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Let's face it!

Editorial, The Island

The government has refused to respond to the LTTE Trincomalee political wing leader S. Elilan's statement to the foreign media that the LTTE has pulled out of the CFA. The LTTE headquarters has struck a different note. It has not withdrawn from the CFA, it says. The SLMM insists the CFA holds. Those who yearn for peace may want to believe that it was a slip of the tongue on the part of Elilan. But the LTTE is not known for lapsus linguae.

According to the CFA, the party that wishes to withdraw has to give two weeks' notice. The LTTE has not just given two weeks notice: It has given several months' notice. It was last November that Prabhakaran gave notice of a CFA pull out in his birthday speech, immediately after the election of President Mahinda Rajapakse. He, it should be recalled, promised war 'next year' [2006] without specifying the exact date. He honoured his promise a few months later by starting claymore mine attacks on the armed forces personnel and resuming high profile assassinations. The LTTE attempt on the Army Commander Lt. General Sarath Fonseka's life marked the end of the outfit's commitment to the CFA.

Elilan has only stated a fact. The LTTE has withdrawn from the CFA. That's for sure. Paradoxically, the SLMM is also right in saying that the LTTE has not pulled out as it has not announced its withdrawal officially. The government is also right in not responding to an unofficial statement by an LTTE leader. The government and the SLMM are hoping against hope, clinging as they do, to a mere technicality.

The statement from the LTTE headquarters that it will abide by the CFA is a calculated attempt at obfuscation. The LTTE knows that an official announcement of a pull out will give a free hand to the government, which in such an eventuality will be able to resort to unbridled military action without pressure from the international community. The LTTE strategy has been to keep the government in the CFA straitjacket, while stepping up attacks on the military and carrying out assassinations as part of its ’ war.

The military capability of the LTTE shouldn't be underestimated, but the fact remains that the losses it will have to suffer in a full blown war with the government going all out will be heavy. It is not for nothing that the former US Ambassador Lunstead warned the LTTE some time ago that if it reverted to war, it would have to face a better equipped and more determined Sri Lankan military.

The LTTE has invested heavily in Kilinochchi, since it lost the strategic Jaffna town in 1995. It claims to have graduated from a hit and run outfit to a quasi conventional army of sorts and it has to live up to that reputation. Unlike in the past when it had nothing to lose but everything to destroy on the other side, today it has to be mindful of a lot of things just like the government. The LTTE's image is crumbling internationally with its arrogance earning it more and more enemies even in the Scandinavian countries that have had to pull out their truce monitors because of its veiled threats. The outfit has become too embarrassing to even its local allies, who are not in a position to defend it over the Mavil Aru dispute. (Else, there would have been protests opposite the Fort Railway Station condemning the government military action.) Atop those vicissitudes, a large scale war which will wreak havoc on what it has painstakingly put in place over the years by way of a self-styled state, is a dreadful proposition for the LTTE. Hence its wariness to acknowledge it is no longer a party to the CFA.

If the CFA is holding as the LTTE, the SLMM and the government claim, then the situation couldn't be any worse without it. Besides the fierce battle raging at Mavil Aru, the Navy had come under heavy artillery fire from the LTTE at the time of writing. The LTTE targeted another troop carrier but the vessel managed to reach safety. Are such acts of hostility possible if a CFA is in force?

There are things in life that are difficult to come to terms with, such as the demise of a near and dear one. It is in human nature to try to wish away such unbearable losses. Our beloved CFA is brain dead; it is being tube fed. Let's face it! Whether to keep it alive that way or not is a matter to be decided by American, European, Norwegian and Japanese doctors, under whose care we have placed the patient.

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