The regime cannot offer real devolution to the Tamils, even if it wanted to, and that’s the secret..!!!

Rajapakse can’t, not won’t, devolve power
The limits of scorched earth strategies

by Kumar David


What do Poltava (1709), Borodino (1812) and Stalingrad (1943) have in common? They are the three celebrated instances when the cruel Russian winter spreading across its vast expanses conspired with an unrelenting scorched earth strategy to starve, dispirit and conquer invading armies. Charles XII was the greatest soldier of Sweden’s then mighty Northern European Empire and never lost a battle till nature, the scorched countryside and Peter the Great conspired together at the Battle of Poltava. The retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow is legend; the aged and indolent General Kutuzov did not quite win the Battle of Borodino but winter and hunger wore out, exhausted and broke the spirit of Napoleon’s army. When Friedrich von Paulus (the first German Field Marshal ever taken prisoner), 12 generals and 91,000 men (all that remained of nearly 400,000) surrendered at Stalingrad in the bitter cold and without supplies, it was the turning point of WW2.

Why do I bother you with all this? Well on the smaller scale that befits our island, the LTTE twice resorted to something not entirely different from scorched earth – well not exactly, but it drove the whole population with it and left ghost towns to invading armies. The first time it achieved a long and uneasy standoff, which however carried in its womb a catastrophe; the second time was that catastrophe. Last week I wrote about Prabaharan’s place as a military leader; today I want to look at some broader issues. Lanka’s military historians are silent, so let’s see if my amateurish foray yields insights. No, I am not a nutty story telling professor; there is a method in my madness; there is always a contemporary political event or movement I am trying to influence.

The Vanni mini-state


When the LTTE was expelled from the Jaffna Peninsula in 1995, it herded the people out with it, overnight, into the Vanni wilderness – the Muslims had been kicked out in 1991. It did not want to leave behind any Tamils for the Sinhala government to administer; the Tamils were its property! Most Jaffna folk eventually drifted back, but the exodus and in 1996 the flattening of the army garrison at Mullaitivu (1,200 soldiers died here, more than at Elephant Pass), allowed it to consolidate a separate state of sorts, a mini-state in about 15% of the Island’s territory. The mini-state was focussed in the Vanni but its partial remit spread into the Eastern Province and the Jaffna Peninsula. This was territorial dual power.

[Lanka experienced dual power twice in quick succession. In 1989-91 it was state-type conventional dual power – the government, initially a bit on the run, and in parallel a punchi anduva (small government) – a condition which could end only in the revolutionary overthrow of the state or the eradication of the ‘revolutionaries’. Dual power always has to end in decisive transformation of state or obliteration of challenger].

The Vanni was a well administered mini-state with efficient departments, competent ‘civil servants’ and a functional police force. Irrigation, agriculture, forestry and road development were actively pursued. A customs service collected, I think well over Rs 100 million a month, from taxes on goods carried by trucks on the A9 and levies imposed on shops and businesses, mainly in Jaffna town. It was not a wowser ethos either; my dissolute friends and I had no difficulty, on the couple of occasions we drove through, in locating bars serving the stuff that cheers, a few steps off the A9, in Kilinochchi.

Three years ago in the Sunday Island of April 1, 2007, in the context of the LTTE’s fledgling air-force, I drew attention to the technology base emerging in the mini-state: "In a modern knowledge-based world the true measure of progress is the sophistication of human resources capital; technology is not things, not machines, gadgets and electronics, rather technology is the knowledge and ability inside people’s heads."

Nevertheless, and you may find this hard to believe, it was a shy administration. Oh yes the LTTE had no problem confronting philistine Sinhala chauvinists. Who would, they are primitive and bigoted? It was shy of meeting real critics who could take its ideology and practice apart, component by component. Let me illustrate with a personal anecdote.

