As a young foreign correspondent posted to South Asia in the late 1980s, I spent a lot of time in the Sri Lankan jungle, covering the longest-running civil war in the region. It was a constantly surprising conflict where Tamil Hindus – and occasionally even Christians – were the suicide bombers, Muslims tended to be non-violent onlookers and the Buddhist Singhalese majority operated a violent “gestapo”, which succeeded in keeping the minority communities in a constant state of terror.
The most fascinating part of the assignment was always trying to track down the Tamil Tigers. Hauled over at gunpoint at Tiger checkposts, I would always take the opportunity to chat to the severely doctrinaire and often very young cadres, and grew to be both fascinated and repelled by this most disciplined and ruthless of South Asian guerrilla forces, each of whom wore a cyanide phial around their necks in case they were captured.
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