The choice for Tamils: failed Prabhakaran or peace-winning Anandasangaree?

Summing up the Washington meeting of the Co-Chairs - US, Norway, Japan
and EU -- US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, R. Nicholas Burns
dealt a body blow at the press conference (Tuesday 22, 2006) that has
sent the Tigers reeling. This is not what they expected. The Tiger
lobby went into top gear on A-9 road to convince the international
community, particularly the Co-chairs, that they were the victims of a
humanitarian crisis caused by an economic blockade imposed by the
government.

Overweight Churchmen and NGO pundits, who have showed no signs of being
affected by a food shortage, too weighed in to back the A-9 politics of
the Tigers obstructing the flow of food. But the unfolding facts were
loaded against the Tigers and it had no impact on the Co-Chairs. The
anticipated economic sanctions against the Government of Sri Lanka
(GoSL) did not materialize and, in keeping with international law, the
Co-Chairs defended the right of the state to protect it sovereignty and
territorial integrity against Tiger terrorists.

The other propaganda maneuver of the Tigers was to accuse the Sri
Lankan Army (SLA) of killing non-combatant civilians. In Vaharai they
fired deliberately from civilian centres and moved out quickly to
provoke the SLA to fire back at civilians. The Tiger tactics worked:
the SLA hit back and when 47 Tamil civilians died the Tigers fed the
corpses into their propaganda machine to blame, as usual, the GoSL. But
the Tigers overplayed their hands. They did not anticipate the Tamil
eye-witness who told Reuters that the Tigers fired first from guns
positioned among the civilians.

The Tigers cranked up the food crisis (caused by their obstructions)
and the deaths of civilians (caused by provocative firing of the Tigers
and miscalculated retaliation by SLA) to extract the last drop of
sympathy from the international community. But the response of the
Co-Chairs went against the Tiger tactics. The Tamil Tigers are now up
the proverbial gum tree. They are not only stuck but also getting
whacked from all sides.

The unequivocal statement of Nicholas Burns delivered a message that
hit the Tigers right between their eyes. He said: "I'd just say on
behalf of the United States that we have faith in the government and
faith in the President of Sri Lanka. They do want to make peace.

"We also believe that the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, is a terrorist group
responsible for massive bloodshed in the country and we hold the Tamil
Tigers responsible for much of what has gone wrong in the country,"
said Burns. Burns added: "We are not neutral in this respect. We
support the government. We have a good relationship with the
government. "We believe the government has a right to try to protect
the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. The
government has a right to protect the stability and security in the
country.
We meet often with the government at the highest levels and consider
the government to be a friend to our country."

"We are working with Sri Lanka as a partner in counterterrorism as well
as counter-proliferation. All that is happening," he said.

The solid backing given by the Burns to GoSL comes at a critical time
when the Tigers and their hired agents in the NGOs were manipulating to
tie the hands and feet of President Mahinda Rajapakse on partisan
accusations of violations of human rights. But Burns came out to back
Rajapakse as "a friend" of America. Incidentally, this has blown the
UNP myth that Ranil Wickremesinghe alone is the political wizard who
has king-pins of the west in his pocket to fix Prabhakaran.

Burns' telling words cannot be more explicit: "We are not neutral in
this respect. We support the government." These words have pushed the
Tigers into a corner where there is hardly any room to manoeuvre. These
words will be ringing in the ears of Prabhakaran today when he reads
the speech prepared for him by his new speech-writer, whoever it maybe,
now that Anton Balasingham is afflicted with terminal cancer.

The overall political message from the aid donors is that the GoSL has
a right "to protect the territorial integrity, sovereignty, security
and stability of the country." Burns, in short, is endorsing Mahinda
Rajapakse's "gahuwoth gahanawa" (hit-me-I'll-hit-you-back) policy.
Burns is crystal clear when he says: "We are working with Sri Lanka as
a partner in counterterrorism as well as counter-proliferation. All
that is happening." This is also a total rejection of Prabhakaran's
Eelamist politics tied to terrorist violence.

The operative word here is "counter-proliferation" of terrorism. This
means that the global targets of terrorism, wherever it maybe, are
still on the radar screen of USA. It also means that the anti-terrorist
thrust of Bush is still alive and kicking despite losing his power base
in Capitol Hill. With or without Bush, America is united against the
proliferation of terrorism and, let no one forget, that Prabhakaran is
high on their list of banned terrorist. This makes it easy for America
to choose between Prabhakaran and Mahinda Rajapakse. Against this
background only the desperate Tiger strategists could come up with the
incredibly stupid idea of changing American policy with a bribe of
a million dollars!

