<\/p>\n\n\n\n
December 23 1987 was a warm, clear day, and I \nwas hiding under a lantana bush with eight of my comrades in a village \nnorth of Jaffna. With our rifles cocked and our cyanide capsules \nclenched between our teeth, we awaited the soldiers who had been \nscouring the area for us for several hours. Our orders were to empty our\n magazines into them before biting into the glass capsules we called \n‘kuppies’ that hung on a thread around our necks. As a Tamil Tiger \nguerrilla, there was no honour in being caught alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n There had been 22 of us that morning \u2013 nine boys and 13 girls, aged \nbetween 15 and 26 (I was 17). Now, four of my comrades were missing, two\n were wounded. Ten were dead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At dawn that day, Indian soldiers had surrounded our hideout, an abandonedhouse\n in Urumpiraay, a village in Sri Lanka’s far north. As the war had \nintensified, our units were being squeezed out of Jaffna peninsula. We \nslept in different places each night: in open fields or houses taken by \nforce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our sentry had spotted the \nenemy soldiers beyond a distant line of trees to the south, and Muralie,\n our unit’s second in command, decided that we should flee north across \nan arterial road. The morning chill was still in the air and the dew \ndripped from banana leaves as we ran though fields and approached the \nroad. As we attempted to cross it, we were ambushed from both sides in a\n barrage of automatic gunfire, grenades and mortars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Get on the ground!’ Muralie commanded. ‘Fire and break through!’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everyone was screaming. We crashed to the earth \nas the gunfire grew heavier, now coming from behind as well. A \nhelicopter gunship hovered above, strafing. We were surrounded. There \nwas no cover other than a few palmyra and banana trees that dotted the \nlandscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lying on my stomach, I shuffled forward, following \nanother girl, Ajanthi. My heart was pounding and thick smoke stung my \neyes. In a state of panic, a few of my comrades attempted to cross the \nroad. One by one, they fell. One was on her back, screaming, ‘My leg, \nsomeone help me!’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A grenade flew over from my left. As I \nscrambled to my hands and knees, I realised Gandhi, our area leader, was\n in its path. ‘Gandhi anna<\/em>, duck!’ I screamed. The grenade hit his head and exploded, ripping his skull apart and covering me with blood and tissue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n Ajanthi got to her knees, ready to dash across the road, then abruptly \nfell backwards, her arms and legs splayed awkwardly. Blood spurted from \nthe centre of her forehead, soaking her auburn hair. In shock, the air \nleft my lungs and I could not inhale it back. Ajanthi had been my friend\n since primary school and we had joined the Tigers together. She had \nbeen hit by a sniper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I crawled forward holding my AK-47 with \nboth hands, desperate to reach Ajanthi and drag her to safety. To my \nright, two comrades were trying to drag Muralie, who had also been hit, \nthrough the wet grass. His blood-soaked body kept slipping through their\n hands. As I reached Ajanthi our unit commander, Sudharshan, yanked me \nby the collar, dragging me with him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘But Sudharshan anna<\/em>,’ I said, stumbling to my feet. ‘We have to get Ajanthi, Muralie and the others.’ ‘They will follow us,’ he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n We ran through the fields and scrambled over a concrete parapet as \nrifle rounds flew from behind us, gouging holes in the wall. On the \nother side, we kept running and found five comrades. Seeing no means of \nescape, we took shelter under a large lantana bush. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At sunset, \nconfident that the soldiers had moved on, we set out through fields, \nsupporting the injured, eventually reaching a gathering of huts on a \nnarrow lane. News of our arrival spread quickly, and a curious crowd \nassembled along the sides of the lane. Most had never seen female Tigers\n before. An old woman flung her bony arms around me: ‘Ayyo, my poor \nchild! Wouldn’t your mother’s heart break if she saw you like this?’ I \ndidn’t realise then how I must have looked \u2013 a starved teenage girl with\n torn clothes, caked in blood, barefoot and carrying an automatic rifle.\n Most villagers wanted us gone. If the enemy soldiers knew we were still\n around, they were sure to attack the village. