace and happiness. The LTTE has no qualms about the means used to accumulate political influence, military strength and economic power to advance its goals. In that light the LTTE will continue to disregard domestic and international pressure and continue its avowed goal fighting for a mono-ethnic Tamil state.

The Future
The ideological experiment of motivating children as combatants has been a highly successful one. The LTTE has been able to enhance its performance in battle by deploying child units. Therefore, it is likely that other contemporary groups will now emulate the success of the LTTE.

The most devastating result of this practice has been the recovery of small-sized suicide body suites - denim jackets with concealed explosives to be worn beneath the garments of an innocent-looking guerrilla or terrorist to create heavy casualties. As these LTTE-manufactured suits, recovered by the Sri Lankan security forces, could even fit a child, there is concern as to whether the LTTE will use children as suicide bombers. The LTTE, at the cutting edge of creation, innovation and invention, has deceived both the Indian and Sri Lankan security agencies by assassinating two heads of government. After garlanding the former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, on the eve of the Indian elections in May 1991, a female suicide bomber killed him. A male suicide bomber, who infiltrated the presidential household, killed Sri Lanka President Ranasinghe Premadasa on May day in 1993. Security and intelligence agencies monitoring the LTTE claim that the faction retains the potential to use unsuspecting children as suicide bombers to target VIPs in the near future.

Unlike on governments, the influence of international organisations on guerrilla and terrorist organisations is likely to remain limited. The persistence of child guerrillas and terrorists, as a phenomenon is therefore likely to remain a feature use in the international system.

Governments, both the weak and the influential, and the international community as a whole, have lacked the political will to change the status quo and to impede an emerging trend. By permitting their support structures for generating funds to weaponry to flourish in their cities, the West - the guardians of democracy and human rights - have tacitly supported many child-employing guerrilla and terrorist groups. For instance, the LTTE has a significant presence, by way of offices and cells, in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Australia. These groups are all engaged in propaganda, fundraising, procurement and movement of weapons. The host states of the West retain the potential to instigate sanctions against them; until they do, the Tamil Tigers - and other groups witnessing some of their success - will continue to break accepted civilised standards in deploying child combatants.

Rohan Gunaratna, British Chevening Scholar, UK, is the author of "International and Regional Security Implications of the Sri Lankan Tamil Insurgency."

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