The second attack on the Tigers came from V. Anandasangaree, the
award-winning leader of the Tamils in the non-violent democratic
stream. He set the tone when he appealed to the international community
from his prize-winning podium at UNESCO, Paris to "liberate the Tamils
from the Tigers". The voice of a Tamil leader appealing from a UN
platform to liberate the Tamils from their so-called liberator exposes
the hypocrisy of the theories, demonstrations and the public postures
of the hired NGO peaceniks who bend over backwards to appease the
one-man regime in the Vanni.

Besides, the voice of Anandasangaree represents the democratic
aspirations of the Tamils exploited by a self-seeking megalomaniac who
has no solution except to sacrifice the children of other Tamil parents
in the name of an elusive goal which he cannot achieve. Anandasangaree
is alarmed by the negative impact of Tiger violence which has reduced
the Tamil population from 12% to a provisional low of 4.3% estimated in
the last census.He quite rightly believes that Tamils without Eelam is
far better than an Eelam without Tamils. After being in the Jaffna
Tamil movement that devoured its children for nearly three decades he
has decidedly taken the non-violent path to save the Tamils. He sees no
salvation in Prabhakaran's violence. And he has the courage to
articulate it at great risk to his own life. In comparison to the
rising stature of Anandasangaree among all communities - both at home
and abroad -- the pro-Tiger Lord Haw Haws in academia and in
foreign-funded NGO circus can be classified only as a bunch of
mendacious hypocrites who thrive, very much like Prabhakaran, on the
agony and the misery of the war-weary Sri Lankans.

These hired humbugs parade as heroes by opposing the GoSL as the enemy
of peace and not war-mongering Prabhakaran. On the contrary,
Anandasangaree opposes Prabhakaran as the enemy of peace and Tamils
without confronting the GoSL not because he is kow-towing to the
government but because he knows that there is no future for the Tamils
in Prabhakaran's self-serving, vindictive violence. Having gone through
the penisular political process he, perhaps more than any other living
Tamil political leader, has a better appreciation of what went wrong in
the north-south relations and the way out of it.

He knows that there is a better chance of ending the war through a
dialogue than by manufacturing excuses for Prabhakaran to wage his
personal war against the Tamils and all other communities. Neither A.
T. Ariyaratne's peace marches from Moratuwa to Panadura, nor Jehan
(Pacha) Perera's National Peace Council can hold a candle to
Anandasangaree's commitment to peace by opposing the ruthless enemy of
peace and dissident Tamils.

Their ideologies are poles apart. The Pacha Pereras in the peace
industry promote the fiction that they are saving Tamils by backing
Prabhakaran --- a leader who has had no compunction in starving the
Tamil people with his deliberate obstruction of supplies of food. He
can't give them a piece of bread though he has plentiful stocks of
guns, ammunition and land mines. Anandasangaree, who should know the
plight of the Tamils better than say Ariyaratne or Pacha Perera, is
demanding that Prabhakaran should lay down arms to save the Tamils.
This is the standard model in the peace processes that has worked from
Ireland to Nepal. So when will Ariyaratne and his side-kick, Pacha
Perera follow the example of peace models in the world and that of a
respected Tamil leader like Anandasangaree and insist on Prabhakaran
laying down arms as a constructive confidence-building measure to pave
the paths to peace?

>From another UN platform, Lois Arbour, UN Human Rights Commissioner,
dealt another blow to the Tamils in the diaspora. She bluntly told the
Tamil diaspora to hold Velupillai Prabhakaran responsible for human
rights violations. This is ominous for Prabhakaran personally because
she is virtually putting him on notice that he is liable for
prosecution on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The implied warning in this is clear. For the first time a leading UN
authority has come out issuing a warning to the Tamil diaspora that
they are violating international law contained specifically in Security
Council Resolution 1373 - the resolution banning financing, propagating
or collaborating with terrorism.

