THE BRITISH SAW THE SINHALESE AS A TOTAL WRITE OFF, NO GOOD FOR WAR OR WORK!!!

Invoking Sivaram’s Satan

As the LTTE’s end game played itself out on the sands of the Mullaitivu coast, the Tamil National Alliance held a series of meetings with heads of Western diplomatic missions in Colombo. A TNA team comprising of MPs R.Sambandan, Suresh Premachandran, Mavai Senathirajah and Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam met the British High Commissioner, the French Ambassador, the Indian High Commissioner and the European Union Head of Mission in Colombo and appraised them of the unfolding situation on the sands of the shrinking LTTE held zone in Karaimullivaikkal. The representations made by the TNA revolved around the "Right to live". They had said that people were getting killed by the thousands and that they must be saved. Their argument had been that people can’t be killed in the name of annihilating the LTTE or wiping out terrorism. Another point that they had made that there was a shortage of food. Premachandran claimed to have spoken to a doctor in the LTTE held zone who has said that they don’t have medicines but they had at least been able to give casualties first aid.

But the doctor had said he had no treatment for those dying of starvation. The TNA delegation had said people were dying because of shelling on the one hand and starvation on the other and that this was a war crime. Premachandran claimed that there had been no food shipments to the LTTE held area since April 1. The ICRC had the food stocks and the WFP was supplying the food to the ICRC, but this could not be delivered because of the shelling by both sides. Premachandran said that they had asked the LTTE to stop shelling, but that the government side had not stopped and that was where the problem lay. Premachandran says that he had contacted the WFP officials in Colombo who had said that there is food that it had been handed over to the ICRC but that the ICRC had not delivered it. As this column was being written there was a news report on Max TV, which said that the ICRC had refused to make food deliveries until there was an undertaking given by both sides that there would be no shelling.

Samaraweera’s view

An interesting angle to this ICRC food supply controversy was that at last week’s cabinet meeting, one minister said that Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu had told an ICRC official to delay the food supplies to the LTTE held zone so that the issue becomes international. Saravanamuttu when contacted however said that he has not met any ICRC official in recent days and that he did not say anything of the sort anyway. In any case, this is now irrelevant because the problem will cease to exist before it can be gone into. The destruction of the LTTE is only hours away from the time of writing this article. When this columnist asked Premachandran about the end of the war, he said that the war will not end but that it will continue in a different way. He said that the LTTE may be no more a regular force, but that it will become a guerilla force. He says that people may be under the impression that everything is finished, but that impression is not correct.

Interestingly, these were the same sentiments expressed by Mangala Samaraweera at a UNP press conference last week where he said that the war will not end but continue in a different form. These sentiments will be music to the ears of government politicians. So long as the war continues, in whatever form, the people of this country will feel the need to have the Rajapakse led government in power. If the war continues, even with sporadic attacks on the military, the Rajapakse brothers will be deemed the only leaders who can meet the challenge effectively. If what Premachandran and Samaraweera said turns out to be true, then the Rajapakse brothers are going to be in power well into their dotage. Mano Ganesan of the Democratic Peoples Front, another partner of the UNP led alliance, expressed exactly the opposite point of view just the week before last at the meeting held at Sirikotha to appoint Rosy Senanayake the leader of the opposition of the Western Provincial Council. At this meeting, Ganesan said that the government has got the jitters because with the end of the war people are soon going to forget the heroics and then start talking about the cost of living, the lack of employment opportunities and issues like that which will favour the opposition.

However Ganesan’s hopes will be dashed if the thinking of Samaraweera and Premachandram holds. What will the military want? There was something that the late General Cecil Waidyaratne told the present writer many years ago which is relevant in the present context. This anecdote will be known to the Army commander, Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka, too because he was a close friend of Waidyaratne. After crushing the second JVP insurrection in 1989, General Waidyaratne who was then the chief of staff of the Army and the head of the crack operations combine that destroyed the JVP had gone to see the then Defense Secretary, General Sepala Atygalle, who had barked at him, "I say, Cecil, you are a f——ing fool!" Waidyaratne had asked "Why Sir, why do you say that?" Atygalle, with the demeanour of talking to an idiot had said "You fool, you finished it off. Now nobody will take any notice of you. You will not get hourly calls from the president and your usefulness is over!"

From a very cynical point of view, Attygalle was right. Waidyaratne was one of the heroes who crushed the biggest threat to democracy that this country has ever faced. Yet he is not remembered as such. When reminded of Waidyaratne’s fate, Fonseka, will gain immense relief from the words of Premachandran and Samaraweera - that it’s not all going to be over soon and that he will continue to be remembered until he no longer cares. So if the LTTE continues, everybody will be happy. The LTTE will be happy since they still exist. Samaraweera and Premachandran will be happy because their prognostications proved to be correct. The government will be happy because the people will want them to continue in power to finish off what they started and did more successfully than any previous government. The militarily will be happy to spend their time eating wild boar and venison in the jungles while picking off the remnants of the LTTE. Military leaders like Fonseka and the others will be happy that so long as the LTTE carries out sporadic attacks, they will be remembered as the heroes who reduced the most feared terrorist group in the world, which was officially designated as such by the FBI, into jungle bandits. For the opposition, the moral of the story is this: Be careful of what you wish for, it might come true!

