|
|
 |
| Sunday, 7 April 2002 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Caging the Tiger and the Lion Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA Will they do a body check? Will they check-out cameras, tape recorders,
handphones, bags, purses, pens; use metal detectors and Or, will it be another show of guerrilla bravado as when Deputy Political Leader Thamil Chelvam, meeting the press in Mallavi a few weeks ago, disdained any such checks, much to the surprise of the attending media people? The media people, however, did not fail to note the hawk-eyed but mufti-dressed, apparently un-armed, young toughs who hovered around their Deputy Boss seemingly ready for a fast-draw (and certainly not to draw out their cyanide capsules) at any suspicious move by the scribes. Mr. Prabhakaran's bodyguards will have to do better than those of charismatic Afghani Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood who was killed last August when a video camera packed with explosives was detonated by two Taleban suicide guerrillas masquerading as journalists. Many people, other than the journalists, will be watching this Wednesday to assess the LTTE's VVIP security threat perceptions - from hostile Tamil militant groups to state military agencies (including covert action units) whose duty it is to target the man who is yet, officially, Public Enemy No. 1. Of course, when one leads the world's largest suicide commando, and has engaged in a physical life-and-death struggle since one's late teens, one at 48 years and still struggling - can afford to take far greater risks than a civilian head of state or government intent on staying in power and enjoying the delectable fruits of that power. Indeed, a show of bravado may be politically more important for domestic (Tamil community) consumption. Or, will there be an attempt to equate the dignity of a State VVIP security cover? Mr. Prabhakaran and his associates will surely keep in mind that warning in the Thirukkural: "He will perish who does what it is not fit to do; and he also will perish who does not do what it is fit to do...". Everything else at the forthcoming, much anticipated, press conference will be noted by the scribes eager to record the historic: from dress to maps to what the Leader may or may not smoke - cigars, beedi or whatever (actually, the chaste Great Leader does not indulge in such vices, unlike one or two of his associates). Leaving aside the history, the media event this Wednesday, will be just that: a sensational, once-in-a-decade event, to be milked by the mass communications industry for its full entertainment value - to satisfy the curious in their audiences and to stimulate the bored and, hopefully, hook them. Even if he does not (or, simply cannot) match the accoutrement of a State dignitary, Velupillai Prabhakaran will, nevertheless, command an equivalent attention and respect by the media professionals as well as their audiences. Thirty years (he formed the Tamil New Tigers, the predecessor of the LTTE, in 1972) of daring insurgency and successful warfare, combined with a brutal authoritarianism on par with any other despot anywhere else, has ensured that. But that flavour of triumph, even romance, that might have been there ten, or, better, fifteen years ago, when the Tigers ruled from Jaffna and dictated in Thimpu, is greatly diminished today: tempered not only by the immensity of the tragedy of the war but also by the rebellion's failures (such as the expulsion from Jaffna) as well as the new geo-strategic limitations, globally emerging, of the Tamil nationalist project. The Cease-fire Agreement maybe the Sri Lankan State's and ruling class' dramatic acknowledgment of their failure to defeat Tamil secessionism but, at the same time, it also reveals the limits reached by that secessionist project and, perhaps, hints at a re-definition of what Tamil nationhood might actually become. And the pressures of the new global political order are becoming perhaps the most powerful factor demarcating Sri Lankan Tamil political community. For Prabhakaran, his success is tempered by the constraints of the larger historical circumstances that, fortunately, are not of his own choosing. Wednesday's media event is not likely to see any triumphant bombast nor strident defiance. That is reserved now only for the Tamil peasantry via the 'Pongu Thamil' shows and for the fawning, de-cultured, expatriates. Demands may still emanate from Kilinochchi, but the tone will be civil, reasoning. Indeed, while some military display may await the visiting media cohort, the emphasis is likely to be on demonstrating civilian Tamil statehood the reality of a modulated 'Eelam'. And modulated it must be, given the realities of the new geo-political circumstances. United States Ambassador Ashley Wills' second recent foray into vital internal