> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # As ITAK Rivals Fight for Influence, Former LTTE Fighters Become the New Battleground - URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/featured/as-itak-rivals-fight-for-influence-former-ltte-fighters-become-the-new-battleground/ - Published: 2026-08-29T04:16:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-29T04:16:07.000Z - Author: Our Reporter - Tags: JM Exclusive, August 2026 **KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka —** For more than 17 years since Sri Lanka’s civil war ended, many former Tamil Tiger fighters have lived on the margins, poor and jobless and carrying the injuries of the battlefield. Now, as a struggle for influence intensifies inside the country’s main Tamil political party, they are suddenly being courted. M.A. Sumanthiran and S. Sritharan, longtime rivals inside the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, or ITAK, are holding separate meetings in Kilinochchi with former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, turning a community still living with the war’s consequences into the newest arena of their contest for control of the party. The former fighters can see it happening. “We know we are being used by both camps of the ITAK,” Senan, a former LTTE cadre, told *Jaffna Monitor*. “They did not pay attention to our problems before. Now they are coming to us because of their political rivalry.” Several other former cadres said the same: that the politicians now seeking them out had shown little interest in their hardships during the years in between. The courtship began with Mr. Sumanthiran, the party’s acting general secretary and a former member of Parliament, who had already met former cadres in Kilinochchi a few times. At the most recent gathering, he was joined by Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, ITAK’s lawmaker for the Batticaloa district. The meeting was arranged by a former fighter from the LTTE’s Charles Antony Brigade who has since become an environmental activist. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f0/aa/f0aaf7b7-6b61-437a-846a-1a80de683912/content/images/2026/08/as-itak-rivals-fight-for-influ-43c516-1-1.jpg) The ground was pointed. Kilinochchi has for years been the stronghold of Mr. Sritharan, one of Mr. Sumanthiran’s principal rivals inside the party. His camp is now preparing a gathering of its own, and building it to be bigger. Former cadres from across the Northern and Eastern Provinces have been invited to a meeting on Sept. 6 at K.K. Lodge in Kilinochchi, convened under the banner of a former combatants’ welfare association, according to people involved in the arrangements. Those people said the organizers include Venthan, a member of the Karachchi Pradeshiya Sabha, a local council, and a close political associate of Mr. Sritharan; and Tamilselvan, an organizer for the lawmaker in Vinayagapuram. Members of Mr. Sritharan’s camp told *Jaffna Monitor* that the event was a direct response to Mr. Sumanthiran’s meetings, and that they expected to assemble a larger crowd than he had drawn. Ex-combatants have struggled to find steady work and rebuild livelihoods after leaving government rehabilitation programs. Some live in severe poverty. Others carry shrapnel and permanent disabilities and need continuing medical care. The years they spent fighting cost many of them schooling, professional qualifications and the work experience that civilian employment demands. Mr. Sritharan, first elected to Parliament in 2010, has built one of the strongest personal bases in the party and has repeatedly survived electoral challenges. He has generally positioned himself closer to Tamil nationalist sentiment and to the legacy of the armed struggle. Mr. Sumanthiran, a constitutional lawyer who entered Parliament the same year, has represented a markedly different strand, emphasizing constitutional negotiation with Colombo and advocacy abroad. His positions on the LTTE and the armed struggle have repeatedly made him a target of nationalist critics. Mr. Sumanthiran lost the contest for the ITAK presidency and then lost his parliamentary seat in the 2024 general election. Mr. Sritharan retained his seat and remains the party’s sole parliamentarian elected from the Jaffna district. After his electoral defeat, Mr. Sumanthiran began taking an increasingly Tamil nationalist line, political observers who spoke with *Jaffna Monitor* said. They described the shift less as an ideological transformation than as an exercise in political survival. Against that record, Mr. Sumanthiran’s repeated appearances alongside former cadres amount to a sustained move into both his rival’s territory and a constituency with which Mr. Sritharan has long identified himself. But the contest over who can gather more former fighters obscures a more basic question: what either camp intends to do for them. Neither side has publicly set out a comprehensive, long-term program arising from these meetings to address employment, poverty, medical treatment, disability or economic reintegration. For Rasu, a former LTTE cadre, that absence is the whole point. Former fighters, he said, have had 17 years to learn the difference between being remembered as political symbols and being helped as people. “Where were these guys all these years?” he told *Jaffna Monitor*. “The war did not end yesterday. It ended 17 years ago. We struggled then, and we are still struggling today. Where were they all this time?”