Mahaveer
'08 and Mumbai mayhem It ain't over till the fat laddie swings
By
Dayan Jayatilleka Courtesy
The Island 29-11-2008
It ain't over till it's over, or as the Americans put it, in a reference
to the opera, it ain't over till the fat lady sings. The Mahaveera Day
2008 speech by Velupillai Prabhakaran, one of the world's most notorious
and certainly tubbiest terrorist leaders, demonstrates that there can
be no solution to Sri Lanka's conflict so long as he remains alive and
active, and has not been brought to justice. In our case it ain't over
till the fat laddie swings.
In the first place the man is an outrageously unrepentant liar and
assumes that everyone suffers from amnesia. In his speech he says that
"It may be noted that during the long history of our struggle,
we have not conducted any act of aggression against any member state
of the international community". Let us forget for a moment that
Sri Lanka is a member state of the international community, a fact that
is proved by his complaint in the same speech, of the military and diplomatic
assistance that Sri Lanka has obtained from members of the international
community on precisely that basis. The man obviously believes that the
assassination by suicide bomber of India's former Prime Minister and
(at the time) leader of the Opposition, Shri Rajiv Gandhi, former chairperson
of SAARC, son of legendary former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and grandson
of the iconic first Prime Minister of independent India, Shri Nehru,
is not "an act of aggression against any member of the international
community"!
In the second place he lies about the history of negotiations, about
the absence of an alternative. There were alternatives for the last
two decades or more. In September 1987, the Sri Lankan -or Sinhala,
as he would put it-armed forces in the North and east had been confined
to barracks, the Indian peacekeepers were the buffer between the Sinhalese
and Tamils, and an Interim administration covering the Northern and
eastern provinces had been created by Executive fiat. Of the twelve
seats on that council, seven, including the chairmanship, were offered
to the LTTE, and yet Prabhakaran refused. He opened fire on the IPKF
by October 10th that year.
Jump cut to 2003. He had arrived at a ceasefire in 2001, not because
he was winning as he claims in this speech (doubtless referring to the
Katunayaka attack) but because, several months after Katunayake, the
Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols of the Sri Lankan Special Forces had
begun to pick off his command structure-in short because he was taking
some hard hits. In April 2003, forty plus states and multilateral agencies
were to attend a donor conference in Tokyo to which the LTTE had been
invited. Taking exception to its non-invitation to Washington DC, (to
the sympathetic nods of Colombo's academics and coffee club cosmopolitans)
it chose to boycott the Tokyo meeting. No other terrorist or insurgent
movement would have done so. Instead, any other movement would have
gone to the meeting, used it as a platform and protested its non-invitation
to Washington. Prabhakaran did not, because he wants all or nothing
and thinks that he, his cause and his movement are entitled to such
special status.
Following the LTTE's pull out from that last "peace process",
Tiger spokesman Anton Balasingham declared in writing that there had
been no agreement to explore internal self-determination amounting to
federalism within a united Sri Lanka. This provoked the usually mild
and compliant Norwegians to release the minutes of the sessions at which
this agreement had been arrived at.
If federalism was what he wanted, Prabhakaran had a clear choice: not
walk out of the CFA process, not renege on the understanding to explore
federalism and not enforce a coercive boycott of the Presidential election
of 2005 at which the opposition candidate, in collaboration with the
sitting (but outgoing) President, was committed to a bipartisan consensus
for a federal constitution.
This is one of Prabhakaran's many consistencies: the sabotage of any
possibility of reform, the assassination of reformists, the foreclosure
of reformist alternatives, and then the Big Lie of the absence of alternatives
as an excuse to continue or resume large scale armed violence and terrorism.
The other consistency echoes and re-echoes throughout his speech this
year. This is the reiteration of a fundamentalist case. There is Tamil
land, from ancient days, and there is Sinhala land. The Sinhalese have
no right to be present on the Tamil land. Axiomatically the Tamil land
must translate itself into an independent sovereign country, Tamil Eelam.
There is not the slightest glimmer of any possible solution, however
far-reaching, within a united country, a single Sri Lanka.