Sri Lankan affairs (made last week, appropriately, at a Colombo seminar on American 'vision' in the new world order) served as presumably intended to once again drive home the immediacy of those geo-strategic constraints. While everyone else in the peace process, from the Government and the LTTE, to the Opposition, the Norwegian mediators, and other political and social interest groups, are expected to delicately nurse the process along, offending neither side and assiduously building confidence and reconciling etc., etc., the US, alone, can lash out and sternly admonish and warn even if Washington is not directly (like Oslo) involved in what is a very complex domestic political process. This arbitrary, brusque, transgression of the parameters of the current process is itself a demonstration (jarring, at that) of that new geo-strategic paradigm: of the political immunity and omnipotence of the world's sole superpower, now arbitrating in everything, official mediators notwithstanding, from Palestine to Columbia to Afghanistan to the Philippines to Angola to Korea. If the very actions were rudely intrusive (even as several sections welcomed it), the one-sided content and tone of the recent US statements, first on the LTTE's truce violations (at that time barely verified by the official mediators) and last week on the LTTE's untrustworthiness (doesn't the State have a much longer record of treachery since that first pact was shelved in 1957?), are designed to articulate Washington's emphasis on the supremacy of State over non-State; of Washington's preference for Colombo over Jaffna - or Kilinochchi or wherever. Actually, as Colombo, along with Kilinochchi, would surely have noted, the very intrusiveness and arbitrariness of the US statements are a demonstration of Washington's supremacy over Jaffna, Colombo and even Oslo (leave aside UN Plaza and the Palais des Nations). The Ashley Wills interventions dictate the boundaries of both the Tamil nationalist quest as well as the Sri Lankan nationalist quest. Washington's hurry to browbeat the LTTE so very early in the peace process, even before the official mediators and ceasefire monitors can properly begin to do their job, is a message that the Ultimate mediator and the Ultimate monitor and the Ultimate peace-maker and Ultimate adjudicator is the United States (or, so Washington hopes). This message then, is not merely a curb on the Tamil community's secessionist aspirations. It is also a curb on the degree of political autonomy of whatever new political entities or entity that will emerge (and emerge it must) from the Sri Lankan peace process, however long-drawn-out that process might be. Even as Colombo bows to its global hegemony, Washington must ensure that Jaffna or Trincomalee (or Kilinochchi, for now) will also bow. In short, the US-led, globally dominant, Western power bloc, is keen that the currently successful LTTE project is constrained in such a way that any entity or territory it has control over will not be a zone outside the influence of the Western powers. The Western powers would not wish Prabhakaran to become even as remotely autonomous as Muammar Khadaffi, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, or Mullah Omar. Neither will Colombo like such a development, for that matter. Even if the elite politicians have not thought it out, the veterans of military counter-insurgency would surely recall those early attempts at a nexus between rebels North and South as the Tamil insurgency gathered momentum in the 1980s. The elite and the State will certainly not want an independent-minded political entity in the North-East (whether entirely separate or confederated) that would harbour Southern dissidents. Hence, the hurry by the West to firmly circumscribe the envisioning of Tamil political community. It is a caging of the Lion as well as the Tiger. Even as the political partition of the Sri Lankan State is thus prevented, neither the State, nor its Western sponsors will wish to see too much of a togetherness among the Sri Lankan peoples. It is solidity (of the State) that is important, not so much solidarity. For the people of Sri Lanka as a whole, however, what is most urgent is an intermediate justice that will bring an end to death and destruction. The urgent priority is neither the glory of an ethnic secession nor the security of the political-economic elite but, rather, ethnic equality, regional autonomy and collective security, and participation in democratic government by all communities at both national and regional levels. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
x-ray machines as
in security procedures at VVIP press conferences in the South? Will Mr.
Velupillai Prabhakaran's security cover match that of our head of state or
government when he meets the world's media this Wednesday in Kilinochchi?