Kumar’s question

Last Thursday, there was a lecture by a distinguished American defense expert Robert D.Kaplan at the Foundation for Co-existence in Colombo. Kaplan is a National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, and has been a consultant to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, the United States Marines, and the United States Air Force and has lectured at military war colleges, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA. One of the questions that Kumar Rupesinghe asked Kaplan was whether this mass scale hostage taking by the LTTE will not become a precedent for other terrorist groups in the world. Professor Kaplan’s talk could not be discussed at length, because of the lack of space. However, my answer to Rupesinghe’s question is that it is not likely to be copied by other terrorist groups. For terrorist to take hostages of ‘enemy’ populations is nothing new. It happened in the Beslan school attack, and even in the recent Bombay attacks. The peculiarity of the LTTE is that they have not taken a section of the ‘enemy’ population as hostages but their own people, of whom they claimed to be the sole representatives. By taking their own people hostage, they were able to make the entire west run around in circles trying to stop the offensive. But this will not be an effective strategy in the case of the Taliban for example, because taking Afghan or Pakistani civilians hostage will not really evoke a similar response from the west because ‘collateral damage’ to civilians is an accepted thing when it comes to Muslims.

So its doubtful whether the Taliban or Al Queda or any other Muslim terrorist group will attempt something as futile as taking Muslims hostage in an effort to win demands from the west. Besides, Islamic societies are very male dominated and if any terrorist group tries to bend the will of the west by taking women and children of their own community hostage, that would not conduce to increasing their prestige in the eyes of Muslims the world over. It has of course been the practice of Islamic terrorist groups to indiscriminately target civilians of ‘enemy’ populations. But even this, was looked down upon by more professional terrorist groups like the LTTE which declared contemptuously after the Bali bombings that they were not in the business of bombing kids at McDonalds outlets. What gives terrorists an edge within the fraternity of terrorist organizations is either their success in capturing state or quasi state power or carrying out large scale attacks on military targets or precision bombings of difficult targets such as politicians.


For many years, the LTTE was a trail blazer in this respect the world over, which is why they were designated by the FBI in 2008 as the world’s deadliest terrorist organization. For such an organization to now be reduced to holding their own people hostage in the hope that concern for civilians will somehow bring about the international intervention that will save their lives, is something that will hardly be inspiring for terrorists in other parts of the world. For one, this is not practicable for Muslim terrorist groups. And anyway, for a terrorist group to do what the LTTE did during its last stages will hardly inspire youth to join such a movement. The LTTE itself rose in the estimation of military experts not by taking women and children hostage but by carrying out spectacular attacks against tremendous odds. Given what they were in their hey day, the LTTE leadership should have made a similarly spectacular exit by fighting to the end in pitched battles.

But now, having hidden behind women’s skirts in a vain attempt to save their lives, they have destroyed that mystique that surrounded them from the very inception of their movement. The fear that the average Sinhalese had for the ‘Tigers’ is now gone. In July 1983, during the ethnic riots, when Tamil property was torched and several hundreds of ordinary Tamils were done to death on the streets by marauding mobs, a rumour flew around Colombo that six (only six!) kotiyas had come to Slave Island to avenge the Tamils and at this bit of news, panic stricken Sinhalese fled in all directions. Even as far away as Avissawella and Homagama, terror stricken motorists left their cars on the roads or on roundabouts and fled into the hinterland because they thought their legs would carry them to safety much faster than their cars on the congested roads. This was at a time when the LTTE would not have had more than a few dozen cadres. In the decades that followed, it was this mystique and psychological advantage that gave the LTTE victory after victory. They have lost it all now because of this ill-advised strategy of taking their own people hostage. Even if remnants of the LTTE manage to survive the present encirclement, they will never again regain their past image.

Mr(s) Prabhakaran

The events of the past several months are a reminder to all of us that the LTTE has always been fighting under protection. In terms of precision attacks and carrying out spectacular attacks on military installations reminiscent of World War 2, the LTTE was without parallel in the world. But it is also true that they never had to face unbridled repression that other terrorist movements in the world had to face. When the SL government moved against them in 1987, they were rescued by India. Pressure in their favour from overseas, whether it be from Tamil Nadu, or from the west, was always factored into their calculations by the LTTE. Why they failed this time is because they were confronted with a government that did not care tuppence for overseas pressures. Their strategy of mobilizing the Tamil Diaspora has failed to bring the expected succour. The JVP in contrast had to face unbridled repression in 1971 and 1987-89, without succour from any quarter.

