Vigilance pays
It is wishful thinking
to imagine that any terrorist outfit to be vanquished in toto
with the elimination of all its top leaders. The LTTE is no
exception. Even the Nazis did not cease to exit all at once with
the demise of Hitler. There were cells of the underground SS
which emerged from time to time to cause havoc and destruction
in German cities. Similarly pro- Nazi organizations started
mushrooming outside Germany and engineered many acts of
destruction.
Though the LTTE by no means could be equated to the Third
Reich there are similarities between the two ordinations that
cannot be dismissed off hand. For one thing the global network
of the LTTE is largely intact despite the arrest of its self
styled leader K.P. There is a remote possibility that it has
some form of contact with the residue in Sri Lanka and that hit
squads are awaiting orders. The LTTE had been too big a
terrorist organization not have its tentacles spread far and
wide.
Therefore, we cannot afford to drop our guard, however remote
the chances of an attack are. True, the LTTE as an organization
has been decapitated with the elimination of Prabhakaran and now
the capture of KP. But like the Nazis there is always the
possibility of a residue - a committed band of terrorists who
would be ready to take the plunge. Though the danger is nowhere
near to what it was in the hay day of the organization there is,
however, a school of thought that there could still be a small
posse among the residue with a highly destructive capacity that
could cause massive devastation so as to undermine the
Government's military gains.
This thinking has now been reinforced with the capture on
Monday of a lorry laden with powerful claymore mines in Mannar.
According to reports, the Vehicle was destined for Colombo or a
target in the South on a suicide mission. The detection was made
by the chance arrest of three LTTE suspects in Colombo through
which the plot was unravelled.
The very fact that the LTTE suspects keep getting arrested in
the South also goes to show that we are not entirely free of the
terrorist threat notwithstanding the destruction of the outfit
as a fighting force. President Mahinda Rajapaksa no less has
warned his Ministers not to take chances and to avoid exposing
themselves unnecessarily. This shows that even the upper
echelons of power have taken this hidden threat seriously.
We Sri Lankans are notorious for our short memories sometimes
at great cost to our well-being. No doubt the scenes of carnage
in the city not very long ago may already be a distant memory to
most of us. Correspondingly, we also see that security checks
have been relaxed - all part of the syndrome we are afflicted
with. On top of this, there are also pleas to release the IDPs
pronto while screening is being done to weed out the hardcore
terrorists still lurking within the welfare centres.
It is time that we learn to wean ourselves out of this
laid-back attitude and treat the looming threat with the
seriousness it deserves. We say this because there is a
likelihood of the remnants of the LTTE attempting a fresh attack
to make a point so to speak and also announce to its foreign
backers that it still has some fight left. Whoever has now taken
over the organization may also want to ensure its coffers don't
dry out with the danger now of the diaspora backing out
especially with the capture of KP who apparently was the last
link with the slain Tiger leadership and holding the torch of
the movement. Hence the need to carry out an attack to ensure
there is no dent in the funding.
The Government should be alive to this possibility and take
every precaution to avert a catastrophe. It should keep in tact
it's tight security apparatus that blocked terrorist inroads
into the city and also continue search operations with the same
intensity as in the past. Eternal vigilance should be the
buzzword lest we repeat past mistakes by dropping our guard. |