Prabhakaran, paramilitaries and peace by H. L. D. Mahindapala

By and large, the current phase of intensified violence has shifted from the east to the Jaffna and Trincomalee. When the violence reached a climax in the east Erik Solheim, the Norwegian led-Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), S.P. Tamilselvan, the LTTE proxies in parliament, the Tamil National alliance (TNA) and NGOs were blaming the "paramilitaries" (meaning Col Karuna’s TamilEelam Makkal Viduthalai Puligal - TMVP). Now that the violence has shifted to the LTTE-controlled areas of the north Erik Solheim, SLMM (to a certain extent), NGOs, Tamilselvan and TNA continue to blame the "paramilitaries" of the east.

This is also an indirect way of blaming the government even though they do not have the evidence, as stated by Ms. Helen Olafsdottir, the spokesperson for the SLMM, in her latest interview with Sunday Leader (15, January, 2006). She told the newspaper: "We do not have evidence that the government is directly supporting or harboring Karuna. But the government is aware of such a group and its existence but has not addressed it properly. This makes our monitoring even more difficult."

The accusation here is that the government "is aware of such a group and its existence but has not addressed it properly." She does not say how it should be addressed by the government though "addressing it (paramilitaries) properly" has serious implications. It means going to war with Col. Karuna who is waging a war against Velupillai Prabhakaran. Is this an option available to the government which is already besieged by the violence of the LTTE? According to the SLMM, international community, and NGOs the government must fight the wars against forces that "makes things difficult" for them (as stated by Ms. Olafsdottir) and not fight the enemy of peace – the LTTE. In any case, will the Norway, SLMM, Co-chairs pick up the bill of a war against Col Karuna and compensate for the human cost? Besides, a war against Col Karuna is not a war for peace but to strengthen the hands of the war-mongers in the LTTE. So how can peace or the people gain by waging another war against Col. Karuna?

Ms. Olafsdottir’s interview is in contrast to the casual approach of SLMM to violations of CFA and the obstructions to peace caused by LTTE with a regularity of the guns and grenades fired by Prabhakaran. Either the SLMM is totally incapable of comprehending the events exploding around them or it is in the business of manufacturing excuses for its own failures and that of the LTTE.

There is, however, a significant difference in the violence that went on in the east and the current violence that rages in the north: the violence in the east was sporadic with hit-and-run attacks but the northern violence has been escalating according to a pre-planned agenda accompanied by war hysteria. Ms. Olafsdottir, summed up the situation with a degree of accuracy when she said: "But now at present with the situation heating up the mood is changing and it is a question now as to how long we could keep the two forces away from each other. Escalations are very difficult to predict. You see, for a war to begin one does not have to wait for a signal from the top. The present escalation itself is sufficient."

She was not that alarmed when the violence was confined to the east. Quite rightly, she is alarmed now that the violence has been intensified in the north. She also says: "In the three-and-a-half-years (since the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement) there was no direct or return of fire. The forces were quite disciplined." And she concludes: "Escalations are very difficult to predict. You see, for a war to begin one does not have to wait for a signal from the top. The present escalation itself is sufficient."

She is right again. In the current "heated up mood" the most unexpected incident can spark off a war. However, she has deftly avoided identifying the source of "heating up the mood". If she had paused to consider the provocateurs she could have found out "as to how long we (SLMM) could keep the two forces away from each other." Since the general tendency of Erik Solheim, Anton Balasingham, Tamilselvan, and SLMM (to a certain extent) is to blame the "paramilitaries" it is necessary to examine the accusation.

For the moment, let us grant that the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) signed in February 2002 has held for the last three-and-a-half-years, though the repeated questioning of its existence by the SLMM and others has undermined the underlying assumption. As acknowledged by her, the Sri Lankan soldiers have been extremely disciplined without returning fire despite grave provocations. So who is “heating up the mood” and who is reneging on the CFA for Ms. Olafsdottir and Erik Solheim to be so alarmed? Perhaps, the following flash-back to November 2005 will probably help to jog the memory of the peace-facilitators:

On November 19, 2005 Mahinda Rajapakse was sworn in as the fifth president of Sri Lanka. On November 27, Velupillai Prabhakaran, in his annual speech, said that he has "decided to wait and observe, for "sometime", his political maneuvers and actions….since President Rajapakse is considered to be a realist, committed to pragmatic politics…." Now “sometime” even in Tamil cannot mean December 5, 2005 – the day when Prabhakaran detonated two claymore bombs, killing six army personnel at Kondavil,. This was followed by killing another seven army personnel on December 6 at Irupalai Junction

