Army in Sri Lanka Shanghais Recruits

POLONNARUWA, Sri Lanka —  Fifteen-year-old Sivalingam Chandramohan was sitting in a classroom in Sri Lanka’s eastern Batticaloa district last October when he was dragged away by a group of armed men.

“My parents still don’t know where I am,” said the spiky-haired teen-ager.

The men took him to a camp where he was trained to use guns. Chandramohan said they were soldiers of the Indian peacekeeping force brought to Sri Lanka in 1987 to quell a separatist rebellion by minority Tamils in the north and east of the country.

The Indians, who are being gradually withdrawn from the island nation off southeastern India, have been fighting a powerful Tamil group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The Sri Lankan government has accused the Indians of training an illegal militia, the Tamil National Army, to continue the battle against the Tigers.

The Tamil National Army is backed by another militant Tamil group, the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front, which is fighting for control of the north and east.

In its bid to raise troops, the TNA has forcibly recruited young men like Chandramohan. But the group is often overwhelmed by the superior firepower and greater dedication of its rivals.

A clash between the two in December in the north-central Polonnaruwa district left 44 TNA militiamen dead and led to the surrender of 155 others to the Sri Lankan army, including Chandramohan.

“We were attacked by the LTTE in the jungles. We lost our way and walked for three days without any food,” he said.

Another member of the group, 24-year-old Moorthi, said they were trapped by the Tigers while drinking water from a pond.

“We told them we wanted to surrender to the Sri Lankan army so they handed us over to a camp nearby,” he said.

Moorthi, a store clerk from Batticaloa, is a member of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization. He said he was forcibly recruited five months ago and given weapons training by the Indian army.

The TNA, which also has members from the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam and the Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front, gave up a cache of weapons including 83 AK47 assault rifles, four light machine-guns, two mortars and a submachine-gun, which they said had been supplied by the Indian soldiers.

“We are too frightened to go back to our villages. We want a safe place. We do not want to join the LTTE,” said 46-year-old Arumalingam, whose son was killed by the Tigers.

“If we are given the opportunity, we will join the Sri Lanka army,” he said.