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On Christmas Day \nwe arrived at a hideout occupied by another Tigers unit. I sat outside \non the mud veranda, thinking about the ambush. Since joining the Tigers,\n Ajanthi and I \u2013 and another girl, Akila \u2013 had been inseparable. The \nlast time I had seen Akila she had been firing her M16 rifle from behind\n a water tank during the ambush. Sengamalam, one of the boys, told me \nthat more than 2,000 soldiers had been involved in the round-up of our \n22-strong unit, and had dumped the bodies of those who died in the open \nair. My mind swum with images of Ajanthi and Muralie, their bodies being\n scavenged by dogs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I heard footsteps and looked up to see the \nsilhouette of three figures approaching our hut. I recognised the tall \nAkila, her hair in plaits, and ran towards her. As we embraced she told \nme that, after the ambush, she had survived by hiding in the water tank \nfor two days. ‘I wish I was dead, like Ajanthi,’ I spluttered. ‘How will\n I face her family again?’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘We have to keep their dream of Tamil Eelam alive,’ Akila said. For me, the dream felt far from reach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was born in 1969 in Kandy, a Sinhala-majoritytown\n in Sri Lanka’s hill country, where I spent the first seven years of my \nchildhood. Although I had Tamil ancestry \u2013 Tamils make up 18 per cent of\n Sri Lanka’s population \u2013 my extended family included Sinhalese, Sri \nLanka’s main ethnic group. In 1978 I was packed off to the northern \nTamil city of Jaffna to live with my grandmother, whom I hardly knew. \n‘So that you can become a doctor like your aunts and uncles,’ my father \nreasoned. ‘Education in Jaffna is far superior.’ I was a confident, \nindependent girl, and my parents believed that I would cope well in a \nnew environment without them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Though I was unsure about becoming\n a doctor, life in Jaffna was idyllic. Not knowing when I would see my \nfamily again, I began to distance myself from them and focused on \nshaping my own life, making new friends and working hard at school. My \nweekends were busy with music, art and drama lessons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon \nafter, my father, an engineer, went to work in Dubai (it was becoming \ndifficult for Tamils to get good jobs at home). My mother, a teacher, \nand sister, who was three years my junior, joined me in Jaffna. I had \nbeen oblivious to the deep-rooted tensions that were simmering between \nthe Tamils and Sinhalese, and knew nothing of the anti-Tamil riots that \nhad killed more than 250 Tamils in the country the year before. But \nbefore long the growing unrest outside my sheltered world was hard to \nignore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tamil pressure groups were becoming more vocal in their \ncalls for equal rights between Tamils and Sinhalese, and an end to what \nmany Tamils felt were the government’s discriminatory policies. \nMeanwhile, Sinhala extremism in the south was growing. There were \nboycotts, strikes and skirmishes. There were reports of Tamil \npoliticians being shot dead, Tamil students being kidnapped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n quest for equality had spawned a number of militant groups, including \nthe Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as Tamil Tigers \noutside Sri Lanka. In the late 1970s they had taken up an armed struggle\n for an autonomous Tamil homeland \u2013 Tamil Eelam \u2013 in the north and \nnorth-east of the country. To begin with, they carried out minor attacks\n on government targets, but on July 23 1983, when I was 14, they \nambushed an army patrol in Jaffna, which brought them into the national \nspotlight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirteen soldiers died that day, but about 1,000 \nTamils were said to have lost their lives in an anti-Tamil pogrom in the\n south that followed. Large numbers of Tamil men, mostly teenagers, \nreacted to what they saw as the Sri Lankan government’s indiscriminate \npersecution of innocent Tamils and joined the insurgency, which was \nrapidly gathering support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1985 the situation had escalated \ninto full-scale war in the north and east, with the government launching\n a military offensive on Jaffna to wipe out the rebellion. From a normal\n happy upbringing, I now found myself living in constant fear. Jaffna’s \nlibrary, where I spent much of my free time, was burnt down by \ngovernment forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We lived under indiscriminate aerial bombing \nand artillery shelling, day and night; our movements were restricted by \nlong curfews. We spent many days in our home-built bunker where I \nstudied, listening to gunshots and explosions, still hopeful that my \nexams would go ahead as scheduled. The Tigers’ television station \nbroadcast images of war: militant training camps, dead bodies, Tamil \nfunerals. The images began to haunt me, and I felt outraged that no one \nwas being held to account, and that the outside world was doing nothing.