The LTTE’s successes gave many Tamils the impression that the organization was invincible. I remember my friend D.P.Sivaram telling me years ago that there was a Tamil businessman in Fiji, who had placed a prominent advertisement in a Fijian newspaper which had only Prabhakaran’s photograph and the words "By the grace of God, INVINCIBLE!" Sivaram himself, less than 48 hours before he was abducted and killed, in April 2005, described Prabhakaran to me as akin to the character of Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Satan is the true hero of Milton’s epic poem, a character seen to be endowed with indomitable will, and unbending attitude even against the most impossible odds. Nothing that God does, can make Satan yield. Defeat after defeat, Satan rises again, to give God battle. But the problem was that Milton’s Satan was immortal and had the luxury of eternity to be what he was. But Sivaram’s Satan is mortal with only a limited life span. Besides Milton’s Satan had willing followers and did not have to contend with a population that was losing interest. Beelzebub for instance, followed Satan willingly and was not a conscript. These were some of the realities that those who romaticised the LTTE’s terror failed to realize.

As this column is being written, one era is ending and a new one beginning. What life is going to be like without the LTTE, is uncharted territory as far as the present columnist’s generation is concerned. Tamil separatist terrorism had begun before we entered our teens, and has always been a fact of life thereafter. Now, in our middle age, we are waiting to see a change. Do the Tamil people want things to change, is a question that only time will answer. For over three decades, the Tamil people of this country have experienced nothing but a reign of terror in the name of national liberation. In fact only the Tamil people could have endured so many years of terrorism. The Sinhalese have a very short fuse and a very low threshold of tolerance. The Tamil people living in the north and east, were ordered first to hand over their money to the LTTE, then their gold, followed by their sons and daughters. On top of all that, they have been asked to leave their homes and move with the LTTE from place to place while the LTTE removed the furniture and even the tiles from their roofs. Later they were asked to dig ditches and fortifications for the LTTE while starving and being shot at for the sake of liberation.

Tamil endurance

In Sinhala society, no terrorist movement however well organized and ruthless, would have got beyond the extortion of money stage. The JVP took only national ID cards, guns and the like in 1987-89 and asked people to keep their lights switched off at night. That was as far as intrusion into personal space went. The rest of the disruption was in the public domain, forced disruption of transport and hospital services etcetera. Even this was too much for the Sinhalese after just two years. The turn in the tide for the JVP occurred around June 1989 by which time, several spontaneous attacks had been launched against JVP activists by the ordinary public for attempting to disrupt day to day life. The massive repression of the JVP that followed only rode a wave of public indignation until the JVP had been wiped out. Had the JVP dared go as far as the LTTE in demanding children of the Sinhalese and all their possessions, there would have been nothing left for the military to do. There would have been an Indonesia -1965 style bloodbath with villagers massacring JVP activists while they slept.

In contrast to the Sinhalese, the Tamils have always been easier to handle. When the Portuguese captured the Jaffna Kingdom, they did not even have to garrison it says the historian Tikiri Abeysinghe. The Tamil people paid their taxes without a murmur whereas in the south, the Sinhalese were prone to surrounding the Colombo fort at the slightest provocation. The British never thought of the Tamil people as a martial race like the Gurkhas and the Sikhs whom they singled out to serve in the British army. The Tamils were considered to be uncomplaining and obedient workers, and thus it was Tamils who were taken as indentured labourers to all parts of the British Empire including Sri Lanka, Malaysia South Africa and other places. Of course it must be said that the British saw the Sinhalese as a total write off, no good either for war or work. Be that as it may, it is only in the context of looking at the Tamil people in the light of British attitudes that would shed some light on how the Tamil people of this country were able to tolerate their purported liberators and the demands made by them for so long.

Ranil’s comfort zone

Last week, as the operation against the LTTE came to a close, the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe took wing on a tour of Europe which included Norway. Even before he left Sri Lanka, the government owned media raised a mighty caterwaul to the effect that Wickremesinghe was going overseas in order to carry tales to the international community and to block aid and support for Sri Lanka. Wickremesinghe, as we have said on umpteen occasions in this column, lends himself to vilification like no other political leader anybody has ever known. His own actions are to blame in large part for this. Last year, during the GSP+ extension controversy, he wrote a letter to Benita Ferrero-Waldner the external affairs commissioner of the European Commission saying that the UNP would be willing to give the government a two thirds majority in order to change the constitution to qualify for GSP+. The opposition leader of a sovereign nation writing to an international civil servant about a change in the country’s constitution is probably unprecedented. It is this kind of ill-advised action that has led to the present deep rooted suspicion about Wickremesinghe and his motives.

The timing of his present visit has raised some eyebrows. For Wickremesinghe to visit Europe, just as the LTTE is begging for help from the international community looks suspicious. Even his allies are beside themselves about Wickremesinghe’s choice of stopovers. One long suffering UNP ally asked the present writer, why Wickremesinghe had to visit Norway at this particular moment because Norway’s role in Sri Lanka is basically over and talking to the Norwegians brings no benefits and is open to various interpretations. Herman Gunaratne, a planter turned author and political commentator, told the present writer that it may be the case that Wickremesinghe has withdrawn into his ‘comfort zone’ when things were going badly for him at home. Europe is a place where he will still be listened to and deemed right whereas, back here, many think he is wrong.


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