How LTTE Intelligence Forged a Legacy of Terror
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From the damp earth of a jungle bunker to the sterile corridors of military intelligence, my life has been a study in transformation. I was born Kagusthan Ariaratnam, a boy who dreamed of soccer and engineering but the Sri Lankan civil war had other plans. It gave me new names – Oppilan, 05, Murali – and a new identity forged in the crucible of conflict. I became a Spy Tiger, an intelligence officer for the LTTE. From this vantage point, I witnessed the slow, agonizing metamorphosis of a movement born from a cry for freedom into an organization defined by the very terror it claimed to fight. This transformation was not an accident; it was a calculated strategy, meticulously planned and executed by the sophisticated intelligence apparatus that I was a part of – an apparatus that became the cold, calculating heart of the LTTE, ultimately poisoning the cause it was created to serve.
My journey with the Tigers began not with ideological fervor but with the raw fear of a 17 year-old schoolboy abducted from my studies and thrown into the maw of war. The initial narrative presented to us was one of righteous struggle against the systemic oppression of the Tamil people. For many, the LTTE was the only shield against a chauvinistic state. I, however, wanted no part of the front lines. The thought of killing or being killed was anathema to my Hindu upbringing and my fundamental desire to survive. I quickly realized my intellect was my only shield. I used my skills in writing and analysis to carve out a space away from the battlefield, a path that led me directly into the nascent intelligence wing. In those early days, the intelligence work was largely focused on conventional military targets. The establishment of a separate Military Intelligence Service in 1992, headed by the pragmatic Thinesh Master, was a testament to this focus. Its purpose was to gather tactical intelligence on the Army, Navy and Air Force to level the playing field in a classic guerrilla war. We studied Jane’s defense manuals, built scale models of naval ships and monitored enemy communications. This felt like a necessary, if grim, component of warfare. It was a fight for survival, and information was our most potent weapon.
However, a parallel and far more sinister entity existed within the organization: the National Intelligence Service, ruthlessly commanded by Pottu Amman, a close confidant of our leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. This wing was a different beast altogether. Professionalized by training from a startling array of global agencies including India’s RAW, Israel’s Mossad and even Pakistan’s ISI, it operated with a cold, detached efficiency that blurred moral lines. At its core was the Special Operations Division, which housed the Black Tigers, our highly secretive suicide squads. It was this unit, under the direct command of Pottu Amman and Prabhakaran, that became the primary instrument of our transformation. Their mandate was not limited to military targets; it extended to assassinations, sabotage and attacks on civilian and economic infrastructure – the very definition of terrorism.
The shift was cemented by a series of audacious and brutal operations that sent shockwaves across the globe. The first was Operation Wedding, the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. This was not a battlefield engagement; it was a meticulously planned hit on foreign soil against a political leader. I remember learning the details: the independent nine-operative team led by Sivarasan, the use of a female suicide bomber, Dhanu, to feign reverence with a flower garland and the sophisticated RDX-laden belt designed for maximum lethality. This single act turned our most powerful potential ally, India, into an implacable enemy and indelibly stamped the LTTE with the terrorist label in the eyes of the world.
The assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 further showcased this cold-blooded methodology. This was not a crime of passion but the culmination of a year-long infiltration mission. The operative, Babu, established a cover as a humble grocer near the Presidential Palace, slowly building trust with guards and relatives to gain proximity. The patience and chilling dedication required for such an act were hallmarks of a professional terrorist cell, not a rag-tag group of freedom fighters. My own work, although I tried to rationalize it as purely military, was drawn into this vortex of terror. The intelligence I gathered on Rear Admiral Clancy Fernando – his routines, his vehicle, his importance – was passed from the military intelligence wing to the national intelligence wing. Soon afterwards he was assassinated by a suicide bomber. I had provided the coordinates; Pottu Amman’s apparatus had pulled the trigger. I was a cog in a machine I was beginning to despise, a machine that was steering our struggle into a moral abyss.
This descent was mirrored by my own internal conflict, a constant battle between my survival instinct and my conscience. The most soul crushing of my duties was training the Black Tiger suicide cadres. These were not fanatics in the way one might imagine. Many were cadres who had been severely disabled in the war, paralyzed or missing limbs, and were tragically convinced that a “glorious” death as a martyr was better than a life of disability. I would stand before them, explaining the schematics of a naval vessel or the weak points of a military base, knowing I was orchestrating their final moments. I saw the desperate hope in their eyes, their desire for their deaths to mean something. It broke my heart to be the instrument of their indoctrination, feeding them the tactical knowledge they needed to become human bombs.
The organization’s own internal rot created the conditions for my greatest personal compromise. The LTTE’s strict prohibition on romantic relationships, a rule born of a desire for absolute focus on the cause, was inhumane and ultimately self-defeating. My love for Nala, a fellow cadre, became a vulnerability. When an operative for India’s RAW, Srinivasan, discovered our affair, he blackmailed me, forcing me to become a spy against my own people. I was trapped. The very organization that demanded my absolute loyalty had, through its own rigid cruelty, forced me into the ultimate act of betrayal. This hypocrisy was rampant; leaders like Commander Kittu were infamous womanizers who faced no consequences while ordinary cadres like Captain Nakulan were blackmailed into suicide missions over similar affairs.
Ultimately, the intelligence wing’s operational “successes” became the LTTE’s strategic failures. The tactics we perfected – the suicide vest, vehicle borne bombs and meticulously planned attacks on high profile political and economic targets – became a template for terrorism emulated by other global extremist groups, including al-Qaeda. Our attack on the World Trade Center in Colombo predated the one in New York. This reputation for ruthless innovation ensured our international proscription and alienated any potential allies. It gave the government the political cover it needed to wage a final, brutal war with no regard for civilian life, culminating in our total military obliteration in 2009. The very apparatus designed to be our eyes and ears had made us blind to the moral and strategic consequences of our actions. Its obsession with tactical victories led to our ultimate strategic defeat.
I began my journey as a boy who wanted to build bridges and ended it as a man who had helped burn them all down. I was a Spy Tiger, a tool of an intelligence wing that, in its pursuit of victory, lost its soul. It transformed a legitimate struggle for Tamil rights into a byword for terror. The quest for Tamil Eelam started as a desperate cry for justice from an oppressed people. But the methods we adopted, perfected by our own intelligence apparatus, ultimately silenced that cry with the deafening and indiscriminate roar of a suicide bomb. We became the architects of our own destruction and I, to my eternal regret, was one of the draftsmen.
Kagusthan Ariaratnam is a defence analyst with over two decades of firsthand experience in the Sri Lankan civil conflict. His journey began at 17 when he was forcibly recruited by the LTTE as a child soldier. His aptitude for analysis moved him away from the front lines and into the organization’s intelligence wing. In 1993, he was appointed a naval intelligence officer involved in the LTTE’s tactical operations. This was followed by a complex period as a double agent, working with India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) before defecting to the Sri Lankan government. As an operative for the Directorate of Military Intelligence, he played a significant role in government counterinsurgency efforts. Now a Canadian citizen, Ariaratnam has dedicated himself to promoting peace and reconciliation.
