CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

New Paradigm of the Anti-War Crusaders

Chandrasoma Rajapakse

The old paradigm had its heart the invincibility of the Tigers and the futility of an endless war that was supposed to get us nowhere other than the perdition of the damned. Not only was this the dithyrambic refrain of the foreign-influenced NGO brigade and its attendant horde of peaceniks, it was covertly endorsed by Presidents, Prime Ministers and Army Generals of yesteryear. That it was self-fulfilling and that the Tigers had a wondrous string of victories will be viewed by historians of a later age as another instance of the synergy of the unpatriotic and the faint-hearted in the surrender of a nation to a brutal aggressor.

By a turn of fate that can only be regarded as miraculous, the Tiger is now a badly beaten animal and our forces have metamorphosed into fighting units that are now the envy of the world. Two things have contributed to this transformation.

The first is the destruction of the paradigm of hopelessness in the struggle against a hyped-up enemy and the marginalization of those who were its principal advocates. It is now recognized that the invincibility of the Tigers was a canard promoted to mythic status by foreigners and their local acolytes determined to divide and diminish a nation whose claims to historic identity go back twenty centuries.

The second was the emergence at a decisive moment of history of men whose native patriotism proved strong enough to ward off the ill winds of foreign-inspired defeatism and to re-invigorate forces – both military and civil – that set to naught the high pretensions of the terrorists led by Prabhakaran. Let us not be complacent.

While Prabhakaran is playing the end-game in an infamous saga that has extended over two decades, his supporters outside the battlefields of the North are not yet ready to give up the struggle. Let us look at their latest feint to pump life into the moribund. One has to go no further than to open the notoriously ‘Pro Koti’ Sunday newspapers. Here a New Paradigm is propounded by such journalistic stalwarts as Tissaranee, David and Dushy. (The Triumvirate dominate the op-ed pages of the Sunday newspapers and are readily identified).

What is this new paradigm? It is based on the hoary principle that if the party you espouse cannot be openly supported (the LTTE in this instance) then it is a smart move to attack the attacker. The dying Tiger is vicariously cosseted by resurrecting the bogy of Sinhala Nationalism or Extremism.

No longer is it possible to speak of a ‘futile war’ because the war is being prosecuted with a professionalism that is the envy of nations having their own Prabhakarans. ‘If Prabhakaran is defeated’ - piteously laments one of the Triumvirate, then ‘it is kaput for the Tamils’.(The strong implication is that the destiny of the Tamils hangs on the heroics of the Fearless Prabhakaran). Is this man living in Sri Lanka? The bulk of the Tamils are in the so-called Sinhala areas. No species of Apartheid is practiced in that region.

The East has been cleared of the Tiger menace and the fact that the Fanged Tiger-Head flag no longer flutters in the breeze is hardly noticed. So what is the spectre that is so menacing to the Triumvirate? Is Sinhala Nationalism - the conviction that this Lanka is the historic land of the Sinhala people – a great offence to Messrs TDS? Are they the mouthpieces of a greater force that looms menacingly in the background but is ill-disposed to openly show its hand? The Tiger will be killed but that historic event will not be the end of our struggle.

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