All this portend that the international and national trends going
against the Tigers have reached a potentially threatening level. The
failure of the Tigers to win the international
community at the time they need it most, even with their partisan
Norwegians pushing the Tiger line, has forced them to turn to India as
the last resort. India is making vague noises about the Tamil victims.
The Tigers too are manoeuvering to create climate change in Indian
public opinion. In an exclusive interview to India NDTV (November 22,
2006) S. P. Tamilselvan, the head of the Tiger political wing, claimed
that the Tigers had nothing to do with the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.
But, Anton Balasingham, realising that the assassination of Rajiv
Gandhi was the colossal blunder of Prabhakaran's arrogant and
implacable violence, apologized earlier, hoping to win back lost
ground. India remained unmoved and Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, leader of
Janata Party, branded Balasingham's apology as a mark of "monumental
stupidity".

Making a last minute desperate bid to turn the tide Tamilselvan
demanded on the privately owned NDTV that the case of Rajiv Gandhi
should be further investigated. But the case was comprehensively
investigated by the Jain Commission which concluded its
finding by accusing Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman, the Tiger Intelligence
Chief, as the master minds behind the killing.

The Jaffna-based churchmen too are ringing their Church bells to whip
up Indian support for the Tigers. The roly-poly Bishop of Jaffna, Dr
Thomas Savundranayagam, showing no signs of any food shortage in his
diocese, told NDTV: "Certainly by ourselves we can't achieve peace. We
are a very small group of people, a minority. In other countries also
peace was achieved by the intervention of international community. For
us the best country is India. It's our closest neighbour and culturally
we are very much linked and lot of our people has taken refuge there.
India must not be simply a spectator but must play an active role in
bringing a lasting peace."

India is being pushed by various political constituencies manipulated
by the Tigers to intervene on their behalf. Pro-Tiger lobbyists have
reached a dead-end because they invested too much in the mythical
equation of Tigers = Tamils. This was valid up to a point in the early
days. But the emerging awareness in the Tamil community is heading
towards the realization that saving Tigers is not going to save the
Tamils. The Tamils, like every other community, is sick and tired of
violence. Both Anandasangaree and Karuna - the two ends of the
anti-Tiger spectrum - concur on this aspect. Anandasangaree says give
up violence. Karuna too insists that Prabhkaran shold be disarmed as a
prelude topeace because disarming other Tamil groups, as required in
the Ceasefire Agreement, has resulted only in the liquidations of the
unarmed Tamil rivals of theTigers. Karuna argues that for him violence
is only a temporary means to end the oppression of Tamils by
Prabhakaran and that he will lay down arms once the Tigers are
disarmed.

Prabhakaran is the odd man out who survives exclusively on a daily diet
of violence. His religion is violence. Tamils seeking peace are trapped
inside his rings of violence. In Vaharai the Tigers have planted a ring
of land mines to prevent the Tamils from fleeing into the peaceful
areas controlled by the SLA. Where is the glory of Prabhakaran if he
has to imprison his people to prevent them running away from him? Why
is he afraid of his own people? Isn't this ring of mines his Berlin
Wall? Isn't Vaharai the metaphor for the subhuman past, present and the
future of Tamils under Prabhakaran?

The Tamils deserve a better place than a prison enclosed by a ring of
menacing land mines. They deserve a better flag than a ring of 33
bullets, two crossed guns fixed with bayonets and a ruthless Tiger
snarling at them. They deserve a better life than the one imposed on
them by their "liberators". Karuna's cry for help from all the other
parties to lay down their arms and co-exist with other communities in
peace demonstrates the utter disillusionment of the growing Tamil
dissidents with a regime that has turned against its own people for its
survival. The crisis facing the Tigers is that they have to fight and
oppress their own people to survive. They dare not let their people to
go where they want.

Anton Balasingham is on record telling the Tamil Times that they cannot
let the Tamil people go to Colombo because they accuse the Tigers of
persecution to get foreign visas and passports. Anandasangaree's cry to
return to the pre-Prabhakaran days when he had the right to protest
peacefully in Jaffna against Mrs. andaranaike opening the Jaffna
University speaks volumes for the loss of dignity, security and liberty
of the Tamils not under "chauvinistic, Sinhala-dominated government"
but under "the sole representative of the Tamils".

