The LTTE’s future after defeat

Ranjith GUNARATNA

For more than three decades, the LTTE has been trying to weaken the democratically elected Government in Sri Lanka, primarily using an intelligently crafted terror campaigns and adroit propaganda campaigns, intermittingly switching into political negotiations, however, without any firm commitment, to achieve its goal of carving of a separate state for the Tamils in the North of Sri Lanka.

The LTTE, which started its campaign as a small vanguard movement of Tamil insurgency, later developed into a powerful and highly structured terrorist organisation with international offices. Over the years it secured adequate support for its activities from the Tamil community and others.

The reasons behind the persistence of support and the attraction of the Tamils all over the world towards the LTTE have been the ability of its leader to ensure absolute authority over every aspect of the organization with higher sense of discipline and strictest control over its cadres. Some contend that the support for the activities of the LTTE is a function of pervasive unhappiness with some aspects of the policies of the Government of Sri Lanka towards “genuine grievances” of the Tamil community. According to others a combination of social, political, and economic ills afflicting the Tamils could be the major reasons.

The most significant dynamic in shaping the affairs of the LTTE is the adoption of one man rule. The dramatic failure of the LTTE can also be attributed to the same factor. The dictatorship of Prabhakaran has prevented the LTTE from transforming itself into a more practical one that could respond effectively to the rapidly changing local and global environment.

Today, the LTTE is experiencing the gradual loss of everything they achieved previously in the face of the successful military campaign of the Forces. The LTTE members and its associates have realised that the organisation is no longer strong enough to withstand the concerted military offensives and translate its past victories to regenerate its lost momentum.

Resources

Thus, the concentration of its resources around one man can be identified as a great strategic failure of the LTTE. Evidently, the group cannot correct this weakness making conceptual, organisational, and operational adjustments so quickly across a diverse political and security environment.

Therefore, with the inevitable military defeat, survivability and resiliency of the LTTE would become zero.

Despite all the illusions about the inviolability of the LTTE and amidst the international and domestic pressure, the Government of Sri Lanka was compelled to respond to the terror campaign of the LTTE in order to maintain law and order in the country and to root out terrorism from its soil.

However, from time to time, as required, the Sri Lankan Government seemingly adopted other measures such as making changes to the Constitution to provide more political space for the Tamils, introducing political mechanisms including Provincial Councils, and talking to the LTTE and other groups to explore ways to resolve the conflict in a more peaceful and decent manner even amidst constant pressure from the certain sections of the Sri Lankan society and lethargic attitudes of the LTTE. In this process, on many occasions, the Sri Lankan Government tolerated the intervention of third parties to a great extent and always respected the opinion of the international community too.

Unfortunately, the gesture of the Government to find a peaceful settlement was misread by the LTTE as a weakness of the political leadership of the country.

The Government decided to seek an end to the terror campaign of the LTTE to clear the path for a lasting political settlement. Today, we witness the final phase of the military campaign, a necessary component of the Government’s efforts in resolving the conflict at this juncture.

Nevertheless, the success of the ongoing operations of the Government of Sri Lanka lies in its remarkable ability to balance a well-crafted military strategy with political ends. In contrast, the LTTE’s approach to the present phase of the conflict is fundamentally flawed.

This document attempts to sketch out a sensible portrait of the LTTE after its military defeat and its specific implications on Sri Lanka in the future.

Scenario

In the process, primarily, three propositions related to the “new LTTE” could be identified. First, according to a popular belief the LTTE would be diminished without any trace. Second, after the military defeat, the remaining cadres would go under-ground pending instructions from their survived leaders in order to regroup and carry out attacks on important targets in Sri Lanka. Third, the organisation would continue with its operations overseas to reach its goals.

The first scenario seems plausible if someone looks at only the military aspect of the LTTE. Accordingly, once the LTTE is militarily defeated and its leadership is crushed, it would not be able to stand on its feet again.

There are many factors contributing to the possibility of this prophesy. The LTTE has been able to maintain the status quo mainly due to its military strength. Its terror campaign was used to emerge as the sole terrorist organization in the North, obtain support of the Tamil community forcibly for their separatist campaign, confuse the political world of the South, intimidate the Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim communities, and as a bargaining chip at the negotiation table to place their demands with an added weight.

Without the gun the LTTE is only a paper tiger. In this line of argument, after the military defeat, the LTTE would disappear leaving only its cruel history.

The second view is that after the military defeat the remaining members will be melting into the ordinary population with the intention of carrying out clandestine operations against economic, military, political, and other important targets in the country.

This could be one of the very likely scenarios and, obviously, such operations could have also been launched to take revenge from those who are in the Government and the military responsible for orchestrating the defeat of the LTTE. The fundamental aim of this phase of the conflict would have been to negate the victory of Government and create a chaotic environment damaging the economy of the country.

Remaining issues

Yet, taking the East as an example, the Government would be able to address the remaining issues successfully to avert any catastrophe and prevent development of new strategic paradigm.

The third scenario is the continuation of the LTTE activities through their bases outside the country. This can also be regarded as another most likely scenario. It is a fact that the LTTE has sizable business dealings including human and drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, and some legitimate businesses.

The LTTE is said to have deposited a large amount of money in many countries. With these resources it can fund anti-Sri Lanka propaganda campaigns, obtain the service of experts to undermine investment and tourism promotion of Sri Lanka, carry out assassination attempts on Sri Lankan leaders while they are abroad, invest in the share market, buy properties, and other business establishments in Sri Lanka, support anti-government activities, and lobby world leaders against Sri Lanka.

To counter these activities of the LTTE Government needs to create a strong network of institutions and a monitoring mechanism.

Given the organisational structure and its activities in the past no one can rule out one or all of these scenarios. It is the view of this author that Sri Lanka can expect a mixture of all aftermath of the military defeat.

Therefore, action should be initiated now itself to manage the future phase of the conflict.

The most important of all is presenting a viable political solution to the conflict soon after the military victory. If such a process gets delayed the scenarios mentioned above can be expected at any moment and the victory would be short-lived. Once a political solution is presented, the LTTE in any shape would no longer be needed for anyone even to frighten a bird in the paddy fields.