The Lanka war is far from over

The LTTE forgot that Eelam was a means to an end, that is, a place of honour for Tamils and the preservation of their identity and culture. By obdurately focusing on an ‘all or nothing’ strategy, the LTTE lost everything and brought upon untold misery on the Tamil people of Jaffna.  

The LTTE also failed to see the altered world situation after 9/11. In the aftermath of that attack, a world consensus was built around zero tolerance for terrorism and secessionism. Sri Lankan diplomacy was skilful and successful in hiding its own obduracy and painted the LTTE in the darkest possible colours. It must be noted that over the past few years,  the LTTE had more or less stopped its terror attacks.  

Finally, Prabhakaran paid the price of forgetting the cardinal rules of insurgency. It is true that LTTE had reached the last stage of its guerrilla struggle in that it was capable of open confrontation with the regular Sri Lankan army. But as Sri Lanka built its military muscle with Chinese and Pakistani help, the LTTE ought to have ceded territory and gone back to its underground days to survive to fight another day. Instead its chose open defiance,  and annihilation.

In the closing stages of the Sri Lankan offensive the LTTE found itself friendless. The Sri Lankans also cleverly timed their offensive to coincide with the Indian elections,  when Indian decision-making goes into limbo,  and gave the Lankans ample time to finish off the LTTE militarily. The defection by Karuna, with his base in the East, was possibly the last nail in the LTTE coffin. With this, the option of retreating to the Vanni jungles was closed for the LTTE. It is these forests that had saved the LTTE when the Indian army had ousted it from Jaffna. It will be interesting to see if Karuna also meets the fate of other Tamil leaders who attempted to reach a compromise with the Sinhalese.  
   
But insurgency is like an amoeba that changes shape and size and reproduces itself.   
 
If the reports in Western media are to be believed, close to 20,000 Tamils have been killed in the present offensive. The whole of Jaffna has been turned into a concentration camp. While the LTTE may have been neutralized,  an organisation like the Palestinian ‘Black September’ may well have taken birth.  It was Black September, born in aftermath of the Jordanian offensive against the Palestinians,  that pioneered the aircraft hijacking and started a cult of terrorism in the Middle East. There is real fear that the brutal tactics of Sri Lankan army may produce this result.

In its six decade long experience of dealing with insurgencies,  India has never used heavy weapons like artillery or air power against the insurgents.  In this the Lankans seem to be following their Pakistani brethren.  A few years ago a European diplomat involved in the Sri Lankan peace process told me that both sides were extremely obdurate. But while the LTTE has been rightly criticised for its demand of Eelam, the government has escaped censure.

Sri Lanka has steadfastly refused to give a federal structure a chance. While talking to the late Foreign Minister Karmadigar (assassinated by LTTE later) in 1996, I mentioned that a status like that of Kashmir in the Indian union would  certainly satisfy most Tamils. Unfortunately the mass of Sinhala opinion in Sri Lanka equates national unity with a unitary form of government. Such is the vehemence of Sinhala opinion on this issue that all talk of federal solution is denounced as treachery.  

In terms of sheer longevity, the Sinhala Tamil conflict is mother of all, dating back to the 67 BC war between King Elara ( after whom Eelam is named) of Jaffna and King Duttagamini who ruled the rest of Sri Lanka.  

Unlike India, Sri Lanka did not have well-developed political parties at the time of independence. The Buddhist clergy was the most well knit organisation in the country,  with influence down to the small community levels. This was through the control that the clergy had over the educational institutions. While not willing to play a direct political role, the clergy nevertheless had its own ideas of how an independent Lanka should be run.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike and his Sri Lanka Freedom Party provided that vehicle. When it became independent in 1948, every major group in Sri Lanka felt insecure. The plantation workers were afraid of deportation, the Moors (Muslims) were afraid of being lumped with the Tamils as they spoke the same language, the Sinhalese were afraid that the Jaffna Tamils together with the plantation workers would dominate them, and the Burghers (a mixed race of Sinhalese-Europeans) simply emigrated to Australia en masse.

The first target of Sinhala chauvinism was however not the Lankan Tamils but the Christians. In a systematic move the Christian institutions of learning and teaching were discriminated against and forced to either flee the country or forced to close down.

Having achieved success on the Christian front,  the next target was the plantation workers who had come to Sri Lanka nearly 150 years ago. Under the ill-conceived Shastri-Sirimavo Accord, India took back the plantation workers who had lived in Sri Lanka for over a hundred years.

The imposition of Sinhala as the ‘only’ official language of Ceylon was interpreted not merely as a move to deny the rightful place to Tamil language but a direct attack on their ‘identity. ‘ A comparison of the politics of the Indian and Ceylonese Tamil parties shows that it was the former that was more militant and separatist.
 
If the Sri Lankans do not show pragmatism and accommodate the Tamil aspirations, the island nation is in for a long winter night of violence. It is only a matter of time before the refugees begin to arrive in India from Lanka, inflaming the public opinion there.  

The Indian approach to Lanka has been timid and indecisive. This stems partly from the memory of Rajiv Gandhi’s  assassination,  but more due to the shrewdness with which the Lankans have used the bogey of China-Pakistan against India. While in the short run the Lankans may have succeeded, they will suffer in the long run if they get involved in the potential big power rivalry in the Indian Ocean area.

They may yet discover that a giant India is far more benign than the Chinese dragon. The Chinese at this time are busy in building a deep sea port at Hambantota, in the deep South of the island. With hardly any hinterland and no economic rationale for it, the port is obviously part of the Chinese ‘String of Pearls’ strategy of having naval bases in the Indian Ocean area. The westernmost end of it is the port of Gwadar in Pakistan. How the US and India react to this ‘venture’ by Sri Lanka would impact on Sri Lanka whose economy is in tatters- with its attendant fears of popular unrest.  The hastily trained and oversized army will also soon have to be de-mobilised by Sri Lanka.

Given all this, one can only describe the situation as ‘interesting’ and pregnant with possibilities, not necessarily pleasant ones.  
 
With our inaction to stop the massacre of Tamils in Lanka, the Tamil anger may well get directed against the Indian leadership, with devastating consequences for current Indian leaders. That would indeed be a first rate tragedy.
 
 
(Colonel (Dr) Anil Athale is Chhatrapati Shivaji Fellow of the USI studying insurgency, and the co-ordinator of Inpad, a Pune-based think tank.)  

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