Mission Accomplished

By Nilantha Ilangamuwa

“If your job is to fix trucks, the bottom line is how many trucks you fix. The combat Army has a totally different ethic: Accomplish your mission and take care of your men.”
- Col Harry Summers (May 6, 1932 - November 14, 1999)

(May 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) All eyes watching and waiting for two major issues in South Asia to be resolved: one is what will happen to Mr. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the newly downed terrorist leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who led the 30 year struggle against the State of Sri Lanka under various types of Governments. The second one is who will become the next Prime Minister of India. Now one answer is clear.

In India again the Congress has been returned to power for another term. The people of India have voted the Congress in for its rural programmes which have been a success. It also introduced the RTI (Right to Information) Act and revamped the public distribution system. It is clearly a case of the people voting on matters that hit their stomach rather than their heart. Eelam has been shown to be not the major issue for the Indian vote base.

Meanwhile, the Tigers are almost finished on the ground but big news will be delayed, awaiting release because of political motivations that dictate a hold until the President can make the announcement with relish. In his speech to the nation which will be delivered by President Mahinda Rajapaksha after his arrival in the Country from Jordan, he is expected to announce that the Tiger leader is no more – all predictions are that Prabhakaran will commit suicide and that his body will be burnt by his own cadres. “The drama of Prabhakaran is just like Hitler’s incident,” a top level military commander told this writer last night. (Please refer to my article of January 19, 2009, Titled "The Siege Within ".)

There is no doubt the British Empire planted the first seeds of ethnic violence in this island nation as well as a large number of other countries which were under their clutches for over a hundred years; indeed, they have done the same thing in the Swat Valley in Pakistan in the 1940s. A few decades since, the people in Swat Valley are still under fire and many Islamist Jihadi terrorist organizations are active in the area.

In Sri Lanka the major Tamil militant movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, seems to have met its end at last. The end of the LTTE is imminent because of the misled and selfish vision of Mr. Prabhakaran. Now the time has come to rethink the lost liberation of the Tamil Community and the policies and selfishness of the LTTE’s useless leaders. While many Tamils demands were reasonable and were rejected by a stubborn Sinhalese polity and therefore received world sympathy, the methods of the LTTE made Tamils lose the world’s support. Many opportunities for the Tamils were missed because of Tiger selfishness.

End of an elusive mind

Few have been able to understand Prabhakaran’s thinking. However Mr. Prabhakaran has made new history for this island nation and his warped thinking has led to psychological trauma with tragic consequences to his personal life. These are unfolding as I write. As I have mentioned earlier, the capture of LTTE Leader Prabhakaran is not an easy task. Today, as I write, all key supporters of the Tigers, individuals and nations, are trying make a bridge for him to escape from the narrow sandy strip of land in the northeastern part of Sri Lanka where Prabharakan and his juniors are trapped. All diplomats who are concerned over the conflict in the island nation are busy with this issue. They propose a ceasefire agreement or a common amnesty for the Tigers. But fortunately the Government of Sri Lanka has been straight and firm in their position and insist that they will move forward militarily till the end of the last on the Tigers bearing arms on the ground. But the mission of those who would save the Tigers is an impossible one. All these people never cared about the Tamil people who are suffering in this war, but they are speaking for the Tamil people only when the Tigers are facing a debacle on the war front. This is the very unfortunate political scenario of regionalism and the politics of the international community. All of them are far away from the core issues of the conflict in this island nation and show little proper understanding of the issues.

What will happen next? There are two options that Prabhakaran had in the final phase of Eelam War IV. One was like the incident that happened to Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Brown in the final phase of World War II. The second one is what was happened in Al Tikrit in Iraq in December 2003 regarding former President Sddam Hussein. “My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate,” he told the US soldiers after he was captured. Then US Soldiers curtly replied to him, “Regards from President Bush.”

Now what about Mr. Prabhakaran, leader of the so called State of Tamil Eelam? Is he ready as a citizen of Sri Lanka to lay down arms and warmly accept President Mahinda Rajapkasha as his president, the same president whom he eased into office by preventing Tamil people from voting? Or is he ready to make a blood bath with his 200 Black Tigers and the innocent civilians who are still hostages under the Tigers? The second option may sadly seem more attractive to Prabhakaran as it will make him a hero at least within pro- LTTE sections of the community, especially those who are aborad and have no understanding of what it is to live under the Tigers. What ever he does, the rest of the World very well knows that Mr. Pabhakaran is the mistake and curse of all of the world’s humanity.

Indo-Lanka Relations

How would an Indian election result influence Indo-Sri Lanka relations? When I put this question to Mr. A. K. Verma, former head of R&AW , India’s external intelligence agency, he said, “The election results cannot be predicted with any certainty but I don’t see a new direction in Indo- Sri Lanka relationship”.

But in his answer to the same question, Mr. Swami Nathan – who retired in 1990 as Special Secretary, DG (Security), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India and presently a president and DG of the International Institute of Security and Safety Management (New Delhi); and a Trustee of the Catalyst Trust (Chennai)) – said, “The situation in Sri Lanka is at a historical crossroad. President Mahinda Rajapakse and his advisers are so intoxicated by the victories in the battlefield that they are missing the golden opportunity to solve the ethnic problem. The President has lost both the occasions to have become the ‘Man who brought peace to Sri Lanka’. Even now, it may not be too late.”

The propaganda efforts by both sides are not fooling international opinion. It would be realised, sooner than later, that both the Sri Lankan security forces and the LTTE are causing heavy casualties among the innocent Tamil civilians caught in the middle. By not judiciously mixing military action with political initiatives, Mahinda Rajapakse is converting the GoSL-LTTE war into a potentially fatal Sinhala-Tamil confrontation.

Conclusion

Now the big news from Sri Lanka over the almost accomplished military mission is spreading around the World. This may initially signal that the armed forces have wiped out the only ruthless terrorist organization which had conventional forces in the air, ground and sea besides a deadly suicide squad.

However the political situation in Sri Lanka is not so good, whatever the gains and good news on the military front may be. The Government is in fact losing on all other fronts, economic and international. We cannot model ourselves on Cuba, ignoring what the rest of the world thinks of us because here South Asian regionalism is very different from the Latin American. As a tiny island nation, Sri Lanka will face more difficult challenges if our foreign policy and domestic politics will not change immediately.

Now that the main barrier against Indian involvement in resolving the core issues of the conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities, namely the Tigers, has been militarily neutralized, Indian foreign policy will change over the post-LTTE society in Sri Lanka.

What will be the new reading and reaction of the Rajapkasha regime to the evolving policies of the new, more stable and confident Indian Government following its reaffirmation by the Indian electorate? What will be the Sri Lankan policies in response? It is a golden opportunity not to be missed by either government to work together for a stable and peaceful Sri Lanka. Time will tell us more on whether this opportunity will be grasped or missed …

-Sri Lanka Guardian