LTTE:
The collapse and after
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How has the LTTE come to this current point of
near defeat? In a discussion organised by the Center for Place, Culture
and Politics at the City University in New York in February, moderated
by Himal Southasian contributing editor Ahilan Kadirgamar, Ragavan and
Nirmala Rajasingam, former LTTE members now living in exile in the UK,
analysed the factors leading up to the LTTE’s loss of military control.
Nirmala, the first woman detained by the Colombo government under the
Prevention of Terrorism Act, in the early 1980s, was subsequently freed
from prison in a dramatic action by the LTTE. She eventually left the
Tigers, however, due to what she felt was a lack of democracy within the
movement, coupled with its human rights abuses. After ten years with the
movement, Ragavan, a founding member of the LTTE, likewise parted ways,
due to its
increasingly authoritarian character and
internal abuses.
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Ahilan Kadirgamar: Many people now
believe that the LTTE is on its last legs. If so, what were the factors
that led to the collapse of an organisation that enjoyed an army, a
large territorial base and even an air force?
Ragavan: A major problem that the LTTE faces today comes from
its authoritarian culture and militaristic structure, in which the
political objective is subservient to the military goal. Initially,
after 1983, when the LTTE was still a guerrilla force in need of the
people’s support, it received considerable backing from the Tamil
masses.
LTTE on the brink of defeat with the successful military
operations. AFP |
As it grew, the LTTE’s primary agenda gradually became the building
of a conventional army with a repressive character and an absence of any
libratory objectives. This alienated the population because it came hand
in hand with harsh practices such as the forcible recruitment of
children, taxation and other forms of control.
During the Norwegian peace process the LTTE, instead of using the
resources and money allocated to support the people under its control,
appropriated the funds and resources to build up its own infrastructure,
such as its sophisticated arsenal and air-conditioned bunkers for its
leaders. They became parasites who lived off the people without giving
back anything to them. Ultimately, a contradiction arose between its
original goal, of fighting for the rights of the Tamil people, and the
reality of military control over those very people.
Nirmala Rajasingam: The LTTE proceeded to become more and more
unpopular amongst the local population in areas where it garnered
control.
It also became less accountable to the people because of external
support, initially from the Indian government and subsequently from
diaspora communities in Europe and North America. Yet even within the
diaspora communities that were funding its cause, the LTTE practised
intimidation through threats, physical assault and even murder.
The dissenting community has been campaigning against the absolute
totalitarian command of the LTTE for quite some years now. Mahinda
Rajapaksa may claim that the fall of the LTTE is due to the military
powers of his armed forces, but I think that the political decline of
the LTTE started some years before, in particular during the
Norwegian-brokered peace talks of 2002.
That is when the people decided that they were so worn out by the war
that, just to live without the disruption and violence of war, they
would even submit to living with the army’s presence.
Ragavan: Another major reason for the LTTE’s demise is its bid
for sole representation and, to that end, the banning of all Tamil
political parties and killing of all other likeminded political leaders
and cadres, thereby estranging large sections of the population.
Ragavan |
The LTTE does not encourage political discussion, and is intolerant
of criticism internally and externally. A case in point is when, in
2004, the LTTE was unable to amicably resolve disagreements between
Velupillai Prabhakaran and ‘Karuna’, the top Eastern commander. This led
to Karuna’s defection, and consequently brought the whole Eastern
Province under government control.
Nirmala: To add further, army reports have surfaced revealing
that some of the military’s most effective informants were former
members of the LTTE who faced internal repression and left the
organisation. One could not easily escape and survive the LTTE’s
hunting-down, and so the defectors would surrender to the army for
protection.
The army gained considerable advantage in 1993 when the military
leader ‘Mahattaya’, along with 600-800 of his cadres, was murdered
following a rift between Prabhakaran and Mahattaya. Because of internal
developments, and the internecine warfare between Tamil militant groups,
and because of the way the LTTE clamped down on Tamil society and took
total control of the Tamils, many people began to have doubts. The
struggle has completely sapped the energy of the Tamil people. They have
even forgotten why they started this struggle. They have had enough.
To go back to the LTTE’s rapid
collapse, what are the external factors, and how do we weigh them
against the internal factors?
Nirmala: Post-11 September 2001, the LTTE was proscribed by
many of the Western countries. But despite the ban, the 2002 peace talks
gave them legitimacy, and meanwhile no significant reduction in their
activities was observed.
The LTTE just set up front organisations and continued with its
regular course of action. But eventually, the increased surveillance
weighed down on the Tigers, especially given their heavy reliance on the
economic power base of the diaspora in the West.
And in the US, Britain, France and other countries, there were
coordinated arrests of LTTE officers. This disabled them logistically,
to a certain extent. On the other hand, the Sri Lankan State has really
benefited from the ‘war on terror’ rhetoric, using it as a convenient
cover for its campaign against the LTTE. Aside from some noise about
civilian suffering and casualties, this has been executed with the tacit
support of the international community.
