By M.R. Narayan Swamy, IANS
New Delhi : A Sri Lankan Tamil minister and the breakaway Tamil Tigers leader have finally made up after months of low-intensity squabbles exploded into ugly fighting that left two men dead a week ago, Tamil sources said.
Minister Douglas Devananda and Vinayagamurthy Muralitharan alias Karuna, who are allied separately with Colombo in the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), met Monday face to face for the first time in months, the sources said.
Douglas, who heads the Eelam People's Democratic Front (EPDP), had thrown his lot with Karuna when the latter split from LTTE in March 2004. EPDP offices in the island's eastern province initially served as Karuna's propaganda units.
As months rolled by, they drifted apart over political and personality differences. Amid escalating fighting between the Sri Lankan security forces and the Tigers, the differences turned vicious.
The EPDP accused the Karuna group, which became completely militarised despite a political tag, of harassing EPDP cadres and families particularly in Batticaloa district, Karuna's birthplace and stronghold. Karuna activists were unhappy with what they saw as EPDP's attempts to expand its support base at their cost.
Last week, the simmering tensions came to a boil when militants of the Karuna group raided an EPDP office in Chenkaladi area of Batticaloa, resulting in a firefight that killed two Karuna men and injured four. Two EPDP members were also wounded.
As a consequence, Douglas and Karuna, both of whom are desperate to establish their supremacy in the Sri Lankan east following the withdrawal of LTTE guerrillas, met Monday under heavy security to thrash out their piled up differences.
According to Tamil sources, it was agreed that both of them would intervene personally in the event of any future serious differences among their cadres that may have the potential to erupt into fighting.
Karuna insisted at the meeting that he was not responsible for pamphlets that have appeared in his name in Sri Lanka's east asking Tamils from the north to quit the region. While Karuna hails from Batticaloa, Douglas is from Jaffna in the north.
The Monday meet, the sources said, was called to prevent further divisions in the anti-LTTE front at a time when the Karuna faction has broken into two, seriously denting the halo of the man who rebelled against the Tamil Tigers in 2004.
The Karuna-EPDP frictions go back a long way to the time when the former was a senior commander of the LTTE and was bitterly opposed to Douglas, who has been allied with the Sri Lankan state since the early 1990s.
In recent times, both EPDP and the Karuna group also indulged in a cyber war, accusing each other of extortion and harassment of civilians including recruitment of child soldiers.
Since both groups support the Sri Lankan security forces, their activities besides the allegations against them embarrassed Colombo, which is facing widespread flak over its dominantly military approach to the long running ethnic conflict.
Despite the Douglas-Karuna meet, Tamil sources have their fingers crossed since the Sri Lankan Tamil militant history is replete with bloody internal and internecine fights that have consumed thousands of lives from the 1980s.
Both EPDP and the Karuna group are heavily armed and are bitterly opposed to the LTTE.