“ Neither the Commander-in-Chief, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, nor his Army Commander, Lt.-Gen. Sarath Fonseka, can risk gambling on the promises of Prabhakaran. Neither of them can stop short of Killinochchi. After Killinochchi all negotiations are possible.” (November 16, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) In the absence of nothing concrete emerging to save the Tigers from their predicament – this has been confirmed in the latest reports coming from Delhi that President Mahinda Rajapakse has stood firm on his decision not to stop the war until the Tigers lay down their arms -- the Tiger cadres and their apparatchiks abroad are looking for a miracle. Since nothing of the sort is also visible in the skies or in the horizon hey rely on rumours that lift their hopes based on illusions of a non-existent ceasefire coming round the corner, under Indian pressure.
As things stand now only a decision by President Mahinda Rajapakse to cease fire can save the Tigers but the Sri Lankan government is adamant that a ceasefire can come only after the Tigers lay down their arms. Which the Tigers are scared and shy to accept because it is tantamount to an admission of failure -- almost surrender!
_____________________
Pooneryn has fallen. 
The message is delivered in the bells tolling louder and louder in the bunkers of Killinochchi. But Velupillai Prabhakaran will not admit defeat. He will hide behind the euphemism of “tactical withdrawal” and carry on until the last Tamil is buried in his graveyards or goes to Canada. The frustrated and misguided Tamils in the diaspora, like those in NGOs, hang on to him hoping that he can launch a last-minute rescue operation. But Prabhakaran has no solution either to the military crisis he is facing now or to the future of the Tamils. Those who believe in him refuse to recognize that he is the problem. They are reluctant to acknowledge that he has gone past his use-by date. They are hesitating to believe that their “God” has turned into a Grim Reaper producing more widows than children.
The glimmer of hope is in the new wave of Tamils who are voicing the aspirations of the only possible alternative to the Tamils – a world without Prabhakaran. As the bunker-mentality bites into the Tiger psyche at an exponential rate the more realistic Tamils are looking forward to the post-Prabhakaran era. But first they have to get over the intransigence of Prabhakaran who is fighting for his survival. He knows that the last option available to them is to halt the war. He is banking on the two active agencies which are running helter-skelter in the periphery to stop the advance of the Sri Lankan forces: the NGOs and the TNA MPs. Despite their hyper activity in key capitals of the world both agents have drawn a blank so far.
____________________
The Tigers missed the bus for negotiating a peace on favourable terms when they had the opportunity in previous peace talks. After giving a number of chances to the Tigers to prove their worth as peace-makers, the Sri Lankan government this time is determined not to do what it has been doing regularly in the past: save the Tigers from the jaws of defeat. Despite all their boasts in the past of being a mighty military force it is undeniable that the Tigers were saved repeatedly by the intervention of Sri Lankan governments.
For instance, the Tigers were saved from the most perilous encounter with the Indians by the force of diplomatic pressure put on India by President Ranasinghe Premadasa. In addition, he supplied clandestine arms to Tigers. The Tigers, as usual, took all the credit, and also the opportunity, to recoup and hit back at the very sources that saved them. Tigers are notorious for biting the hand that feeds them.
Premadasa gave diplomatic and military succor to the Tigers. Politically, the Tigers were given everything on a platter by Ranil Wickremesinghe when he signed the Ceasefire Agreement on February 22, 2002. He also bestowed international respectability and acceptance. So both militarily and politically, the Tigers were saved by the Sri Lankan governments.
Having burnt the fingers several times before, Mahinda Rajapakse has put an end to the false expectations which come in the form of on-again-off-again peace offers and said: “Enough is enough!” More than capturing territory, his advancing forces have exposed the biggest myth circulating in diplomatic, journalistic, NGO and academic cabal which argued that the Tigers can never be weakened or beaten. Tigers too were banking on this myth of invincibility. Their bark was bigger than their bite.
They are facing worst crisis of their history on two counts: 1) they are cornered and 2) worst still they do not know how to get out of the corner. They are hoping to manipulate Tamil Nadu as a last resort but having lost Delhi and the rest of India they are crippled. They dynamics of Tamil Nadu have a force of its own. The undercurrents of Tamil Nadu politics see Prabhakaran as the Veerappan – the hunted criminal who gained some acceptance as a Tamil nationalist (including D. B. S. Jeyaraj, the Tamil political commentator in Sri Lanka) – they lost. Lingering echoes of Veerappan have manifested in hidden undercurrents moving stealthily among Tamil Nadu separatist movements that pop up from time to time. Prabhakaran is feeding this with cries of Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka. He is linking his future to Vaikos, Nedumarans through Karunanidhi who still harbour suspicions about Prabhkaran’s politics and violent tactics.
