CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Tamil Terrorists off the hook for the second time?

Ardnach Rajapaxa

After the epochal event of 9/11, terrorism became an abomination to the mighty powers of the West that heretofore had turned a kindly eye on the likes of Prabhakaran. Facing the imminent threat of extinction, the high command of Tamil Terrorism decided to sue for peace. This volte-face was calculatedly done to forestall a possible demarche (military or political) by a resurgent Sri Lankan State in the new climate of zero-tolerance for terrorism that supervened following the assault on the Twin Towers by the fanatical agents of Bin Laden.

Luck was on his (Prabhakaran's) side, because there arose in our benighted country a political leader who gratuitously assumed the role of go-between and appeaser of the terrorists of the North. A treaty was signed that gave legitimacy, respectability and fighting strength to the LTTE at a time when this accursed organization had no future. They got off the hook thanks to the magnanimity of a clean-suited traitor.

They may get off the hook for the second time. Today, the LTTE is in its death-throes with its leader Prabhakaran a sick and ageing troglodyte operating a killing machine by remote control. True to the form of all tyrants, he has no natural successor and his close underlings who run the day-to-day show are uncouth rustics with no independent vision of how things ought to turn out. The East is no longer the tyrant's fiefdom and brain-washed armies of young warriors that acted blindly at his behest are a thing of the past. The Claymore mine and the lone suicide bomber are the principal weapons in his depleted armoury.

In this catastrophically weak state, who comes to his succour? Who calls for a 'federal arrangement' that will put an end to the fighting? Who makes a mountain of the civilian losses at a time when more people are killed on the road (or take their lives in despair) than fall victim to the bombs and bullets of the terrorists? Who speaks of a 'failed state' when the real failure is Prabhakaran's bloody adventure to seize power by destroying Sri Lanka?

Who clamours for rights and privileges in our embattled state when gun and bomb toting terrorists slink in the very arcades and corridors of power that are supposed to safeguard these prerogatives? Is the answer not clear-cut? Who can gainsay the fact that the United National Party under the stewardship of the renowned nation-disowning apostate is in the vanguard of the movement to downgrade, dismember and hold to ridicule our nation?

When the leaders of the UNP declare that they are in favour of a 'federal solution' is their meliorism sung on behalf of Prabhakaran or the nation-state of Sri Lanka? Is is not evident even to the obdurate and those with closed minds that UNP speaks on behalf of the Eelamists when it claims that federalism is the only way forward in the resolution of the so-called ethnic problem? Surely they know in their bones that for the militant Tamil - let alone Prabhakaran -federalism is the enticing portal that leads to 'self-determination and the free state of Eelam.

Let us expand briefly on this theme. That the LTTE is moribund is known to the vast army of apologists for the decades-long terrorism of Prabhakaran. The brute-force campaign for Eelam now coming perilously close to an inglorious end, its well-wishers seek desperately to find other ways to achieve the same goal. The unnatural UNP rump that currently leads this once-respected and powerful party is the great hope of the Eelamists. Will they repeat the post-9/11 feat of giving oxygen to the dying Tiger? To switch to a different metaphor, will they get the Tiger off the hook for a second time? Remember, friends, that a sovereign and independent Sri Lanka has no special allure for the foreign hordes that surround us. It is in their interest to foster disunity and division - a task that is made so much easier by the traitors within..

BACK TO LATEST NEWS

DISCLAIMER