KILLINOCHCHI: The time is 7.30 pm. It is an evening with a cup of tea and the television. A group of eager youth affiliated to the LTTE’ media unit sit around waiting for the beginning of the transmission.

Talk ceases as the channel begins airing its programmes for the day. Nearly fifteen minutes is devoted to the “Tamil Eelam’ theme song that is aired daily at the opening of the transmission which lasts for two hours. Vellupillai Prabakaran looms across the screen larger than life.

“Our problems can only be solved through war” says the Tiger uniform clad LTTE war maestro, in a trailer that is carried every fifteen minutes with cuts of the Sea Tigers in action. In colourful attire dances are featured as well as songs that all run into one theme – the boosting of the morale of the cadres and the preparation for another ‘liberation war’.

A half an hour ‘archaeology’ programme is featured that is focused on giving ‘proof’ that the Tamils occupied Sri Lanka’s north east ‘first’.

The programme is followed by an ‘arts and culture’ programme that shows that exhibition of paintings by youngsters in the LTTE-controlled regions. Paintings of skulls, guns, dead roots and a landscape that has a blood red skyline and a black-red ground is featured.

“We have to die to usher in a new land where we will be free,” injects Niresh, one of the ‘communication officers’ of the LTTE media unit who had earlier been a military trainer. The highlight of the transmission is the news which again begins with a nearly fifteen minute lasting song that depicts the ‘glory of Tamil Elam’, ranging from birds, beasts and the Liberation Tigers.

The news focuses on the events of the day. The blooded and smashed bodies of two army soldiers who were shot dead by the LTTE are displayed across the screen. Three civilians allegedly killed by troops are also portrayed. A detailed interview given to the TV station by the LTTE political wing leader S. P Thamilchelvam is portrayed in which he specifies that the only option is war.

Dayanidi, a former school master who functions as the LTTE spokesperson echoes his leaders. Hours after a Norwegian team headed by Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brakstar flew in to Killinochchi on Tuesday for a crucial meeting with the LTTE political wing chief, S. P Thamilchelvam, Dayanidi in an interview with Dawn emphasizes one word. War.

“We have had no message from the government stating they have considered our demands. We have explained our position to the Norwegians. We have told them we are on the brink of war. We want the army to withdraw from the north east,” says Dayanidi.

Five youth were killed in Trincomalee over a week ago allegedly by the government military in a killing that has spurred a series of retaliatory attacks by the LTTE, the chief of which being the first suicide sea attack on the Navy which killed 13 sailors. The suicide sea tiger attack was the first to be carried out within the past five years of the ceasefire.

Meanwhile Jaffna, the northern tip of the country and the former amphitheatre of a 20-year-old war is once again submerged in killings which occur daily. A mother and two daughters were killed in their beds in the Jaffna peninsula on Monday in a killing that some speculate to have been carried out by Tamil supporters of the former LTTE militant, Karuna. On Tuesday, the killing trend continued, with two brothers gunned down in Kopai, Jaffna and two soldiers shot hours later in a retaliation by the LTTE.

“We want normalcy. We want the killings to stop. We will tell the Norwegian peace envoy to Sri Lanka Erik Solhiem that we are ready for talks,” says the spokesperson for the guerrillas.

But as Dayanidi points out the talks will have to be on the terms of the rebels, in the only venue that they are willing to agree to, Oslo. Asked by the Norwegians to explain the heavy rate of killings carried out against the military the Tigers staunchly deny responsibility including the spate of claymore mine attacks on the military that killed over 60 soldiers.

Nearly five years after the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE checkpoint that marks the entrance to the Killinochchi region where the rebels run their de facto state, is virtually deserted. A few lorries with construction material transported by foreign non-governmental organizations stand where there were previously winding queues of vehicles, mostly those bringing in visitors from the South.

“The only people who come here are the Tamils fleeing Jaffna. Nearly four thousand families have fled Jaffna for the past three weeks and have sought refuge here,” says a young female police officer, Priya, clad in the smart blue LTTE police uniform.

Twenty-one-year-old Priya who is originally from Jaffna had fled to the LTTE-controlled regions 10 years ago in a background of war and had chosen a career with the ‘Tamil Eelam police’ three years ago. Appearing amiable and friendly, two rare traits in LTTE cadres and police officers especially to the local media, her conversation with the writer is stopped halfway when a male civil clad cadre joins in and begins interrogating the reasons of why we are here, in a far less friendly manner. As Priya confidently informs, while Jaffna and other north-eastern regions which is under government control but with a high level of influence and presence of LTTE cadres have erupted into an unofficial war, the regions of Killinochchi and Mulativu, the two main bases of the LTTE, seem impregnable and paradoxically ‘peaceful’.

Killinochchi, which seemed an area of shrub and temporary shelters five years ago, has now developed into a bustling town that is equipped with many modern facilities, a result of a large number of foreign non-governmental organizations present in the area.

While armed male and female cadres, clad in the LTTE tiger uniform are busy carrying out war training to the civilians and heavy trucks speed down the narrow roads of Killinochchi carrying heavily armed cadres, Sabha Naganathan, a Tamil architect broods in despair.

“We have planned one thousand one hundred houses, destroyed by the tsunami, to be re-built in Killinochchi. The tidal waves swept away these houses and now it looks like a war will do the same,” says Naganathan who had studied architecture in Norway and lived in the country for 29 years.

Working as an architectural consultant to an integrated group of three foreign humanitarian agencies identified as the Solidar consortium, Naganathan remembers a time when he studied Sinhala, the language spoken by the 74 per cent majority of the country. “I was a student at the Sinhala Madya Maha Vidyalaya in Jaffna. There were many Tamils who studied there along with Sinhalese students,” he says to an audience of captivated foreign NGO workers over dinner, referring to the early 1970’s when many Sinhalese lived in Jaffna side by side with their Tamil neighbours.