WORDS AND PHOTOS BY THOMAS HAUGERSVEEN, ASSISTED BY HENRIK PRYSER LIBELL

According to unofficial numbers, roughly 4,000 Tamil soldiers are female. Right now, northern Sri Lanka is run as a de facto Tamil state, with a Tamil police force, politicians, and judges. The progress would not have been possible without their female soldiers. While in Sri Lanka I met some of them, including Tamilvili. She lives in the village of Killinochi, a two-hour drive from the border town Omathai. Tamilvili isn’t her real name. It’s the nom de guerre she was given by the guerrillas when she left her family and friends behind to join the fight. When I met her she was on a reconnaissance errand, staring out over a minefield. She’s no longer part of the fighting troops, but she still had her Kalashnikov hanging from her shoulder. She lost a foot after stepping on a land mine and is now being retrained as a war photographer. I was there teaching a class in photography, and that’s how we got to know each other. “I’m proud of my sacrifice, and I’m happy I can keep working for the cause, even if I can’t fight at the front,” she told me. It’s a bit hard to reconcile that sort of fearless dedication with the way the kids behave in my class. The girls flirt with the guys while they all hang out just like kids at school would anywhere else. At certain moments, I can look at them and see typical young women, not trained killers. I guess they’re both things at once.

Tamilvili at her post by the minefield in Tamil Eelam.

Sri Lanka is a conservative, patriarchal society. But Sudar, a spokesperson at the LTTE peace secretariat, tells me that women are an incredibly important part of their organization. “A female troop once defeated one of our most notorious enemies, the Sri Lankan Special Forces,” he told me. “There are also rumors that one female troop conquered a group of Green Berets, but that’s not correct. It was a troop that had been trained by the Green Berets [officially, the US does not provide Sri Lanka with military aid].
We don’t make a distinction between men and women—we simply make a distinction between people who can fight and people who can’t. Women are usually just as useful to us as men in a fight.”


TO BE CONTINUED
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