The choice for the Tamils is simple: either they stick with the narrow,
mono-ethnic one-man rule imposed on them by Prabhakaran or they accept
the broad multiple realities of a tolerant democracy presented by
Anandasangaree. Lois Arbour is right. The Tamils have
a responsibility to tell Prabhakaran that enough is enough. They cannot
survive on the myths of blaming the Sinhalese forever and ever. That is
the road to the open prisons of Vaharai. The time has come for them to
take responsibility for their past mistakes and actions. They are not
the lily white victims they pretend to be. Their future is in getting
out, as fast as they can, from this mental prison. Anandasangaree is
showing the way out of their failed past. But if the Tamils decide to
stick with Prabhakaran then they must accept the consequences that come
with it: 1) living inside the mined prison of Vahari and 2) being cut
off from the rest of the world, just not A-9 road. The choice is
theirs. This is the only message worth sending in their birthday cards
to Prabhakaran.

In the meantime, as a last resort, the Tigers are pleading with India
to intervene on their behalf. The history known to the Indians should
inform them that those who embrace Prabhakaran are not repaid with any
gratitude. Rajiv Gandhi and Ranil Wickremesinghe learnt this the hard
way. The choice open to India, if it decides to intervene, is to back
Anandasangaree and not Prabhakaran Anything short of that would be
counter-productive to India's national and regional interests.

But this would lead to a head-on collision with the Tigers which India
would rather avoid than confront. President Rajapakse too has said,
quite rightly, that India should not intervene directly and give space
and time for an indigenous solution to emerge. Indian interventionists
got their noses rubbed in the dirt when they assumed that they had the
theory, the legal framework and the power to solve the Sri Lankan
crisis. The failed Indian experience should teach them that their role
can be meaningful, effective and long lasting only if they come in to
assist the evolving process without intervening on behalf one community
alone at the expense of all other communities.

Furthermore, if Indian policy assumes that its future is linked to only
to one community it is playing with fire. It is this Hanuman policy
that set fire to Sri Lanka in the disastrous Dixit adventure. To be
successful the second time round, the Indian strategists must go beyond
their narrow domestic walls and adopt a holistic approach, taking into
consideration the unique matrix of the Sri Lankan political culture
that cannot be - and should not be -- restructured to suit the
over-exaggerated political ambitions and agenda of one armed minority.

India has a lot to answer for what is happening in Sri Lanka today. Sri
Lankans are paying with their lives today because of India's folly.
India too paid a heavy price for pursuing imperiously a hegemonistic
policy that, first, created the problem by
breeding Tamil terrorists to destabilize Sri Lanka and, second, by the
forcing the nation to accept its formula as the solution to the problem
they created. In the end, Indian political punditry and machinations
boomeranged when the Tamil agents mothered by Indira Gandhi did not
hesitate to use the Indian soil and Indian training and expertise to
blast her son, Rajiv Gandhi.

But before that a Sinhala naval rating hammered Rajiv Gandhi with the
butt end of his rifle when he was inspecting a guard of honour. So
India got it from both sides. India was not only humiliated but its
proclaimed capacity and authority to be the benign protector of
regional stability and neighboring states lost credibility. There are
two lessons in this for India: 1) the least it intervenes the better it
is for all concerned; 2) if it intervenes it must be on behalf of all
communities and not just for one community. If India has a capacity to
learn from its past mistakes it must restrict its role to these two
options. Any adventurism going beyond this will be disastrous to India
and Sri Lanka.

There is also the contretemps of Alan Rock, the disgraced and misused
Canadian Liberal Party hack, who parachuted into Sri Lanka on the
strings pulled by Radhika Coomaraswamy, another political hack of
peninsular politics of the north like her mentor Neelan Tiruchelvam.
This UN Poirot discovered by talking to some selected Tamils of the
east (without knowing a word of Tamil) that the Security forces were
rounding up children for the Karuna Group. That is another story that
deserves some greater attention later.

Rock's comments coincided with the meeting of the Co-Chairs in
Washington which cannot be dismissed as a mere coincidence. The NGO
hopes ran high believing that the UN censure would swing the Co-Chairs
to their side. Instead, much to the chagrin of NGOs pundits, the
Co-chairs reconfirmed their faith in the Government of Sri Lanka.

Like all roads that lead to Rome, all this leads to the leading
question of November 27: how will Prabhakaran face these negative
forces rising against him? He is cornered, he is wounded, and he has
hardly any room to maneuver. He has failed in his desperate attempts to
get A-9 road open. He has no solid backing from any state. He has
successfully divided the Tamil community and his own militant
organization.

