The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers by Weiss Gordon

Author:Weiss, Gordon [Weiss, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781934137574
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2012-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

The Sri Lankan army had failed to prick a hole in the first so-called No Fire Zone that ideally would have drained the battlefield of most civilians. The battle continued to force civilians in a headlong retreat away from the front lines. But in early February, the first serious indications emerged of the brittleness of the Tamil Tiger lines and the willingness of individual Tiger commanders to allow civilians to escape. Barely two weeks after the bombardment of Convoy 11, 58th Division troops overran 20,000 civilians crouching in bunkers inside the No Fire Zone. Using loudspeakers as they inched forward through the jungles and across the rice paddy fields, troops summoned people towards their lines, despite the ferocious fighting and shelling all around.

It was a fraught experience. Ordinary soldiers had to determine if there were Tiger fighters among the desperate people who had heard the summons and were waiting for the battle to pass over them. After crouching for days on end without cooked food or water in shallow trenches, bodily shielding their children, people rose abruptly and dashed through the underbrush to what they hoped was safety. Sometimes nervous soldiers shot them. Sometimes they were caught in crossfire. For the first time, reports began to reach the UN that Tiger cadres were shooting at people to prevent them from escaping. 7 On the whole, however, the vast majority of people who escaped seem to have been received with relative restraint and care by the frontline SLA troops, who quickly passed them up the line for tea, rice and first aid. The faceless enemy, such a source of terror for the young peasant men and women of southern Sri Lanka who made up the majority of the troops, were suddenly given a human aspect, as thin, bedraggled women clutching children to their breasts and pleading in a foreign tongue fell at their feet.

Around another 300,000 people had decided that their best chances lay to the northeast. On February 12, unaffected by the failure of the first No Fire Zone, the government declared a second, this time on the twelve-kilometer-long sliver of coastal land next to the Nandikadal lagoon.8 From this point on, the army plan was to drive people into a single corner of the Vanni from where nobody could escape, and attempt to whittle down the Tiger resistance through attrition. Great streams of people packed the dirt lanes and tiny paths of the Vanni pocket as people fled on foot, bicycle, tractor and bullock cart to escape the onslaught and headed to the new NFZ. The refugees discarded whatever they could no longer afford to carry, balancing their worldly goods against the need for speed and their depleting physical reserves. Incoming shellfire from the army and the report of outgoing shells from the few dozen Tiger artillery pieces whistled and thundered across the landscape. At impact, many sought safety by throwing themselves to the ground to escape the deadly fusillade of shrapnel, but others died on their feet, too fatigued to repeat the exercise.

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