After The LTTE, What?

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is in its death rattle. It wasdecisively defeated by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces weeks ago, but a handful ofits leadership headed by Prabhakaran has cynically and cruelly prolonged theagony of the Tamil civilians by using them as a buffer and human-shield in orderto delay the re-establishment of the writ of the Sri Lankan government in aminiscule piece of territory (about 20 sq.kms), which has been declared by the governmentas a no-fire zone to avoid collateral casualties among the civilians still underthe control of the LTTE and to enable them to escape from the clutches of theLTTE.

Prabhakaran is a leader with a split personality. During the 26 years he hasdominated the Tamil landscape in Sri Lanka, he had shown a remarkable organizing capacity and an ability to motivate his followers to perform virtual miracles.His motivating his cadres to acquire a capability for action by air and seawould go down in the history of insurgency and terrorism as indicating anorganizing capability of a high order. The LTTE under his leadership managed tobring almost the entire Tamil-inhabited territory in the Northern and EasternProvinces under its control. The determined manner in which the LTTE foughtagainst the Indian-Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980s and frustratedits efforts to defeat it spoke highly of its capabilities for a conventionalwarfare. 

If Prabhakaran  had the activities of the LTTE confined to conventionalwarfare and developed the LTTE as a purely insurgent force, which targeted onlythe armed forces and not innocent civilians, he would have acquired greatersupport from the international community for the Tamil cause. The rational sideof his personality as illustrated by  his organizing capabilities had toconstantly contend with a highly irrational side, which drove him tosimultaneously take to terrorism of a shockingly brutal kind. 

The targeted killings by the LTTE of many Sri Lankan Tamil leaders, who wereperceived by Prabhakaran as possible impediments to his rise as the unquestionedleader of the Tamil community, and its brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi inMay 1991 were the outcome of the irrational side of his personality. No other Indian leader had done more to help the Sri Lankan Tamil cause than IndiraGandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Only a sickly and sickening  irrational mind couldhave ordered the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and Laxman Kadirgamar, ahighly-respected Tamil leader, who was a senior adviser on foreign policy toformer President Chandrika  Kumaratunge. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhion Prabhakaran’s orders shocked Indian public opinion--including publicopinion in Tamil Nadu-- and weakened Indian support for the Tamil cause. Theassassination of Kadirgamar shocked the Western public opinion and led to thedeclaration of the LTTE as a terrorist organization by the Western world,thereby denying the last vestiges of Western support for the Tamil cause. 

As the LTTE faced one defeat after another during the last three years fromthe Sri Lankan Armed Forces--initially in the Eastern Province and finally inthe Northern Province--the irrational side of Prabhakaran’s personality erasedhis rational side. His shocking use of the Tamil civilians in order to delay thefinal end of the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaign undertaken bythe Sri Lankan Armed Forces is driven by this irrational streak in him, whichnow dominates his personality. 

The prolonged agony of the Sri Lankan Tamils caused by the final  bout of Prabhakaran’s irrationality and loss of lucidity in thinking has to beended.  The Sri Lankan Armed Forces, which have shown  patience tillnow and deliberately slowed down their operations, cannot be faulted if theyhave come to the conclusion that the time has  come to liberate the no-fire zone too from the clutches of the LTTE by undertaking limited operationswith small arms and ammunition even at the risk of some collateral casualties tothe civilians.

The desperate attempt of Prabhakaran  to use the civilians to protecthimself from the advancing Sri Lankan Army can be attributed  to the totalloss of lucidity in his thinking and his consequent inability to face the bittertruth that he and his organization have been defeated decisively by the SriLankan Armed Forces and that there is no chance of their staging a come-back.The Requiem for the LTTE could be written without fears of going wrong, shouldthe LTTE stage a come-back as it had done on  occasions in the past. It hasbeen defeated beyond recovery. His conventional as well as terroristcapabilities are in  shatters. Earlier conventional wisdom that smallgroups of the LTTE might still be able to keep indulging in sporadic acts ofterrorism in different parts of Sri Lanks needs re-consideration. His desperatedelaying action at the cost of immense suffering to the Tamils, whose cause heclaims to espouse, is meant to give him an opportunity to seek safe sanctuaryeither in Tamil Nadu or elsewhere from where he could try to re-start his fightagainst the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. It is in the common interest of India andSri Lanka that Prabhakaran is finally able to make peace with his Maker byeither being killed by the Armed Forces or by taking his own life. A defeatedPrabhakaran, if left alive in India or elsewhere, would not be a threat, butcould be a nuisance for both the countries. 

