LTTE’s Eelam without borders

With the Sri Lankan armed forces having wiped out the LTTE and brought the war for an independent Eelam to an end, the rebel group’s international relations head Selvaraja Pathmanathan has announced a plan to set up a Provisional Trans-national Government of Tamil Eelam with the support of 800,000 Lankan Tamils living all over the world.

Sri Lanka has laughed it off and one analyst has called it a desperate attempt by the LTTE to rise from its ashes. Though Prabhakaran is dead and along with him the entire leadership, there are an estimated 2,000 rudderless LTTE cadres with arms, according to intelligence reports, and they can pose a challenge in future if they have a political platform to fight on. So however fanciful the virtual Eelam concept may look, it deserves a closer examination.

Mr Pathmanathan has refused to call it a government in exile for such a regime will require a host country. But the aim is to mobilize international support so that this transnational setup can metamorphose into a government in exile in time.

Mr Pathmanathan has set up a committee of experts under lawyer Visvanathan Rudrakumar to structure such a government.

It will hold talks with other groups holding similar views on Tamil nationalism, homeland and right to self-determination for  the Tamil people of Sri Lanka on working out a common plan of  action

Mr Pathmanathan has said such a government is necessary to articulate  the aspirations of the Tamil people, as reflected in the 1976 Vaddukottai resolution, the 1985 Thimpu declaration and the LTTE’s 2003 Interim Self-Governing Authority Proposal, in the world fora as the Tamil people