Vanguard Blog

Every now and then, something that seemed impossible to achieve, comes to pass. But we don’t always notice and say, “Holy Shit!” That’s because we live in an age where an over-abundance of trivial information is coupled with a rapid pace of change. Often, when we learn about a new occurrence, it’s difficult to think back even a few years and remember why it’s significant.

That’s the case with the subject of this week’s Vanguard doc, Mariana van Zeller and Darren Foster’s Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror. Which is one of the reasons why it’s so cool.

Without spoiling the suspense in Wednesday’s episode, in it Mariana and Darren look at the recent demise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the LTTE, one of the nastiest and most formidable insurgent/terror organizations in the world. With the US facing escalating violence in Afghanistan, they’re telling an important and engrossing story with big implications.

But besides plugging their episode, what I want to do here is vouch as to how nasty—and seemingly impossible to defeat—the Tigers really were.

In April of 2000, when the Tigers had a huge offensive going, Laura Ling, Gotham Chopra and I went to Sri Lanka, after Laura succeeded in getting us journalist visas in two days of trying, after I tried for a year and a half and failed. We arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, and found out that in order to get past the military checkpoints to head to the conflict zone, we needed a Road Permit, which we didn’t have. It took Laura a few days of negotiating with the Minister of Defense to get us the permit, and meanwhile we looked around Colombo a bit—what struck us was how common large suicide bombings by Tigers were. Our hotel had been bombed, and many public places had huge doves painted on the pavement—a sign that there had been a bombing. Hundreds of people had been killed in the city in the previous couple of years.

Outside the capital, fighting between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government continued to intensify. The week prior to our visit the Tigers had staged an amphibious landing at Elephant Pass and over-run a large Sri Lankan military base. The guys at the US Embassy in Colombo told us: “There are only two groups in the world that could stage an amphibious landing of that size—the US Marine Corps, and the Tamil Tigers.” The city seemed to live on edge.

Laura finally got us our road permit, and we drove out to the east, where the government controlled the main highway via a series of fire bases built along it—until night fell, and then the Tigers controlled the highway, along everything else off the highway which they controlled during daylight also. En route to a safe hotel run by a Tiger sympathizer, the sun set on us, and we had a pretty intense few hours driving the highway in the dark, afraid the soldiers in the fire bases we were passing would mistake us for Tigers and shoot, while the Tigers would mistake our van for a military vehicle and shoot.

The second day, we reached the end of where the government controlled the highway. There was a military base, and a barrier, like a train crossing, leading to Tamil Tiger country. Laura got on the phone with her friend the Minister of Defense back in Colombo, the soldiers raised the gate and we headed into Tiger Territory driving a steady 40 km per hour and honking our horn every 100 meters as a sign to the Tigers not to fire on us. Finally, some Tigers flagged us down, took us to a nearby command post. For such dread folks, they seemed very soft spoken and placid. They served us ice cold Coke—it was hot—and then showed us the cyanide capsules around their necks—they all wore them so they could commit suicide if captured. Then they gave us a tour of the area. We met a couple 16 and 17-year old girl Tigers who’d already had several years of combat experience. They were also placid, but now it began to seem spooky. Not surprisingly the Tigers were big into a culture of martyrdom. They showed us a lot of monuments to dead leaders, and a cemetery with 1000 fresh Tiger graves. They offered to let us stay to the night and go with them to fire mortars at a Sri Lankan military base, but we decided to head back.

My conclusion back then: What a nightmare. So when Laura and I heard early this year that the Tigers might be close to being defeated, we found it astonishing. And then Mariana and Darren went over to check out this important but underappreciated development. And the result is not only fascinating, but important. Check it out Wednesday.

This Week on Vanguard: Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror

“Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror” airs this Wednesday at 10pm ET / 10pm PT on Current TV.

Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! – Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. – Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” – Mariana van Zeller
- A Shout-Out to Interns Everywhere – Tracey Chang
- The economy is growing again. Where does that leave you? – Mitch Koss

Tags: Asia, Colombo, Darren Foster, Gotham Chopra, Laura Ling, LTTE, Mariana van Zeller, Mitch Koss, South Asia, Sri Lanka, Tamil, terror, terrorism, Tigers, Vanguard Vanguard Journalism