Velupillai Prabhakaran said it. ‘The Ceasefire Agreement is defunct’. Sure, the man’s word is not his honour, for ‘honourable’ is something that Prabhakaran clearly doesn’t know the meaning of as New Delhi surely knows, but it is as official as he could get.
His annual grandstanding (in diminished circumstances and a dismal political environment, of course) was in essence a war-cry. We don’t know who sanitized the speech into English, but in the Tamil original he clearly said that he was planning to establish ‘the government of the independent state of Tamil Eelam’. This is, he says, the immediate goal. As Dayan Jayatillake correctly points out, ‘there are no longer any intermediate aims, goals, demands or tactical way stations’ this side of Eelam.
A few days after this declaration, as though to underline intention with word, Prabhakaran carried out an assassination attempt on the Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. The various apologists for the LTTE might say that a military target is ‘legitimate’ under the circumstances, but the fact remains that legitimacy can be referenced only by the legal or the righteous. Prabhakaran is neither, not even in the narrow frame of his stated ambit.
The President can rightfully be relieved that his Defence Secretary (and brother) escaped assassination, but this is not reason enough to celebrate. Two soldiers died in the attack, two lives as valuable as that of his brother, were lost to their respective families and the nation. Prabhakaran, by word and deed, sends a message: ‘My blood-lust is not satisfied yet’. In short, others, big and small, can hardly claim to be protected 100%. The state has a responsibility, albeit the parameters of exercising this has been determined largely by the ‘word and deed’ above.
The word and the deed reiterate a truth that slow-minded pacifists and politically naïve have often sought to ignore, pooh-pooh or obfuscate, but which has always stared us in the face. Jayatillake puts it well: ‘The LTTE is a secessionist–terrorist army, on our soil, posing a direct, deep and existential threat to our state, society and people’.
This is not the first time that Prabhakaran has indulged in Eelam-speak or war-whooping. He says these things, however, in a political-military climate that makes chest-thumping more than a little bit incongruous. Anton Balasingham tried to woo India by saying ‘killing Rajiv Gandhi was a mistake’. Thamilselvam denied LTTE responsibility in the assassination. Confusion aside, India was not fooled.
On the ground, the LTTE is taking a beating that few believed it would. The Karuna-Prabhakaran split was a watershed event and the LTTE shows no sign of recovering. Internationally, the LTTE’s ‘freedom fighter’ claim no longer purchases any believers.
Key players in the international community have chastened the government for lapses in the humanitarian situation, but have unequivocally blasted the LTTE for its no-apologies brand of terrorism. It is either openly or in the very least implicitly accepted today that the LTTE and the Tamil people are two distinct entities. Refusing to facilitate the transportation of food and other essentials via the A-9, the LTTE has lost all its credentials regarding concern for the Tamil community. Not that it needed much convincing, of course.
‘Eelam-speak’ has a more serious implication. ‘Negotiations’ were and will only pertain to a this-side-of-Eelam ‘resolution’, somewhere between and not excluding complete surrender by the LTTE and federalism. Prabhakaran has not just shot down the CFA, he has in effect said an emphatic ‘no’ to negotiations. It does not leave the government much choice. It certainly takes the stuffing out of those who argue that the LTTE can be cajoled out of terrorism through negotiations. As for the international community, especially Norway, the USA, India and Japan, there is no doubt that relevant authorities in these countries would ask themselves the question: ‘How would we react if our Defence Secretary or his/her equivalent is targeted in this way?’ Anne-Grete Strom-Erichsen, Minister of Defence, Kingdom of Norway, would no doubt tell Eric Solheim, Hanssen-Bauer and others what national security means and demands from a defence ministry, for example.
The only intelligent response, as history has shown and as Jayatillake points out, is a strategy that aims to destroy the enemy as a military formation; a strategy that is implemented by intelligent leadership and maximum force subject to the laws of war, to humanitarian law.
This begs the question: Wither the peace effort? And indeed, wither Norway? Have they outlived their usefulness? The cynics may say ‘they became irrelevant the day the CFA was signed’ and not without cause either. However, if we agree to put the past, along with a flawed and ill-worded CFA, behind us, then Norway or perhaps some other player whose neutral credentials are more valid than Norway’s does have a role.
Prabhakaran stated one fact: This CFA is dead. A fresh CFA is not a ridiculous proposition, however. In any event, it is imperative that all concerned understand two things: a) it is unlikely that Prabhakaran would bite, and b) a new CFA has to script in democratization as well as de-escalation of conflict. The second condition refers to a clear road map, time-frames to achieve reasonable goals, inclusiveness in process and democracy as goal and process. If these are scripted out, as was the case in the 2002 CFA, then it would be an exercise in futility.
In other words, Norway, all other international players and all citizens of this country have to do a hard think and take stock of the ground reality of word and deed, the difference between freedom fighter and terrorist, the distinction between the Tamil and LTTE, and the prerogatives available to the state. It is not a happy time, admittedly. Terrorism does not yield anything but a bountiful harvest of suffering. There are causes of suffering, a need to alleviate suffering and a pathway to end it. That map, at least, is clear. Let there be equanimity in all this, if only to facilitate clarity of thinking.