Prabhakaran’s latest manoeuvre is to remote control Tamil Nadu through CDs. Ayotollah Khomeini manipulated Iran from Paris through his tapes. Prabhakaran hopes to do it with his craftily edited CDs. The TNA MPs have smuggled thousands of propaganda CDs projecting the Tamil kids as the victims of a devastating bombing operations and distributed far and wide in Tamil Nadu. This CD has had a significant emotional impact on the Tamil Nadu constituency.
Dr. Noel Nadesan, the Editor of the Melbourne-based Uthayam – a Tamil community newspaper circulated in Australia – told the Sri Lanka Guardian that Prabhakaran, whatever his failures may be, has made two major contributions to his brand of politics through the art of entertainment: 1. lifted the quality of Tamil music to inspire his political cause and 2. promoted the film/video industry to produce technically superior visuals to boost his image.
The latest CD smuggled into Tamil Nadu has had the desired effect. Dr. Nadesan said that it has even moved the Chief Minister Karunanidhi. It is the prime instrument that has influenced the film actors and the average Tamil Nadian.
In Tamil Nadu the Tigers are fighting with CDs and, of course, money – tons of it! Knowledgeable sources point out that Tamil Nadu politics can be directed easily with money. Some of the leading Tamil politicians, and even film stars, are said to be in the pockets of the Tigers who are throwing money around to buy political allies and influence Indian politics. Those who know the subterranean politics of the India say that this is not a surprise.
The Tigers, of course, have failed to win over the more influential English media (The Hindu, the Times of India, The Indian Express etc). Nor have they won the intellectuals and the think tanks. The Tigers are focusing mainly among Tamil Nadu politicians and the pop artists to whip up popular support for the cause which they find it difficult to sustain.
Clearly, the CD has turned out to be the key political player in Tamil Nadu, next to hard cash. Kumudam Weekly of India has given a vivid description of the doctored CD. It shows bombs exploding, bodies piled, one on top of the other, survivors running hysterically, dead loaded into vehicles, and three blood-stained babies lying in a hospital with a distraught mother crying: ”No doctors in this hospital! No doctors!”
It is meant to be a tear-jerker. But even Chief Minister Karunanidhi who is reported to have been moved by it has reservations. He had in the past questioned the role of Prabhakaran for raising human rights issues after killing the most number of Tamils, as stated by S. Chandrahasan, the son of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of Tamil separatism.
The penetrating insights of G. Parasarathy, a leading intellectual light of Tamil Nadu, not to mention the power he wields behind the scenes, on Tamil Nadu politics cannot be ignored. In a revealing overview of Tamil Nadu – Tiger relations he wrote in the Sri Lanka Guardian (November 13, 2008): “But what is not well known is that till the IPKF was compelled to act against the LTTE in Sri Lanka, Mr Karunanidhi was one of the LTTE’s strongest critics for its role in assassinating his protégé — the founder leader of its rival, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) — Seeri Sabarathinam. The LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran were, in fact, protégés of Mr Karunanidhi’s archrival, the then Chief Minister MG Ramachandran. MGR, however, was angered by Prabhakaran’s obduracy and when I met him in 1987, while he was convalescing in Baltimore, on instructions of the Prime Minister, he expressed his understanding of Rajiv Gandhi’s compulsions in ordering the IPKF action.”
“Speaking at the all-party meeting in Chennai on October 14,” said Parathasarathy, “and recalling the assassinations of TELO founder Seeri Sabarathinam and EPRLF leader Padmanabha (by the LTTE), Mr Karunanidhi made it clear that it was “fraternal wars” caused by the LTTE in the past that had proved to be a major setback for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka. He regretted that “the present situation we are facing in Sri Lanka is due to the fraternal wars of the past”.
Parasarathy added: “The DMKs’ patriarch, whose party was routed after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and who led the UPA to a resounding victory in Tamil Nadu by capturing all 40 seats in the 2004 election, was signalling that while he recognised the excesses of the LTTE, he wanted New Delhi to spare no effort to end the killing of innocent civilians in Sri Lanka.
Interestingly, while Opposition leader J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu also vows to protect the interests of Tamils in Sri Lanka, she has shown by her past actions in that she is fully cognisant of larger national interests in dealing toughly with the LTTE.