I knew Nadesan (LTTE IGP) quite well from his time in the LSSP and from when he was with us in the pre-NSSP Vama group in the 1970s; he was Mahendran then. After 2000 whenever we drove through the Vannie, or when in Jaffna during the interregnum, I tried to contact him to ask about my nephew on my wife’s side, Sanjeeva Goonewardene. Sanjeeva, an air-force pilot, was shot down over the sea by LTTE gunners when approaching to land at Pallali. There had been sightings, and rumours that he was held prisoner were rife; I was desperate to find out more. Nadesan, unaware of what I was after, consistently avoided me, fearing political criticism and an inquisition; or perhaps his handlers prohibited him. I have found the same in the diaspora LTTE, even former Peradeniya students, even the best and the brightest. They know they are wrong; they can’t face the Marxist left.

To get back to my theme, the mini-state carried with it the seeds of glory or of obliteration. Its remit on many fronts was very limited; there was only a joker of a judiciary, no formal body of law, central bank, banking system, or currency – farcically, Colombo paid many of the bills. But that was not the problem. Had Thamil Eelam emerged out of the Vanni crucible, these things would have worked themselves out.

The crucial point is this; the corollary to territorial dual power is that the armed forces of a state (even mini) mutate with an unstoppable logic into formal armies, navies and an emergent air-force. The guerrilla force fades away – once formalised it cannot turn back the clock and revert to its former self. Thereafter, conventional war becomes inevitable, a war which the mini-state is fated to lose. Demographics, resources and international balances make this an eventual certainty, sans a political settlement of the national question. And that, as has now become clear, will not happen without a revolutionary transformation in the Sinhala South. As dark a Greek tragedy as Euripides ever wrote!


The hopeless exodus


Oft in these columns I have echoed Mercutio, "a plague on both your houses", meaning, damn the LTTE for driving three hundred thousand people into the wilderness for its own selfish benefit, and damn the government and the armed forces for dastardly bombing and shelling of civilians. To a degree this is now past history; the LTTE leaders are all dead, and a massive mandate at two elections has shielded government leaders from the trepidation of war crimes investigation for the time being. (An electoral landslide in Sudan has had a similar effect on The Hague’s charges against Omar Hassan al-Bashir).

I don’t know anybody who sold the LTTE short, politically, in 2008 and gained fat credibility in May 2009; yes, I too was selling, but selling long (if you remember so was Sarath Fonseka with his forecast of prolonged guerrilla war after the conventional phase). Foolishly, many Tamils in the diaspora were buying, and buying long at that, till quite late in the day. The reasons for the debacle were what every intelligent person knew would eventually prevail (demographics, state power, resources and international balances); the surprise was the speed and drama of the collapse. The transformation of the guerrilla into the brass and buttons of soldier, colonel and commander in chief, accelerated the catastrophe immanent in the womb of the mini-state, more than had been foreseen.

And what about the scorched earth, the exodus? After the fall of Kilinochchi the LTTE leadership knew it was finished; dragging the people along was a desperate attempt to construct a human shield for its own preservation. (Yes many Vanni Tamils did go along voluntarily; they feared state brutality more than the LTTE). The exodus tactic may have worked if Delhi had a different take from Colombo on Tamil civilians, but it did not. Both had the same take: ‘Bomb the bastards (the leaders) into oblivion and hang civilian casualties’. Moral of story; because it works invariably in Russia and once here in 1995, does not mean it will work again when trapped with back to India and to the Indian Ocean.


The odds against a settlement


I do not know whether the government will trot out something that the TNA, standing on the quicksand of post-war gloom, can be coerced into accepting at Indian prodding; that remains to be seen. What I do believe is that the Rajapakse government will rule out meaningful devolution and self-administration. The problem is the way in which the regime is stabilised within Sinhala polity. This has often been said in recent years but last week I came across a striking way of putting it across. Paraphrasing Tisaranee; the dynastic ambitions of the family will be tolerated by Sinhala polity only so long as it stands as the champion of Sinhala nationalism. Snap that thread and it will be the end of dynastic ambitions; the Rajapakse family lives and feeds on this quintessential symbiosis.

The regime cannot offer real devolution to the Tamils, even if it wanted to, and that’s the secret. Sensible liberals, Indian commentators and even William Blake are on record: "OK now, the LTTE is finished, the government is strong and stable; no problem, devolve and settle the national question". Unfortunately they are only counting events, but not accounting for the aforesaid symbiosis. I think the Cassandras have it right, but we will see within months, if not weeks, when the constitutional draft is unveiled.


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