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Tiger talk

Even as the United National Front Government took office last week amid hopes of a revival of a joint, multi-party, peace effort, the LTTE launched a series of attacks on State security forces strongpoints in the north-eastern war zone.

Does the intensification of Tiger military activity indicate a revival of its aggressive offensive military posture that had slackened after the devastating assault on Katunayaka airport and airbase? Or, are the recent attacks mere warning signals - reminders, as it were, by Mr. Velupillai Prabhakaran and comrades, that while there is election fever and victory celebration in the South, the Tigers await attention?

Whatever the intention, the immediate result of the LTTE military activity is death, injury, and destruction and, heightened military tension all around. More sorrow and more ethnic hatred has been sown.

Even if the LTTE meant these strikes as some brutal reminder of our cruel national predicament, it reflects sadly on the Tiger movement’s ability to communicate its message. It shows starkly that the Tiger movement has yet to begin to transcend its purely militaristic politics. It has yet to learn, properly and adequately, the niceties of a civilian politics that must, at some point parallel the armed struggle - especially if, in the future, the armed struggle is to be replaced by a peaceful and wholly civilian process.

History has taught Sri Lankan society the bitter lesson that, sometimes, at certain junctures, given our human frailties and instincts, armed action is necessary; coercion is necessary. The measure of our civilization is to know when such action has sufficed and to shift back to the more complex, perhaps slower, civilian processes. Peace and stability can only come with that. In short, Mr. Prabhakaran must learn the lesson that the Sri Lankan national political establishment has learnt - at tremendous human cost: weapons-speak is not enough.

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