Let us be on the guard

by Nacholibre

(September 25, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Prabakaran may be down but he is not dead. Until he continues to live, the cold-blooded terrorist in him continues to live too.

Prabakaran has comprehensively lost the East and half of his pride with it, and is progressively losing the other half too by losing the remaining land that he once ruled with terror in the North. The mythical “Eelam” that he promised to the world has ceased to exist in every form that one can imagine. Almost all the sine qua non for a separate state has been successfully wiped off the map by the victorious armed forces of the nation. Prabakaran has lost most of his terrorist band and his able commanders to the army and also lost the international sympathy and support, which he once enjoyed under the pretext of a liberation struggle. In short, Prabakaran is dying a slow death while witnessing himself the death of his 30-year old terrorist campaign in this island nation.

However, as I said at the beginning too, he is still a terrorist and he is not dead yet, and the only good terrorist is the dead terrorist, they say.

From today until the 26th of November this year, there are just two months to go until the pro-LTTE factions around the world will be clamoring to listen to the annual policy speech that Prabakaran makes on his so-called “heroes’ day”. That is if he eludes being killed before that. It is not that Prabakaran would have any shift of policy to offer by his speech at this time of the moment. In fact, he has not even had any thought to have any shift in policy all these thirty years, the only policy of his terrorist mind being the one that threatens a sovereign nation with terrorism in order to carve out his monoethnic dreamland of this country. Yet, as he is not dead yet, and since his ardent followers in many guises around the world still keep venerating him, his maveer speech will be awaited and Prabakaran will have to deliver somehow if he is alive.

What can he deliver? Easier will be to ask what he cannot deliver.

Prabakaran cannot pride himself with his military might anymore. He has been beaten fairly and squarely and his golden days of military “might” are long gone and his inability being humiliatingly exposed. He has begun to lose the invincible image that he used to command among his loyal Diaspora and the pro-LTTE factions around the world. A good example of this is the answer that the infamous LTTE mouth piece Dr. Brian Seneviratna gave recently when a few LTTE Diaspora asked him as to what the LTTE is doing, presumably frustrated by the long line of defeats the terrorist outfit has been suffering at the hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces. Dr. Seneviratna has reportedly said, I quote, “Forget about the LTTE, what are you doing?” That is the extent to which the image of LTTE has degraded in the eyes of the people who once thought that the terrorist band was invincible and Prabakaran was God Krishna. The State has separated the Eastern province from the North and solidified its presence there and it has not stopped ever since. It is running down the rest of the terrorist strongholds one after another in the North too. Prabakaran cannot blame the government of not going for a negotiated settlement because he was the one who spoiled all the chances of such in the past due to his greediness for the military superiority over the state and to his uncompromising stance of creating Elam. He cannot blame the government for human catastrophe when the world clearly sees what he is doing keeping the thousands of civilians in the harms way by trapping them in the Mulaitivu jungles for his own survival. He cannot ask for international sympathy when he continues to forcefully use children and civilians in his armed campaign. He cnnot ask for international support when he has already murdered a Prime Minister of India and has been caught red-handed while gunrunning and being involved in other terrorism-related money swindling and scams around the world for which his terrorist band has earned rightful, unreserved proscription. He on the other hand is a designated terrorist by more than one sovereign State and a fugitive that Interpol is after. So are his closest associates.

Now we can come to the original question. What can Prabakaran deliver in his next maveer speech if he survives that long?

To begin with,Prabakaran can offer the world nothing but terrorism. Whatever he offers is certainly terrorism coated with a promise for a separate Elam.

Many defence analysts say that Prabakaran absolutely needs to reverse things before the monsoons begins at the end of this year, as, if he fails, the armed forces of the State will have reduced him and his terror band to a virtual guerilla force incapable of any major conventional military victory against the army anymore. Thus, Prabakaran will try his best to “score” a few points before his next maveer speech, as without a few such success stories, he will be better off not making a speech at all in the first place. Who among the frustrated Diaspora would want to believe him under the present status quo?

Prabakaran is all too able to deliver civilian carnage for sure. He is a master at it. A wide spread bombings of civilian targets in the South would be among his prime strategies. He has not achieved by doing exactly that in the past, but he will not stop doing it. Therefore, it goes without saying that these two months will be critical for the country. The concerned public in the South better keep their eyes on their surroundings for the sake of their own and for the sake of their work place and their neighbours’ too. The State should ensure that the civilian life would not be disrupted by the terrorists and the public too should cooperate with the authorities. We can be a force on our own if we unite and stay focused.

Coupled with that, Prabakaran will be strategizing to “create” mass murders of Tamil civilians in the conflict zone too. He will not back away from such just out of humanity because he has none. He will do it to put the blame on the State security forces so that the baton could be relayed to the waiting NGO’s and INGO’s to run the next lap of taking the Government to task over alleged human catastrophes. Such a scenario cannot be ruled out as Prabakaran is unable to turn the tables of this war now without any outside mediation and meddling to support his cause. For the outside “forces” to get involved, there should be conducive ground situations, where the GOSL can be held responsible. While the State never wants that to happen, it should take all precautions to avoid those pitfalls, but Prabakaran, on his part, will not forget to “make” things look like the State is the culprit. Even if it will be clear that LTTE is involved, NGO relay runners of the LTTE around the world will not stop until they finish their dirty job of vindicating the LTTE and vilifying the State. This is one aspect Sri Lanka has to strategically look at during these two months, not to mention thereafter too.

The State armed forces are all to capable of defending the nation and eradicating Prabakaran and his terrorist band militarily. However, the prime mover of this whole humanitarian operation is the Head of State and the State and Military top-brass who assists him in drawing out plans and in the subsequent execution of it. It is only a few days ago that a few local newspapers reported of intelligence of a possible LTTE infiltration of a leading politician in the Finance Ministry by way of Sinhala speaking spies who worked for the minister in his election campaign. The LTTE are masters at this disguises and they have proven themselves judging by their track record of killing a number of leading politicians and key military figures of this country being within. The best way the LTTE could halt this marauding war on them is to go for decapitation strikes at the Head of State and/or at other leading movers and supporters of the State’s response to Prabakaran’s terrorist campaign. We should never forget that in order for a sovereign state to succeed against a coordinated terrorist insurgency, the country should protect its leaders at all cost. If the terrorists get things done their way successfully and remove the prime movers of these humanitarian operations from the equation, they will not need any other success now. Such a scenario will mean only one thing and that is that they will have already won and Sri Lanka, as a nation, would have lost.

That is the significance of keeping everybody’s vigil during these two months and beyond.. It is the prime responsibility of the state intelligence and the security details of VVIP’s of this country to protect our leaders tooth and nail and it is the prime responsibility of those leaders to heed the security advice and comply with the arrangements made. Because, one small miss will mean a huge loss that this nation will not be able to turn around at this critical juncture. - Sri Lanka Guardian