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The government launched further offensives and air raids became\n commonplace. Bodies were sometimes strewn by the roadside on my way to \nschool, or hanging from lampposts. I was dismayed by the attitude of \nfamily and friends who believed that they had no power to change the \nsituation, but didn’t support the militant groups either. ‘These \nmovements are run mostly by uneducated, low-caste youth,’ they said. \n‘They are not capable of solving the Tamil problem.’ But at least they \nwere trying, I thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The more I listened to the militants, \nthe more I sympathised with the idea of an armed struggle, the more it \nseemed like the only response. There had never been any military \nconnections in my family but I felt that if we were going to be killed \nor driven from our homes, then shouldn’t we at least put up a fight? \nWith friends, I talked about joining the insurgency, though few felt the\n same, believing that such actions would bring disgrace to our families.\n Middle-class girls didn’t do such things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In May 1987, when I \nwas 17, the Sinhala government launched Operation Liberation, declaring \nall-out war against the Tamil militants on the Jaffna peninsula. By now,\n the Tigers had gained administrative control of the region, restricting\n government forces to their barracks. My mother decided that we would \nreturn to Kandy until the war was over. As we prepared to leave, I made \nup my mind to run away to join the Tigers. I told my mother that I was \ngoing to Ajanthi’s to say goodbye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After I told Ajanthi my \nplans, she said, ‘I’ll come with you for moral support’, and we set off \ntogether for the office of the Student Organisation of Liberation \nTigers, a large house near Jaffna University. We were interviewed. They \nwere hesitant about recruiting middle-class girls, but finally relented.\n Ajanthi said she would miss me too much if I left without her, and was \nenlisted, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘The life of a freedom fighter is harder than you\n think,’ Thileepan, the leader of the Tigers’ political wing, warned us,\n adjusting his spectacles. ‘We gamble with our own lives and bury our \nfriends. There’ll be none of the comforts you are used to. I’m not \nconvinced that you are suited to this lifestyle, but no one here is held\n against their will.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing my mother and sister were out, I \nwent home and wrote them a note explaining that I had joined the Tigers.\n The following morning, naturally, my mother and sister and Ajanthi’s \nfamily came to the Tigers’ camp to plead with us to return home. ‘You \nare about to ruin your life. This is not for you,’ my mother said, \ngrasping my hands, her eyes filled with tears. Ajanthi’s father said we \nhad been brainwashed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thileepan sent us to work with members of \nthe Tigers’ female political wing, the Freedom Birds, contributing \narticles to their magazine. At the Freedom Birds’ headquarters, we met \nAkila, who at 17 was already an active member. We immediately became \nfriends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks later, Ajanthi and I were selected by \nThileepan for military training, and sent to an all-girls’ camp in an \nouter suburb of Jaffna. As we were the first group of female fighters to\n receive military training in Sri Lanka (at this point, there were fewer\n than 80 female Tigers), the organisation’s enigmatic leader, Velupillai\n Prabhakaran, wanted to talk to us personally. Prabhakaran was seated \nbehind a table in his office as I entered. The flame from a hurricane \nlamp cast shadows across his round face, and his large brown eyes \nglistened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although he did not ask many questions, it felt like \nhe knew everything about me. ‘There’s hardly anyone in our movement from\n your suburb,’ he said. ‘Most girls here come from rural areas. They are\n used to hard work, pounding rice and chopping firewood. Be in no doubt:\n training is going to be harder for you.