(May 12, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Even the worst votary of the present war in Sri Lanka would be shaken up by the news that over 400 civilians including 100 children were killed last Sunday when the war violently hit the ever shrinking “safe zone” turning it into the most unsafe zone in Sri Lanka. And this tragedy is neither the first one, nor going to be the last one.
Of course, the response of everyone - the Sri Lanka security forces (SLSF), the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the international community - who shares the responsibility for the tragedy in some way or other was on well rehearsed lines. The SLSF blamed the LTTE for killing civilians to prevent them from fleeing the war zone, the LTTE accused the SLSF for using artillery to kill Tamils and the international community expressed shock and dismay.
And Indian politicians, who had been flogging the Sri Lanka Tamil tragedy for their own gains in the parliamentary poll underway now, were more concerned on building their shaky coalitions after the election.
The deaths have been reported by a government doctor manning a makeshift hospital. And that is irrefutable though the number of deaths and the culpability for them might be endlessly disputed in the finger pointing exercise that usually follows.
But what do the deaths of the innocent going on regularly for sometime now, indicate?
* The SLSF is not going to stop its offensive although it knew that this avoidable slaughter would happen. It now runs the danger of its victories being tarnished indelibly by the blood of innocent civilians. It is losing its patience for the final victory – the deadline for which had been stretched once too often for its comfort.
* The continued callousness of SLSF in handling Tamil population who had come out of the safe zone and its reluctance to handover the relief camps to non-military control only reinforces the Tamil suspicion that the government’s objective of the war is far from liberation of Tamils from the clutches of the LTTE.
* The conduct of LTTE, the self styled guardians of Tamils, in the safe zone has shown that its survival priorities are above the lives thousands of Tamils under its control. This is not unexpected as the LTTE has a long record of glorifying death, rather than celebrating life. Now it is probably prolonging the inevitable end of war to enable its thalaivars (leaders) to escape; after all only last month it sacrificed 600 of the cream of its fighters in an offensive doomed to failure.
* The SLSF promise of not using artillery in its final offensive was of no relevance except for Indian politicians to score brownie points in their run up to the election. This author had been saying all along that in such a small area, weapons available to infantry units are capable of causing heavy casualties even without artillery fire. If the war is not stopped immediately more and more civilians would be killed by small arms and light weapons fire.
* It would be futile for Sri Lanka Tamils or for that matter for the LTTE to expect Indian politicians to bale them out of this crisis. They have exhausted their political rhetoric and other priorities are taking them over. Those (including the wishful thinkers among the LTTE and its supporters) expecting dramatic changes in India’s Sri Lanka policy after the elections might be disappointed (along with Sri Lanka Tamils), as the new government in New Delhi might put Sri Lanka issue on the backburner, due to the quirks of coalition politics in India.
* Given this bleak future, it is Sri Lanka Tamils who should take charge of their lives. They have to do it themselves, free of the armed liberators of all kind, non-effective politicians who are not there in times of crisis, and international community with its own priorities.
International interest and sympathy for the plight of the trapped civilians is waning, thanks to the infiltration of LTTE elements among the agitating Tamil expatriates in many western metro cities. The red flags with the Tiger symbol increasingly displayed in these agitations are really red flags to liberals who would sympathise with the agitating Tamils. They abhor the LTTE for its human rights abuses. The LTTE does care to answer their question as to why it is not allowing the civilians to leave the war zone. And they do not want to be identified with it in public. And that would be a big loss for Tamils as liberal elements form the backbone of civil society which can prod western democracies into some meaningful action.
Apparently LTTE’s goals in stepping up its presence in these protests are different. Fearing the loss of LTTE’s toehold in the expatriate constituencies, it is probably on a desperate bid to disown responsibility for the military debacle. For sometime now, it has been blaming international community for the problems of Tamils. Its propaganda machines are concocting and circulating stories and CDs of Indian army involvement in Sri Lanka war. So the LTTE takeover of Tamil protests would be a logical option to this end.
The public protests of expatriate Tamils would have carried more weight if Tamils living in Colombo had taken to the streets in a massive show of support. They must be very concerned and more worried about the fate of thousands of their kin stuck in the no war zone. Why are they not doing so even in Colombo which has a Tamil speaking majority population? Is it only because they fear a violent security clamp down on any public protest under the draconian anti terrorism law? Why is the Tamil National Alliance, which had been thundering on the issue in parliament and issuing statements accusing everyone including India, not leading such protests from the front? Is the Sri Lankan Tamil tired of the never ending exercise of war and has given up in despair? Or as the government and its Tamil acolytes claim, the Tamils are happy they have been liberated from the clutches of the LTTE?
Only Sri Lanka Tamils and their so called political leaders living outside the north can answer these questions. And their silence is what leaves Tamils elsewhere baffled even as hundreds of innocent lives have been lost with monotonous regularity in the three year old war.
(Col. R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90.He is associated with the South Asia Analysis Group and the Chennai Centre for China Studies. Blog: www.colhariharan.org E-mail:colhari@yahoo.com)
Col. Hariharan says that,
"The deaths have been reported by a government doctor manning a makeshift hospital. And that is irrefutable ...."
It has also been reported elsewhere that the doctor spoke via a satellite phone. But the government says that it has not provided any satellite phone to any doctor in the "no fire zone"
It is, therefore, strange that this one time "Intelligence officer" of the IPKF doesn't have the intelligence to realize that this doctor is just a mouthpiece of the LTTE speaking to the outside world via a satellite phone provided by his captors in the propaganda war against the Sri Lanka government?
How can Hariharan say that "It is irrefutable...". Isn't this the same Hariharan who just a few months ago declare that "The LTTE cannnot be defeated militarily"?
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