Besides, when Prabhakaran launched his stealth war on December 5, 2005 – just eight days after he said "sometime" -- he contradicted the clarification issued by Balasingham who said that "news agencies have distorted and reported that Prabhakaran will start a war within a month. Prabhakaran did not say like that. Prabhakaran did not give a deadline of a month. He said a short period and it will be next year. He did not mention a date. But he has said he cannot wait for long. This is the important final news our leader." He added: "We are giving time for you. If you do not do anything for our people and drag on any talks we will start our war for right of self determination. "

Prabhakaran earlier warned the Government "Our people have lost patience, hope and reached the brink of utter frustration. They are not prepared to be tolerant any longer. The new government should come forward soon with a reasonable political framework that will satisfy the political aspirations of the Tamil people. This is our urgent and final appeal. If the new government rejects our urgent appeal, we will, next year, in solidarity with our people, intensify our struggle for self-determination, our struggle for national liberation to establish self-government in our homeland."

In this key paragraph neither Prabhakaran nor Balasingham refers to “paramilitaries” as the excuse. They emphasize the urgency, without dragging on the talks any further, as the reason for "starting our (next) war". Trigger-happy Prabhakaran stated on November 27, 2005: "Our people have lost patience, hope and reached the brink of utter frustration." The ploy here was to dress up the LTTE – instigated violence against the Security Forces as another Palestinian-style "intifada". It was a blatant attempt by the LTTE to hide behind the Jaffna population by projecting them as the impatient, frustrated people wanting another war. But this proved to be a hollow propaganda tactic which was dismissed by the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission as "unacceptable". Not even D. B. S. Jeyaraj, who was hoping that it would turn into something like an "intifada", concluded that it was an "intifada".

The identifiable source of violence was neither the people of Jaffna nor the "paramilitaries" of the east but Prabhakaran who revealed his latest blue print for the next war in his November 27, 2005 speech. He said quite bluntly that his planned Eelam War IV was halted by the unexpected blast he got from the tsunami. And he went on to emphasize that the war he postponed in 2005 will be launched in 2006 after giving "sometime" to "pragmatic" President Mahinda Rajapakse. The paramilitaries did not – repeat NOT -- come into his politico-military agenda as detailed by him.

Of course, Prabhakaran does not want the world to think that he is a bloodthirsty war-monger. He and his propagandist unfailingly project him as a man of peace. They deny that he is "heating up the mood" even when he is detonating deadly claymore mines. Tamilselvan says that the violence has been organized by the incensed Jaffna people. Now it is common knowledge that the only group capable of producing claymore mines and the technology to go with it, particularly in the north, is the LTTE. Naturally, political commentators and the diplomats have been asking pointedly: from where did the civilians (who are not combatants) get costly claymore mines and the skills to blast the soldiers? And if the "civilians" are planting these claymore mines are they "civilians" or a part of the LTTE killing machine?

Which also points to a serious chink in the LTTE armour: propaganda. The LTTE killing machine needs legitimacy for its brutalities. This task has been assigned to their apparatchiks abroad and, of the course the local NGOs. For instance, the killing of 13 soldiers in the north which sparked off the horrendous 1983 backlash against the Tamils in the south was justified as a revenge attack for raping an unnamed Jaffna woman. Every agent of the LTTE believed and propagated it. But it was later admitted by the LTTE that the killing of 13 soldiers in 1983 was retaliation for the killing of Col. Anthony by the Army. Prabhakaran was to name one of his sons after him.

LTTE propaganda is laboring tirelessly to (1) psyche its cadres and its population to be in readiness for its next war; 2) to whip up war hysteria to force its population to cross over to India as refugees – a move to win sympathy in Tamil Nadu and to neutralize the Delhi centre; and 3) to legitimize its violence that will be unleashed in its Eelam War IV. A part of the propaganda ploy is to raise human rights issues by faking human rights issues, more often than not. Example: an attempt was made to pin the blame on the Security Forces for the death of Tamil girl in Pungudutivu. The LTTE propaganda said that she was raped and killed by the Security Forces. But the SLMM and the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) both dismissed this accusation, proving that the LTTE propaganda has lost its credibility. It no longer has the clout it had in the past. Its war crimes and crimes against humanity have reduced the LTTE to a Pol Potist regime acting with impunity.

