KILLINOCHCHI (Sri Lanka): The coastline in the LTTE controlled north-eastern region is beguilingly calm. A few boats are seen cruising along the waves, seemingly holding nothing more than fish and fishermen.

On the beach sun burnt fishermen sit around nets filled with prawns of impressive size. A few foreigners, members of non-governmental organizations based in the area, hover around choosing the seafood they will buy at half the price sold in Colombo.

New boats, painted in bright colours to replace those destroyed in the December 2004 tsunami, glisten along the tidal wave ravaged coast of Thallady between Killinochchi and Jaffna.

Overall it looks a serene beguiling picture of going back to sea. But beneath the calm the north- eastern seas are as volatile as the constantly death rigged north-eastern land.

Nearly three weeks after a suicide attack was carried out by the LTTE sea tigers on a naval vessel killing 13 sailors, guns are a common sight along the beach. With hardly any ‘outsiders’ to the region, the rebels have no need to be overtly cautious and many who for all outward appearances are harmless fishermen are seen cradling weapons. A closer look into the boats which seem to hold only fish reveals ammunition.

The rebels, who initiated a wide-scale mission to provide military training to civilians in all parts of the north-east, especially after the assassination of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar last August, have obviously identified Tamil fishermen as an important human shield as well as a militant resource.

But the heightening unrest at the seas is a headache to the fishing industry. The Tamil fishermen whose daily bread depends on the seas have been forced to curtail the distance of their ventures in the ocean.

“We used to go up to five kilometres. I now go only up to a little more than one kilometre. This has taken away over 90 per cent of my usual earnings. But we fear we will be fired at by the Sri Lankan Navy mistaking us for sea tigers if we venture any further,” says Ratnam, a fishermen in the area who says he has ‘nothing to do’ with the LTTE.

For hundreds of fisher families the rising tension at sea is one which once again plunges them below the poverty line in a territory where there is little work option.

“During the war we could hardly go to sea. When we did we had to get passes from the military and keep to a distance as short as one kilometre. Those were desperate times and once again we fear we will face the brunt of heightened security restrictions by the navy,” says Kumar, who had moved from government-controlled Jaffna to Tiger-controlled Killinochchi last month in the wake of increased attacks on the military by the LTTE.

Sunandran, a former fisherman with six young children, sit outside their small temporary shelter and declared that he is now a van driver.

“I transport fish sellers and their fish to the Killinochchi town from Kattakadu, a coastal tsunami resettlement area,” he says describing his new form of livelihood which brings him around 200 rupees for the journey of roughly 35 kilometres.

None of the fishermen speak of the guns in their boats or in shady corners of the beach.

For the Tamil rebels the sea tells a different story, the rising waves falling upon memories of young men and women who have been groomed to take on the task of death.

In the plush LTTE headquarters these young men and women ‘live on’ in photographs.

Over the past four years of the ceasefire, the LTTE have heightened their training of sea tigers for their ‘Sea Tiger’ naval force with 125 sea Tiger cadres ‘graduating’ from an LTTE camp last week from the rebel held Mullativu region.

Women play a key role in the Sea Tiger wing, especially in its division of ‘Black Tigers’, the cadres who are especially trained to carry out suicide missions at sea.

Often light fibreglass boats with an all female crew have proved highly effective against the Sri Lankan navy. The LTTE’s tactics of using fisher boats as ‘shields’ have made it difficult for the navy to spot the Sea Tiger vessels and even more difficult to attack.

Recruitments, especially of women, to its sea tiger force are high due to a highly effective publicity campaign carried out by the rebels through their media.

In one such publicity move shown over the rebel television channel, ‘Tamil Elam television’, a young girl is seen surrounded by a group of young women whose demeanour befits a pre-nuptial ceremony where the bridesmaids assist in beautifying the bride.

Here, it is a short haired, smiling, soon to be bride of death who is ceremoniously doused with water and soaped in preparation for crossing that horizon of no return.

Shortly after, clad in black trousers, shirt and cap she is seen walking onto a sandy beach, stepping onto a seacraft which turns into a black explosion.

The LTTE’s public strategy aimed at parents and elders is to inculcate the belief that their children will be ‘immortal’ if offered at the pyres of ‘Eelam’.

“I believe it is a sacrifice,” an aged woman in rebel-held coastal territory told this writer refraining from mentioning the name of her son but stating that he had joined the LTTE ‘special’ wing.

For this older generation in the coastal north-eastern region whose main occupation has been fishing and who had for a lifetime battled the perilous seas it is has been, in over twenty years of war, a battle of a different nature.

They have had to watch while their offspring were taken away from them and trained to explode themselves in varying goals of death and destruction.

Even though peace talks are once again in the offing, the chances of LTTE cadres, particularly its deadly suicide force, being trained to court life as arduously as they are made to court death seem remote.

—The names of the fishermen have been changed upon request