Lesson from Nugegoda: The need for vigilance

Malinda Seneviratne

“Terror has come to Colombo,” screamed the title of a purported analysis of the political situation after the Nugegoda bomb blast, and one was left with the echo of the oft-proclaimed observation regarding terrorism in this country: how short our memories are!

Dig a little deeper, i.e. beneath the surface of scare-mongering headlines and salivating editorial comment from those who want to make political capital out of a nation’s anguish, and one encounters the sober truths that are often glossed over or conveniently forgotten in the sensationalization, politicization and even trivilialization that is part and parcel of the political a la Sri Lanka.

First, there is nothing ‘new’ in this attack. The attack is not a ‘first’ since Mahinda Rajapaksa decided to take the LTTE head-on. If memory requires refreshing, then the names of General Parami Kulatunga and Army Commander Sarath Fonseka would constitute the required pinch.

If these were ‘military targets’ then the claymore mines that gutted a couple of buses a year ago should do the wake-up trick. Note: Lakshman Kadirgamar was assassinated after the CFA-authoring Ranil Wickremesinghe was voted out of power and the late Foreign Minister was as “civil” as one could get.

If a nuanced analysis is demanded then one can write something like this:

“Terror was always in the city, it is always a sleeper waiting to wake up; it was indeed an enemy to whom the gates were thrown open with the proverbial red carpet to boot, courtesy CFA.”

One must be brutally sober about these things because sentimentality clouds reason and anything less than hard, humour-less planning and execution would be woefully inadequate in countering a mindless terrorist.

There is absolutely nothing gained in crying foul here, for example, saying that the LTTE is now targeting civilians and therefore has once again proved that it is a terrorist organization.

The point is that terrorists do not divide targets into ‘civilian’ and ‘military’. The world no doubt is given to confusing ‘terrorist’ with ‘rebel’ and is celebratory of the mislabelled ‘rebel’ (simply because that particular animal lives in another country and preys on other peoples).

The people in this country, on the other hand, require no lessons in definition: a terrorist is a terrorist whether in full suit or suicide jacket, and must be treated as a threat.

Those afflicted with political naivete of course would periodically mutter ‘negotiated settlement’ as though the LTTE can be cajoled into ‘talks’ when in fact terrorist organisations by definition cannot and will not understand the meaning of the word, unless they transform themselves into a formal political entity.

‘Over my dead body,’ one can almost hear Prabhakaran murmuring wherever he is holed up these days.

The Government and the citizens of this country have to ask themselves a few questions at this point. Did we lull ourselves into believing that gains in the battlefield rendered the enemy absolutely powerless to strike elsewhere ?

Did we forget that we have to be vigilant all the time and that the terrorist needs to get lucky only once ? Did we as citizens believe that our ‘security’ is for the security forces and that all we need to is to cheer their victories and lament their defeats ?

Make no mistake, we have to support our security forces to the hilt, whether or not we voted for the government that bids them to fight. Make no mistake, all of us have a day-to-day role to play in eradicating our beloved land of the pestilence called terrorism and this role is predicated on one thing: vigilance.

Terrorism has no fixed target, no fixed location. Anywhere and anyone is ‘fair game’ for Prabhakaran. This is why we have to be alert, why we have to be conscious of our surroundings, and why we have to look out for strangers and suspicious behaviour.

We have not come to the point of ‘every man for himself’, but we lose nothing by paying attention to our safety.

Of course we must lament, we must remember not to forget those who became victim to a ruthless terrorist’s mindless act of terror, but we must never let down our guard. We must be ever vigilant. It is the least we as citizens can do; it is the least favour we can do to ourselves and our loved ones in these terrible times.