Moment of truth for the LTTE
R. Hariharan
With the
Security Forces about to bring off the long pending war, it
is high time for the LTTE chief to contemplate what is in
store for him. Following are the views of a Colonel who
served as head of intelligence with the Indian Peace Keeping
Force in Sri Lanka, as carried in The Hindu. |
The moment of truth appears to have arrived for the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam.
Its fall could not have been more dramatic; a few days ago a few
thousand people of Jaffna, on whose behalf the LTTE says it is fighting,
wanted it to release the civilian population held as a human shield in a
small area in the northeastern corner of the Northern Province. Far from
saving the lives of over 2.5 lakh Tamils there as it claims to be
seeking to do, the LTTE has put them in the line of fire that is
directed against itself.
support
There were two other jolts for the LTTE. In Chennai, Dravida Munnetra
Kazagham leader and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi reiterated that he does
not support the LTTE that had weakened the Tamil resistance.
The European Union, Japan, Norway, and the US, the four co-chairs of
the Oslo peace process 2002, called upon the LTTE to lay down weapons
and surrender after accepting the amnesty offer put forth by the Sri
Lanka Government and prevent further loss of civilian life. It is an
irony of fate that in 2002 the very same co-chairs had tacitly accepted
the LTTE as the spokesman of the Tamil population at peace talks.
Unfortunately, instead of vigorously pursuing the objective of getting
the best devolution package through the talks, the LTTE focussed on
building its armed strength with the trappings of a government - its own
police, judiciary and administration. It did not matter that the LTTE
had to leave to the Sri Lanka government the tasks of providing health
care and supplying essential goods for the people living in areas under
LTTE control.
|
The time
has come for the LTTE to give up war |
Even while speaking of its own legitimacy to take over the
administration of the north and the east under the interim self-
governing authority proposal, the LTTE’s pistol groups went around
killing scores of people, including Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar
and a General of the Sri Lanka Army.
When the tsunami came on Boxer Day 2005, thousands of Tamils
perished. Their plight touched the whole world and money came pouring in
from everywhere. It is true that the Sri Lanka government should share
the blame for its failure to implement its agreement with the LTTE with
respect to tsunami relief. But even as the LTTE was complaining aloud
about that, it was trying to strike deals worth millions of dollars with
illegal arms dealers abroad to procure advanced missile systems and
other weapons. This came to light during a sting operation carried out
by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation a year later.
The LTTE enjoyed an unprecedented level of support and goodwill among
the people of Tamil Nadu during 1983.
Despite its record of killing Tamil militant leaders of repute such
as Sri Sabharatnam of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) and
hundreds of cadres of other groups including the People’s Liberation
Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), the Prabakaran mystique persisted
and many Tamils ignored his seeming character aberrations.
However, the LTTE started dissipating its goodwill in India when it
colluded with its ‘sworn Sinhala enemy,’ President Ranasinghe Premadasa,
to get the Indian forces off its back and send them out of Sri Lanka.
However, the LTTE did not use its newfound bonhomie with the President
for the benefit of Tamils.
Instead, it killed Premadasa after carrying out a bloodbath of
thousands of cadres of the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front
(EPRLF). Their only sin was that unlike the LTTE, they had accepted the
Indo-Sri Lanka accord.
Leadership
The LTTE relentlessly pursued the members of the EPRLF leadership who
had taken refuge in India and killed many of them in Chennai.
The final act of killing Rajiv Gandhi, the man who had proactively
intervened in Sri Lanka to help Tamils, also killed Prabhakaran’s
equation with India. No amount of political or parochial rhetoric is
going to repair the damage done to the LTTE’s image, particularly in
Tamil Nadu, by that act.
Its failing fortunes in the present war have pushed the LTTE back to
the position in which it was in 1987 - under mortal danger from the Sri
Lanka Security Forces. It was India that rescued the LTTE then. Now that
the LTTE is fighting for survival once again, its propaganda machine is
asking the people of India to save Tamils in Sri Lanka.
There is no sign of contrition on Prabhakaran’s part for killing
Rajiv Gandhi - which would have been the logical first step for mending
fences with India. But the LTTE, it seems, works on its own logic.
Otherwise how do we understand its broadside against India even at this,
its hour of need? The pro-LTTE TamilNet quotes an article saying, “It is
an open secret that the present Indian Establishment, run by Sonia
Congress, is waging its own proxy war in the island of Sri Lanka,
concurrent to Colombo’s war against Tamil Nationalism.
In its frustration arising from its incapability of achieving
anything positively, India is not only heading for maintaining perpetual
trouble in Sri Lanka, but also is inviting turmoil to a part of its own
country.”
Prabhakaran
Prabhakaran seems to have forgotten his own statement on India in his
last Heroes Day message wherein he said: “Our people always consider
India as our friend.
They have great expectations that the Indian superpower will take a
positive stand on our national question.” Is it all changed now when the
LTTE talks of ‘India inviting turmoil to a part of its own country’?
The LTTE has to come to terms with the reality all over the world
now. The world has lost its patience with terrorism. Most nations
consider the methods used by organizations like the LTTE to be terror
tactics. That was one of the main reasons for the LTTE’s downslide in
the present war.
The time has come for the LTTE to give up war. It has to help the
people rebuild their lives shattered by 25 years of war.
Already hundreds of civilians have died in the artillery bombardment
because the LTTE has not made up its mind to end the war that it is not
winning. Prabhakaran should act now and free them.
The way out for the LTTE is clear: Prabhakaran should remove the
fetters on the leaders of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), its
political proxy in the Sri Lankan Parliament, and allow them to make
meaningful contributions to bringing about peace.
The LTTE probably knows that its final act will be over with an
offensive launched by five to six divisions of the Sri Lanka security
forces on its redoubt. Before that happens, the LTTE can do one act of
goodwill by letting free the hapless population it is holding today.
|