Ideology and Goals

Goals
The chief goal of the LTTE is to separate from Sri Lankan government and create an independent Tamil state by the name of Tamil Eelam. This goal was fueled by numerous acts of Tamil oppression, but the "straw the broke the camel's back," was the destruction of a library in Jaffna by Sri Lankan government(Nesiah K, Remembering the Jaffna Public Library) http://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/Library_6_01.htm. The library contained many of the cultural Tamil documents written in the Tamil language, and it could be said that this event led directly to the Tamil declaration of war on Sri Lanka on November 27, 1982.




Ideology 
The LTTE was one of the most rigid terrorist groups to date. They did not allow members to smoke, drink alcohol, have sex, or have any kind of relationship with people not in the LTTE. They also had different views on women's roles than traditional Tamils. The LTTE treated women recruits the same as their male recruits, giving them opportunities in the political fields as well as the battle fields. They did divide units by gender, but this was because of their strict policy on sex, especially pre-marital sex(Richards, Joanne, An Institutional History of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/ccdp/shared/Docs/Publications/CCDP-Working-Paper-10-LTTE-1.pdf.  The views that differed most from traditional Tamil members and LTTE members were on the topic of rape. Many Tamil women who had been raped by Sri Lankan military members were given a place in the LTTE and a way to fight back, while women who were raped were viewed as "damaged goods" by traditional Tamils (Alison, Miranda, Cogs in the Wheel? Page 43)http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/alison/research/cogs_in_the_wheel/cogs_in_the_wheel.pdf.