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Training, in a village\n south of Jaffna, was indeed gruelling. The days began with a two-hour \nexercise regime, followed by commando training. In the afternoons we had\n firing practice and lessons in explosives and camouflage. Prabhakaran \nwould visit often, and one afternoon expressed his desire to recruit us \ninto the newly formed Black Tigers, the organisation’s suicide bomber \nwing. Only a week earlier the first of the Tigers’ suicide bombers, \nknown as Captain Miller, had driven a lorry packed with explosives into \nan army barracks. Prabhakaran wanted to give women the same \n‘opportunity’, he said. I knew I could never do such a thing because I \ndidn’t have the courage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the war escalated, civilians were \nbeing drawn into the conflict, and a humanitarian crisis was developing \nin Jaffna. Eventually, the Indian government intervened. It was no \nsecret that India had been fostering Tamil militants and providing them \nwith training and ammunition, and the relationship between the Indian \nand Sri Lankan governments was strained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the peacekeeping \nforces arrived, a ceasefire came into effect, and a peace accord was \nimplemented on July 29 1987. The war-weary Tamils welcomed the Indian \nPeace Keeping Forces (IPKF) with open arms, and our training came to an \nabrupt halt. But Prabhakaran informed us that our services would be \nrequired in a month or two \u2013 he was sure that hostilities would resume \nby then. Like the Sri Lankan government, he did not appreciate the \nforeign intrusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So it came to pass. In September 1987, while \nother Tamil militant organisations engaged in the political process, \nThileepan went on hunger-strike at the Nallur Hindu Temple near Jaffna \nin protest against certain aspects of the peace deal. Mass rallies were \norganised by pro-Tiger Tamils in Jaffna and also by Sinhala extremists \nin the south, both parties believing the IPKF’s intervention served only\n to assert India’s supremacy in the region. Fourteen days later, \nThileepan died. The Tigers blamed the Indian government for his death, \nand for standing aside while Sinhalese forces violated the peace deal by\n arresting some prominent Tigers despite the amnesty provisions, and \norganising Sinhala settlement programmes in Tamil areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The war\n resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting\n not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too. A few \nthousand youths suited only for guerrilla warfare, we were no match for \nthe world’s second largest army. Fighting the Indians made no sense to \nme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had joined the Tigers to make a stand against my country’s\n oppressive government, but now found myself at war with those who had \ncome to maintain peace. It seemed that we might be destroying our only \nchance of resolving the situation peacefully. In October 1987 I\n was sent to the battle front north of Jaffna where, by coincidence, \nAkila and Ajanthi joined me in a unit of 30 cadres. The first female \nTiger had died only a few days earlier, confirming that women were now \nfirmly engaged in frontline fighting. During battles we had been trained\n to fire in the general direction of the enemy, not at individual \ntargets, and I am not sure whether any of my bullets hit anyone. I’m \nglad I don’t know. I once asked the more experienced Muralie how he had \ncoped with the knowledge that he had shot people. ‘After your second \nvictim,’ he said, ‘you learn to live with it.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tigers had no\n chance of overpowering the Indian army. Jaffna and many surrounding \nareas were now under their total control. We were being ambushed on an \nalmost daily basis, becoming accustomed to life on the run. Support \namong Tamil civilians was waning, too. Whenever we encountered them, \nthey pleaded with us to stop this futile war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By early 1988 self-preservation wasnow\n our main strategy. Forced out of the Jaffna peninsula by the IPKF and \nfollowing an overnight boat trip, we found ourselves in the jungles of \nthe Vanni in the Northeastern Province, where it was easier to lie low. I\n was now part of a large unit of nearly 45 girls, with Sengamalam, one \nof only two boys, in charge. We moved around the jungle constantly, \nenduring primitive living conditions, while 130,000 Indian troops \nsearched for some 2,000 Tigers on foot and by air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After five \nmonths in the jungle, I contracted malaria; many others were ill with \ndysentery and typhoid. Akila stayed by my side, taking care of me, \nbringing medication and rice water in a rusty tin. I felt broken, \nphysically and emotionally, constantly questioning the purpose of a war \nthat could clearly never be won. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had believed the militant \npropaganda, convinced that Tamil Eelam could be achieved within a year \nor two, but it was now clear that an armed conflict would resolve \nnothing. ‘You are free to go home any time,’ Thileepan had told me. It \nwas time to walk away while I still could. One morning in June 1988, at a\n house near the forest where we had taken shelter following an attack on\n our hideout, I approached Sengamalam as he washed at a well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘I want to resign.