The Tamils in the democratic stream and the break-away group of Karuna
in the east have significantly diminished Prabhakaran's power to
sustain his claim to be the sole representative of the Tamils. His
folly in denying the Tamil to exercise their democratic rights to vote
has strengthened the hands of Mahinda Rajapakse more than ever before,
with the major southern parties joining hands to deal with the threats
to national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

So what is he left with other than a rapidly dwindling force with
decreasing powers of pursing their political goals? He is left only
with his lethal power to kill and destroy - a power that loses its
power the more he uses it, as seen in the latest response of the
Co-Chairs. His secret weapon of suicide bombers - a crime against
humanity - will no doubt create frightening headlines. But the same
headlines will pile up as charges against him in the case that will be
filed in the ICC. His use of indiscriminate violence has passed its
use-by-date. Neither his political future nor his personal future will
have a future if he goes down this track. But, as they say, its
difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.

Prabhakaran's ultimate objective has been to win the war not peace. He
has never survived - nor can he survive -- in an environment of peace
at any time. He has survived only through war. To go for peace at this
at this stage is to lose the war which he alone needs to enthrone him
as "the sole representative of the Tamils".

Any peace, except on his terms, is going to diminish his stature. His
addiction to violence runs into obscene limits. Every Tamil suicide
bomber serves as a substitute for an aphrodisiac. His pornography is
produced by his agents filming videos of his killers destroying the
lives of others. Example: Rajiv Gandhi which proved to be his nemesis.
He has to rely on violence not only keep his adrenalin pumping but also
to feel that he has the power to force others to obey him. He is the
classic "pathological killer" (Prof. James Jupp, Australian National
University) who has become a cult figure to that section of the debased
Tamil community and NGOs which glorifies and justifies Prabhakaran's
obscenities as the most heroic chapter in Tamil culture.

Is Prabhakaran the ultimate symbol of Tamil culture? The Tamil
community is divided on this issue. But even those who hero-worship him
have guilty reservations and they tend to salve their consciences by
blaming the Sinhalese for his abominable violence. They refuse to
acknowledge that he came out of the mono-ethnic extremism of the
peninsular political culture to reinforce their myth that the hated
Sinhalese were wrong. To prove that the Tamils are right they took up
the gun endorsed in the Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976. Where has all
the violence unleashed since then taken the Tamils? Where can it take
them in the future when the international community recognises Sri
Lanka as an indivisible state to be shared by all communities?

Besides, the Vaddukoddai violence, as adopted and applied by
Prabhakaran, has been running out of excuses, arguments, theories, and
justifications mainly due to his inhuman excesses. The Tamil community
is stuck with him just as much as he is stuck in a dead-end. He is
stuck whether he goes or doesn't go to war. He'll be seen as a loser by
his financial and political backers if he doesn't go to war. The
fundamental flaw in Prabhakaran's political obsession is that he has no
strategy outside war to win his goal of Eelam - and he wants nothing
less than that. He will also wind up as a loser if he goes to war
because his violence will force him to commit more war crimes and
crimes against humanity with no hope of winning his Eelam.

The thrust of counter-proliferating terrorism, the increasing pressures
of human rights and turning tide against him will mark him as the most
wanted, hunted political animal who is running headlong, on his own
volition, to occupy the vacant chair left by Saddam Hussein. Already he
is on the wanted list of Interpol, India and Sri Lanka. The Tamil
diaspora should also know that there are human rights activists who are
preparing dossiers to indict Prabhakaran in the International Criminal
Court. Tamils also know that bad news is often censored by his minders
to keep him trigger-happy. If Prabhakaran goes down the path that he is
expected to go on November 27 he will only be tightening the noose that
is already too tight for his thickening his neck. But his madness knows
no limits. Prabhakaran will do what he is wont to do.

Whatever policy he adopts, at the end of the day the Sinhala and the
Tamil communities will have to co-exist as they have done since the
year dot. The remarkable feature of the Sri Lankan political culture is
that the visceral bitterness and the antagonisms that divide most other
conflict zones do not over-determine the love-hate relationship of
these two old communities. The migrating demographics from the north to
the south prove, if proof is necessary at all, that they have the
capacity to co-exist under any reasonable political umbrella if the
likes of Prabhakaran are removed from the political equation and more
space is provided for the Anandasangarees. The triumph of
Anandasangaree is the only reasonable and attainable goal for the
Tamils. The discernible order coming out of the chaos created by Jaffna
Tamil violence confirms this. Besides, having dragged the Tamils
through three decades of gory violence what has Prabhakaran got to show
other than a ballooning pot belly?