Parasarathy’s comments point to the fact that Tamil Nadu is neither a pro-Prabhakaran monolith nor the guaranteed fall back base (pinna thalam) for Prabhakaran. When it comes to the crunch both Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi are more committed to the “larger national interests” of India than to the parochial politics of Tamil Nadu. They are also aware of the perfidy of Prabhakaran. But the flaw in handling Tamil Nadu is in the failure to structure a guided program to separate Prabhakaran from the Tamil people and present the Sri Lankan issue as a struggle to save the Tamils from Prabhakaran. This is a political necessity to build Indo-Lanka relations and, above all, to rescue peace, stability, growth in the region. A discombobulated south, beyond the last tip of India, will decisively throw Delhi out of joint in the emerging world order. With numerous separatist movement threatening India’s internal security, growth and stability normalizing relations with Sri Lanka is a must.
Pointing the finger at Delhi, Parasarathy states categorically: “But what New Delhi has failed to do is to explain to people in India that while it sympathises with civilians caught in the conflict, it also recognises that the LTTE and particularly its leader, Prabhakaran, have no inhibitions in deliberately using civilians as human shields and that with the defection of its key military commander Karuna in the Eastern Province, the LTTE is isolated both internally and externally.
“People in Tamil Nadu cannot support an organisation that is designated as a terrorist group by 31 countries, including India, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and 27 members of the European Union. Prabhakaran is responsible for the assassination of one President (Ranasinghe Premadasa), one Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi), nine Sri Lankan Ministers including the island’s most prominent Tamil, former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, and 18 prominent Tamil political and Parliamentary leaders. They include popular figures who could challenge Prabhakaran within the Tamil community, like TULF president Appapilai Amirthalingam, Sam Thambimutu and human rights activist Neelan Tiruchelvam.”
The task now is for a joint Delhi-Colombo operation to combat the pop art and the power of Tiger money circulating in Tamil Nadu to win and influence Tamil Nadu opinion. The objective is to change the anti-Sri Lankan image propagated by technologically perfect CDs and money. New bridge building exercises are called for, without much water pass under the bridges. A good start was the collective of effort of Sri Lankan artistes to woo their counterpart in Tamil Nadu.
The NGOs are bound to fill in the blank space if Delhi and Colombo fail to move fast. They will find Tamil Nadu a good hunting ground to spend their money to keep Prabhakaran’s war going. Sri Lankan NGOs can be expected to take the fastest boat to Chennai soon, abandoning the west.
However, it is reasonable to assume that, taking into consideration all the factors involved, the upper hand is still with the Sri Lankan government. What is more, with the best will in the world the Sri Lankan forces cannot stop the war having come this far. It will be suicidal both to the Forces and to the nation as a whole. They have to finish the job they began and there isn’t a better opportunity than now. An opportunity like this may never come again.
Neither the Commander-in-Chief, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, nor his Army Commander, Lt.-Gen. Sarath Fonseka, can risk gambling on the promises of Prabhakaran. Neither of them can stop short of Killinochchi. After Killinochchi all negotiations are possible. In fact, that would be the most opportune moment to open negotiations to test the genuineness of Prabhakaran for peace.
A move for peace after Killinochchi will also put to the test the agents of Prabhakaran in NGOs and in the TNA, not to mention Tamil Nadu. It is unlikely that Prabhakaran will accept it. He cannot accept a peace offer, with or without laying down arms, after the fall of Killinochchi. To begin with he will have to start without any bargaining strength. He will insist on going back to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s defunct CFA. But he is in no position to dictate terms. He will have to decide to between war and peace without insisting on preconditions.
So the time for an agreement to cease fire is drawing near. It should begin the day after the fall of Killinochchi. It will also ease the international pressure on the Sri Lankan government to stop the war. If Prabhakaran refuses to accept the olive branch that he has been requesting so fervently then he will have to take full responsibility for the consequences. The Sri Lankan government can throw the ball into his court and wait patiently to see how he plays it.
To change the metaphor into a game of football, it is safe to conclude that, placed in the dire circumstance he is in now. Prabhakaran is sure to kick the ball into his own goal.
This will not surprise anyone. He has been doing that each time opportunities came his way to save face and return to the politics that can save the war-weary Tamil people. Prabhakaran’s has been out of touch with reality because he places his self-interests above that of his people. He has no alternative in his hands, other than brutal violence, either to save himself or the Tamil people whom he claims to represent. The most prominent place available to him in the records of history is go down as the man who built the greatest number of graves for the Tamil people, just not in Sri Lanka but among the entire 70 million Tamils domiciled in far-flung homes of the world.
H.L.D.Mahindapala: Editor, Sunday and Daily Observer (1990 - 1994). President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists' Association (1991 -1993). Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1993 -1994). He has been featured as a political commentator in Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special Broadcasting Services and other mainstream TV and radio stations in Australia.) - Sri Lanka Guardian
Post a Comment