The international community which boycotts and blockades the elected
Hamas administration in Gaza because it does not recognise the right
of existence of the state of Israel must eschew all contacts with Tamil
separatism which does not accept the bottom line that that any solution
- however radical - must be within the borders of the legitimate sovereign
state of Sri Lanka.
Prabhakaran's speech reiterates the zero sum character of the game.
There is nothing in that discourse that is negotiable. It leaves the
state only two alternatives: Capitulation and withdrawal or fight on
to reunify and reintegrate the whole territory of this small island.
In his speech Prabhakaran clearly indicates where he places his bets:
Tamil Nadu, and through Tamil Nadu, India, and Tamils the world over.
It is a pan-Tamilian appeal, with hints of a Greater Tamil Eelam as
single psychological space, if not an immediately political one.
The Mahaveera speech 2008 coincides with the multiple terrorist attacks
in Mumbai. There is a pernicious theory which distinguishes between
international terrorist networks of "jihadis" and terrorist
causes which are home grown and have territorial aspirations. This is
nonsense. Every terrorist organization has some territorial referent,
whether it is Kashmir or Palestine. As Prof Robert Pape's research (his
data base contains every single terrorist act committed any where in
the world going back decades) concludes, every terrorist cause, especially
every terrorist cause that deploys suicide killers, sees itself as fighting
for the liberation of some territory from some alien domination or presence
in one or more geographic location, be it the Taliban, Al Qaeda (US
troops on Islamic soil including in Saudi Arabia), Islamic Jihad or
the Tamil Tigers.
It is not that no distinctions are observable or legitimate as between
various armed movements, but these boil down to the distinction between
those who resort the witting use of lethal violence against non-combatant
targets and those who avoid such use. That is the distinction between
terrorism and armed insurgency, guerrilla warfare, or armed liberation
struggles. Terrorism is a method. It is deployed in the service of an
array of cause and springs from an array of inspirational sources or
distortions of such sources.
Terrorists are not necessarily those who only target civilians. Most
terrorist organizations target armed forces at one time or another,
while also going for no combat targets. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the various
"jihadi" organizations in areas of Pakistan and Kashmir, attack
variously the armed forces of the US and its allies, Pakistan and India-but
this does not exempt them from the appellation of terrorist because
they also kill the unarmed and the innocent.
Terrorists learn from each other just as medical researchers or athletes
or musicians do. They learn from each others' example and behaviour,
tactics and techniques. This is quite irrespective of the differences
in their causes and ideologies. South Asia is one of the world's most
volatile and dangerous regions, not least because of the presence of
nuclear weapons. Ethnic, religious tribal and kinship ties move across
state borders.
This draws states into the internal affairs of others. If the states
of South Asia do not adopt a consistent policy towards terrorist movements;
if there is no united front of states against terrorist movements, all
states and societies in the region will suffer, with deleterious consequences
for far-flung areas of the globe including the most powerful and affluent.
Prabhakaran is one of the best known names in South Asian and global
terrorism. The LTTE is a well-known terrorist "brand". The
fate of the LTE will send a signal throughout the region and the world.
Prabhakaran's speech demonstrates that he is unrepentant in his maximlaism,
fanaticism and political fundamentalism. He displays once again and
even more than before, the syndrome that most fanatics do: that of Hubris.
Hubris, as we know from the ancient Greeks, attracts Nemesis. Prabhakaran
and his Tigers have left us no choice if we are to save this island
from being split apart on ethnic lines and descended upon by pan Tamil
expansionism.
Nemesis is awaiting Prabhakaran in the form of the spearheads of the
Sri Lankan armed forces, fighting in the mud and rain, but closing in.
It must never be forgotten though, that Kilinochchi is the penultimate
prize. This war can only end the way it did in Angola with the death
of Jonas Savimbi and in Chechnya with the death of Djokar Dudayev and
Shamil Basayev. It can only end in the jungles and townships of Mullaitivu
where Prabhakaran retreated and recovered from the IPKF and then from
the Sri Lankan army after Riviresa. Let none, no factor or force, internal
or external, stop or delay Prabhakaran's rendezvous with Nemesis.
(These are the personal views of the writer)
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