After the final death of the LTTE, which is expected any day, what is thefuture of the Sri Lankan Tamil cause? Would a Requiem for the LTTE also mean aRequiem for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause? Hopefully not. It is in India’sinterest that the LTTE as a terrorist organization is destroyed once and forall, but it is not in India’s interest that the Sri Lankan government andArmed Forces proceed from the destruction of the LTTE to the destruction of theTamil aspirations for greater political and economic rights in their traditionalhomeland and for greater human dignity. 

Let us not forget that ever since our independence in 1947, the Bengalis ofthe then East Pakistan, the Balochs and Sindhis of Pakistan and the Tamils ofSri Lanka have been India’s natural allies. It was this reality whichpersuaded Indira Gandhi to assist the Bengalis of the then East Pakistan toachieve their independence. Even though successive governments in New Delhirefrained from supporting the causes of the Sindhis and the Balochs, Indianpublic opinion sympathized and continues to sympathise with their cause. It wassympathy for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause at New Delhi when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister and in Tamil Nadu, which induced India to take up theircause in the 1980s. 

There is no reason why India should not pride itself and seek to be theparamount power of the region. To emerge and remain as the paramount power, weneed natural allies in the region around us. We should not let the legitimateaspirations of our natural allies--whether they be  the Sindhis and Balochsof Pakistan or the Sri Lankan Tamils-- be crushed by  a brutal regime--whether in Islamabad or in Colombo. 

Since 1947, the Balochs rose twice in revolt in favour of independence fortheir homeland. On both occasions, they were defeated by the Pakistani ArmedForces as decisively as the  LTTE by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. ThePakistani leadership brutally used the Air Force against the Balochs to crushtheir freedom struggle. Undaunted by this, the Baloch people, under a newleadership, rose in revolt for a third time two years ago and their third war ofindependence is still going on. 

The remarkable victory of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces against the LTTE waspartly due to their improved counter-insurgency and counter-terrorismcapabilities made possible by Indian assistance in the form of training andsharing of intelligence and partly due to their emulating the Pakistani Armedforces in the brutal use of the Air Force against people whom they portray astheir own. Just as the Balochs were defenceless against the brutal Pakistani airstrikes, the Sri Lankan Tamils were defenceless against the Sri Lankan airstrikes. 

The US has used air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan--but in foreign territoryand against foreign nationals. Only three countries in the world have used airstrikes in their own territory against their own people-- the Pakistanis againstthe Balochs, the Russians against the Chechens and the Sri Lankans against theTamils. 

President Mahinda Rajapakse has repeatedly promised that once the LTTE isdefeated, he would be generous in meeting the political aspirations of theTamils. He gives the impression of being a sincere man, but will the SinhaleseArmy with its head bloated by its success against the LTTE allow him to do so?The indicators till now are not encouraging. Many Sri Lankan officers might havebeen trained in India, but their mindset and their attitude towards theminorities have more in common with those of their Pakistani counterparts thanwith those of their Indian counterparts. Therein lies the danger that afterwinning the war against the LTTE, the government, strongly influenced by avictorious army, might trey to impose a  dictated peace on the Tamils. 

If the angry Tamils once again look up to India, there is no reason why weshould not reciprocate provided a new leadership emerges in the Tamil communityand it has drawn the right lessons from the brutalities of the LTTE. 

The LTTE is deservedly dying, but long live the Tamil cause.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.