Even a pro-LTTE NGO agent like Kethesh Loganathan of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo is forced to admit that the LTTE is not for peace. Reuters’ (Nov. 8. 2005) Simon Gardner, quoting Loganathan said: "The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -- blamed for the August assassination of the island's foreign minister -- are refusing to resume peace talks they pulled out of in 2003 because they are not ready for a long-term deal," analysts say. "The LTTE simply are not in a position to give up their demand for a separate state yet," said "It is one of the factors which is holding them back from entering into negotiations on a permanent settlement," he said.

In plain English, Loganathan, a pro-separatist participant at the Thimpu talks, is saying that the LTTE’s insistence on a separate state will not let them enter into negotiations for a permanent settlement. In other words, he is admitting that separatism and violence are inseparable. And yet Erik Solheim, SLMM, NGOs and TNA are making desperate bids to pass the blame on to the “Sinhala chauvinists” or to the paramilitaries. Besides, the reports of independent NGOs confirm that their excuses are wearing thin. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented in its world report for 2006 issued on January 18, 2006 that the LTTE has been killing at the rate of one a day. It adds that this "alarming rate" is owed to the killing of "particularly of Tamils in opposition to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam….Tamil Tigers continued to assassinate political opponents with complete impunity," accuses HRW.

Those who refuse to acknowledge that the Prabhakaran does not need an excuse for killing, or for intensifying violence should not be in the peace process or in any political discourse on the peace process. Prabhakaran began his career in killing by first pinning insects he caught when he was a child, according to M. R. Narayan Swamy. He wrote: “He even inserted pins into his nails. At other times, he would catch insects and prick them to death with needles to gain the mental preparations to torture the "enemy". ” (p.52 Tigers of Lanka –from boys to guerillas). He graduated into killing humans by gunning down Alfred Duraiyappah in 1975. He hasn’t stopped killing since then. His whole career has been devoted to refining the art and technology of killing. It is second nature to him. Did the LTTE liquidate the entire Tamil leadership in the democratic stream because of "paramilitaries"? The prestigious Hindu states that the LTTE has killed more Tamils than any other force. Was it the "paramilitaries" that prompted him to kill the insects or the Tamils?

The horrendous tragedy is that Prabhakaran continues to treat Tamils like the insects. Each time he kills a Tamil he comes alive and feels that he is invincible. Liquidating his perceived enemies is a regular fix he needs to stabilize his quivering nerves. Is this the dignity he has given to the Tamils? There are even Tamil theologians in the Churches who are working to deify this "insecticide cult" as a divine mission. But not all Tamils are worshippers of this cult. A growing body of dissident Tamils is resisting this cult of sacrifice in the name of a devouring god. Unfortunately, for them the Ceasefire Agreement did not provide space for them. It provided arms only for the "insecticide cult" to thrive.

If the CFA acknowledged and allotted a political space for the democratic Tamils to exercise their inalienable rights by disarming the LTTE along with other armed groups the peace process would have had a better chance of ending violence. Instead it turned the CFA into an instrument of war by legitimizing the use of violence by the LTTE. No other government in the West who preaches peace and human rights to Sri Lankans would permit one armed group to retain their weapons to be used against those outside their ring of violence. Failure to disarm the deadliest fanatics of violence is fundamentally counter-productive to any peace process. Disarming armed groups is a pre-requisite for peace.

Of all the terrorist groups the LTTE is in a unique position because the Co-chairs (represented by Erik Solheim) acted on the belief that it is a great victory for peace not to disarm the LTTE. The inevitable consequence is there for all to see. But who cops the blame? Invariably, it is the LTTE complaints against the "paramilitaries" and/or the Sri Lankan government that takes priority at any discussion of advancing peace. Erik Solheim, the Pontius Pilate of the Sri Lankan crucifixion, also blames the Sri Lankan government.

Having paved the path for violence along with Ranil Wickremesinghe, Erik Solheim returns once again to the scene of his crimes. He will go to Vanni and will not hesitate to thank Prabhakaran for his offer of a towel to wipe his hands. Then, with some luck, he will come out of Vanni, may be with the LTTE agreeing to meet in Geneva. But for how long will the talks last? Erik Solheim has gone to Vanni to reap what he has sowed and – mark my words – to repeat the excuses trotted out by Prabhakaran.