Nirmala Rajasingam |
A number of militant groups came into
being in the 1970s, during the period preceding the promulgation of the
Prevention of Terrorism Act. What factors led their rise?
Nirmala: Sri Lanka has been wracked by its colonial legacy of
ethnic conflict. Indeed, the seeds of division and ethnic antipathies
and animosity were germinated during the colonial period itself. Despite
claims of long histories of intractable ethnic conflict, this is very
much a conflict of modern origin.
Right at the moment of Independence, the Sri Lankan state became a
majoritarian state, with a government of elite leadership. Soon after
that, we see a coming-together of a new array of forces, of lower-middle
class and middle-class teachers, clerks, traders and Buddhist monks in
the south questioning the elite leadership and deciding that this is the
time to overthrow the colonial legacy and come into their own. The
movement culminated in the 1956 general election.
What followed from the 1950s onwards was the burgeoning of a virulent
form of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, and the passing of a series of
discriminatory legislation against minorities and Tamils in particular.
The Sinhala Only Act was passed in 1956; the Republican Constitution
was adopted in 1972, giving Buddhism a place of privilege in the
constitution while removing the protection that was afforded minorities
in the previous constitution; and immediately afterwards, the infamous
policy of standardisation of marks for university admissions was also
implemented in 1972, which Tamils found to be discriminatory.
This came alongside colonisation attempts that had begun in the 1950s
in the Eastern Province, where a lot of Tamils lived, radically altering
the local demography and reducing Tamil and Muslim representation in
Parliament. Non-violent protests by Tamil parliamentarians and their
supporters were responded to with periodic violence by the state,
throughout this period.
In my opinion, the minority leadership did not quite understand the
forces driving this Sinhala nationalism. Therefore, rather than build a
strong grass roots democratic movement, the minority leaders felt that
their problems could be fixed by going into deals with the political
leadership at the Centre, thereby securing concessions for their
communities.
The standard official narrative of Tamil nationalism will always tell
us that the Tamil leadership waged a decades-long democratic struggle
against the Sri Lankan state before giving way to the militant movement.
I believe this to be incorrect.
The militarisation of the movement started not as a result of
exhausting methods of protracted democratic struggle, but as a response
to the 1972 standardisation of marks referred to earlier.
This affected a miniscule percentage (about 0.01 percent) of the Sri
Lankan population - the Jaffna and Colombo Tamil middle-class and
upper-class youth. Years of poor economic conditions during the 1960s
and 1970s prompted the first JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna)
insurrection of mostly poor and rural Sinhala youth. Following its
merciless putdown by the then government, the policy of standardisation
was set forth to placate anti-government sentiment in the south.
This policy required Tamils to have higher marks for acceptance into
university, which marginalised Tamil youths who looked to university
education as a means to secure employment in the state sector.
The perceived discrimination catalysed the taking-up of arms by
select middle- and lower-middle-class Tamil youth of Jaffna, initially.
Recruitment of people from the poorer sections of the Tamil community
into the militant movement happened afterwards.
Because of the narrow class composition of the movement’s leadership,
many marginalised groups - Muslims, Up-country Tamils, Dalits, Tamils
who hailed from the Eastern Province and the Vanni - were alienated and
excluded from the so-called ‘Tamil nation’. While the ‘bourgeois’
struggle waged on, Sinhala Buddhist nationalism responded with violence,
through periodic government-instigated pogroms against the Tamils. It
was after the Black July killings of 1983 that Tamil militancy
mushroomed.
Is there a legitimacy for Tamil
nationalism devoid of the LTTE? If not, can we think of a political
solution outside the nationalist framework?
Ragavan: We need to look at it differently, because this
nationalistic framework will only alienate people further. Tamils
constitute 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s population, and they have to join
hands with the other minorities.
Tamil nationalism that does not take into account the regional
religious and economic differences will not be able to reconcile itself
with these broad alliances. Without the support of the Sinhala
progressives and other non-Sri Lankan Tamil minority groups, Tamils
cannot take their struggle forward anymore.
Nirmala:I am rather keen to turn my back on Tamil nationalism.
It is counter-productive and destructive to respond to Sinhala Buddhist
nationalism using the latter’s own logic. We must eject ourselves out of
the deadly relationship between these two inimical nationalisms.
While the Tamil people’s struggle for their just rights and against
the majoritarian state cannot stop, they have to stop thinking Tamil,
Tamil, Tamil all the time. They have to be thinking in terms of their
rights within the larger framework of minority rights. Also, devolution
is about giving power to the local people; it is not just about the
Tamil people.
We have to wipe the slate clean and start all over again. This must
be done actively, as I do not think that Tamil nationalism with
secessionist aspirations, particularly in the diaspora, will die a
natural death with the demise of the LTTE.
Even if the LTTE is destroyed as a conventional armed force, it is
possible that a new guerrilla war could emerge in a few years’ time.
For this very reason, it is our duty to see that a democratic
leadership evolves, and an alternative, truly democratic voice for the
Tamils emerges.
Courtesy: Himal Southasian, April 2009 |