SCHRAM: New life begins with Tigers' defeat

By Martin Schram

COMMENTARY:

Before Palestinian suicide bombers were blowing up Israeli women and children in marketplaces, before Iraqi suicide bombers were murdering Iraqi civilians as well as Iraqi and American soldiers, there were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka - the world's little-known pioneers of the deadly craft of suicide bombing.

On Monday, the Tamil Tigers were defeated after three decades of bloody rebellion. Their brutal leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was shot fatally by government troops in a final firefight. People danced and cheered in the streets of Colombo, capital of this island nation off India that used to be called Ceylon. After all, by then, Tamil Tiger suicide bombers had killed more than 200 Sri Lankans.

The Tamil Tigers raised, trained, educated and mainly indoctrinated Kittu. He became a specialist in ambushing government troops and was invited to join an elite group, the Black Tigers. He didn't know, at first, that he had been designated as a suicide bomber. He met his maximum leader, Prabhakaran, who was worshipped by Tigers young and old. The ruthless rebel chief told him it was the highest honor to be a suicide bomber. Kittu believed.

 

All thanks to Kittu's minder. He gave the failed young suicide bomber the one thing Kittu thought he never would have after seeing his parents killed: the gift of a new life.

There is one thing more: The minder who gave Kittu this gift of life was, in fact, the Sri Lankan intelligence officer who was Kittu's intended target - the man whose life Kittu had planned to end on that 2001 day when everything went so wonderfully wrong.