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n He stopped drying his face with a sarong and looked at me with alarm. ‘Is someone giving you grief?’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘I just can’t cope any more,’ I said. ‘I am tired of this war. I’m weak.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n Calmly, he said that he was sorry, that he was surprised I had lasted \nso long. ‘I must warn you,’ he said, ‘your life will be in grave danger \u2013\n from the Sri Lankan army, Indian forces, even rival organisations. Your\n name is on their wanted lists.’ I didn’t care. Surrendering my rifle \nand kuppie, I severed all ties with the Tigers, unsure of what the \nfuture held or whether my family would take me back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I \nleft, I went to say goodbye to Akila. When she saw me wearing a dress, \nher jaw dropped. ‘What’s going on? You’re leaving?’ Consumed with shame,\n I could hardly speak. ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me,’ she sobbed. \n‘We have so much to achieve.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I could answer, Sengamalam \nhurried Akila into the forest and I watched her fade into the bright \nsun. I never saw her again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sengamalam organised for a local boy\n to take me to an old woman’s hut in the nearby town of Kilinochchi. For\n the next seven days, the old woman and I did not exchange a word or a \nsmile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One afternoon, while I helped herd her cattle into the \nshed, I saw my mother running towards me down the dirt lane. The mayor \nof Kilinochchi, a distant relative of ours, had bumped into the Tamil \nboy who had taken me to the old woman’s hut. The mayor was carrying a \nphotograph of me that my mother had sent him and asked the boy if he had\n seen me. Once I had been identified, the mayor fetched my mother. The \nonly emotion I felt was relief, as if I was no longer capable of \nexperiencing happiness or sadness. My mother embraced me and sobbed \nwhile I stood numb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘I thought you might have disowned me,’ I said, finally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘You’re my daughter,’ she replied. ‘I’d never give up on you.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n Within two months of being re\u00adunited with my family, during which time \nwe never discussed my experiences with the Tigers, I was sent to a \nboarding school in India, where I completed my studies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although\n now in the country whose army I had fought only months before, I was \ndetermined to move on, and make the best of the second chance I had been\n given. On the surface, normality had returned. My fellow students were \ngirls from affluent families who liked talking about boys, movie stars \nand make-up. When the lights in our dormitory were turned off at night, \n In 1990, with help from a relative, I moved to Sydney (my family later \nmoved here, too) and went to university. After my departure from the \nTigers, and with a new life opening up to me, I blocked out any news of \nSri Lanka as best I could. These days, of course, that is impossible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The two-year war between the Tigersand\n the Indian forces came to an end in July 1989, with changes of \ngovernment in both countries. But the fighting between the Tigers and \nSri Lankan government forces continued. The primitive but effective \nguerrilla organisation that I left behind grew into a sophisticated and \nformidable fighting force. As its methods became more extreme, the \nLTTE’s notoriety increased \u2013 not just within Sri Lanka but all over the \nworld. (In late 2001 it was classified as a terrorist organisation by \nmany countries, including Britain.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tigers have carried out \nhundreds of suicide attacks over the past two decades \u2013 more than all \nother radical organisations in the world combined \u2013 notably the \nassassination of the former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 \nand the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. The guiding \nprinciple of the Tigers, which is so difficult for outsiders to \nunderstand, is that the greater the sacrifice, the higher the honour. \nThere are no bravery medals or pompous ceremonies for living Tigers. \nThey are recognised for their efforts, and awarded a rank, only \nposthumously. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The past decade has seen several attempts to form a\n lasting peace agreement between the Tigers and the government, all \nunsuccessful, with the most recent deal being torn up in early 2008. \nSince 2006 the LTTE’s numbers have fallen sharply, funding from the \nTamil diaspora has dwindled while government forces stepped up their \ncampaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the beginning of this year, a number of crucial \nTiger strongholds were recaptured, and the government was confident it \nwould annihilate the remaining 1,000 or so Tigers within months. After \nthree decades, the civil war \u2013 which has claimed more than 70,000 lives,\n including at least 23,000 Tigers \u2013 appears to have reached its endgame,\n the Tigers on the verge of a final, crushing defeat. The Tamils are, it\n seems, back at square one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, the situation may be worse \nthan ever, with the UN estimating last month that 150,000 civilians were\n trapped in the eight-square-mile battle zone, under constant threat of \nbombing from government forces and being used as human shields by the \nincreasingly desperate Tigers. Some human rights groups have condemned \nthe Sri Lankan government for practising ethnic cleansing against them \nunder the guise of fighting terrorism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Tigers have \nstaged many comebacks in history, the latest government offensive may \nprove fatal. But the scars of this war will remain and until a political\n solution that recognises and respects the rights of the Tamil people is\n reached, I am certain that the Tamil fight will continue in one form or\n another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n More and more these days, my thoughts turn to the \nfriends I have lost. Recently, for the first time, I typed Akila’s name \ninto Google and found several archived reports and court documents. \nAkila died on November 1 1995, in a battle against the Sri Lankan army \nin Neervaeli, a town for which we had fought side by side. With defeat \nimminent, she ordered the members of her unit to bite into their cyanide\n capsules, and then did the same herself. She was 24. After her death, \nshe was awarded the highest rank achievable in the Tigers at that time: \nlieutenant colonel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The most shocking detail was that she had \nbeen wanted for masterminding, along with Prabhakaran, the killing of \nRajiv Gandhi. The suicide bomber and her collaborators had been members \nof Akila’s unit, as I might have been if I had not walked away from the \nTigers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the surface, my life goes on as a happily married \nmother in an affluent Sydney suburb who enjoys reading, travelling and \ngardening. But often, in my dreams, I am being chased by soldiers or \nhanging off the side of a cliff, unable to save myself. It has taken me a\n long time not to panic when I hear a helicopter overhead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I \nrarely discuss my past. Some people cannot believe that someone with my \ngrounded life could have done such things. Others probe deeper, asking \nif I regret picking up a gun with the intention of killing others. Of \ncourse, some will never understand; others may consider me a former \nterrorist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The world has changed since I left the Tigers, just \nas the Tigers themselves have changed. In this age of terrorism it is \neasy to dismiss all rebel groups as evil extremists, without considering\n the desperate circumstances that drive people to align themselves to \nsuch organisations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I tell people that the only reason I joined \nthe war was to defend my people, because I felt there was no other \nchoice. I was not coerced to join the insurgency. As an idealistic \n17-year-old, I believed in the power of the individual to make a \ndifference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, I recognise the elements of reckless, \nselfish teenage rebellion in my behaviour. Naively, I had not \nanticipated how much my family would suffer as a consequence of my \nactions, and for that, above all else, I am deeply sorry. To this day, \nmy parents have never asked me about my time as a guerrilla. As a mother\n myself, I understand why: that they must somehow have felt that they \nhad failed in their duty as parents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope that my own children\n will grow up with firm, positive views, but without the blind idealism I\n had all those years ago. I will try to teach them tolerance and \nempathy, that the end doesn’t always justify the means, and that \nviolence always breeds more violence. I learnt that lesson the hard way.\n Sadly, I don’t think Sri Lanka has learnt it at all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I expressed my doubts\n to Akila. Fiercely loyal and single-minded, she argued that, as foot \nsoldiers, we were unaware of the complex politics of the situation, and \nthat our leaders knew exactly what they were doing. ‘Believe that Anna \nPrabhakaran is always right,’ she told me. I decided to ignore the \ngrowing disquiet inside me and joined the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I cried myself to sleep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n