Contact Admin. From Kilinochchi to Puthukkudiyiruppu continued from Part 1. While several of the senior leaders reportedly believed that the war could no longer be won and that it was time for a new approach, none was in a position to tell Prabhakaran, who had acquired a reputation of invincibility to live up to.
Sources who had access to senior leaders said that the counsel of men like V. Pathmanathan would have been of little consequence because they were not on the ground and it was often easy for those like Castro and Nadesan to discredit them by dropping innuendos suggesting they were agents of outfits like CIA or RAW.
The talk got around among the people that Prabhakaran had become mentally unbalanced after the fall of Killinochchi. Other reports said that he was refusing to meet groups like the Christian clergy and intellectuals, who were pressing for course change. An Experience from the Battleground Vanni Experience that many advised the leadership to stop forced conscription, mend relations with India and to proceed in a new direction, but to no avail.
The writer notes that among the first things the LTTE started when the war began in was forced conscription, openly justified in LTTE propaganda, while also claiming contradictorily that youths are joining voluntarily in large numbers. The article to which further reference will be made appeared in the Madras based Tamil journal Kalachchuvadu , August An outcome of the meeting, according to sources with access to senior LTTE leaders, was a decision to go on fighting.
One assumption was that if they made life difficult for the Army, they might be content to hold the A9 Jaffna — Kandy Road and not move east. No decision of consequence was taken. Pottu Amman, according to our source, put forward a plan to stop the Army by using their assets to foment terrorist attacks and paralyse the South. Not perhaps wanting to risk turning international opinion against them, Prabhakaran vetoed the plan.
