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| Sunday, 14 March 2004 |
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LTTE's internal tensions Tamil nationhood: 'Split' or devolution? Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA Indian Oil's managers must surely be nervously watching the fate of their US$ 300 million investment (one of the largest single inputs of FDI) in Trincomalee's oil tank farm as Tiger undercover units sent from the LTTE national command in the Vanni roam the township in mufti while other hit squads head southwards through the environs of this Sri Lanka Navy bastion for a possible strike against Eastern LTTE commander Colonel V. Muralitharan alias 'Karuna'.
Already some 500 Tiger troops from the North are believed to have infiltrated into the East. They include what appears to be a battalion of the crack Charles Anthony Regiment personally led by senior Commander Sornam, which is known to have arrived in the Muttur area just across the large Koddiar Bay from Trincomalee, and elements of the Jeyanthan Regiment which are believed to have landed secretly further south on the Batticaloa coast. Commanders Ram and Jayathan are reported to be leading these units. Even more ominous are reports that Balraj, head of Tiger special forces commandos, may also have infiltrated into the Muttur area to possibly coordinate several small commando hit squads which are already inside the Eastern Province. If the Australian cricket team now has the measure of spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lankans are just beginning to get the measure of 'split' wizard Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan. The BBC's suitably overawed Colombo correspondent, after a visit to the Colonel's massive base camp in the 'Eelam' territory inland from Batticaloa, described Karuna as the "most endangered man in Sri Lanka" The BBC reporter, of course could not resist a bit of Euro-centric condescension with her remark about Wordsworth quoting translator Varathan "who had never seen a daffodil in his life". I wonder whether she ever remarks about the generations of Britons who have grown up with and quote Kipling even though they have never seen a jungle. Karuna, of course, is a cyanide capsule-wearing, veteran combat commander who knows far more about death and combat survival than most Sri Lankans, except perhaps those who manned the infamous death and torture squads under our beloved President Ranasinghe Premadasa. Son of Vinayagamoorthy, a well known UNPer and supporter of the late UNP Minister K.W. Devanayagam, Karuna is believed to have joined the LTTE after the trauma of the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom. Not just Somavansa Amarasinghe, chief JVP ideologue (wow! some theoretician!), but everyone in the South who is so anxious to see the defeat of the Tamil struggle for self-determination must be waiting with bated breath to see if the reports of the split in the LTTE will turn out to be a genuine fracturing of this guerrilla force whose unified ferocity and heroic self-sacrifice is the principal cause of the gradual crumbling of Sinhala ethnic supremacy over this island of Sri Lanka. The LTTE's national command, in the form of Tiger political chief S.P. Thamilselvam, as well as its Eastern command have been quick to formally deny any fracturing of the movement. But Tamilselvan himself, in the act of denying a split, has admitted (at a meeting with SLMM Chief Trond Furuhovde last week) to a "crisis" which he said would be resolved quickly. The usually reliable Tamilnet internet news service quoted the LTTE Peace Secretariat website as reporting that Tamilchelvan had said that the "crisis is only a temporary one and a resolution will be reached soon". At that time, I too, thought that things might be sorted out "soon" and sorted out by some kind of compromise between Kilinochchi and Batticaloa. I thought that the larger need for the unity of the Tamil nationalist movement would prevent either side from further aggravating the rift. However, by last Saturday morning, Kilinochchi's 'dismissal' of Karuna proved me wrong and I had to withhold my column for last week. Now, not only has Karuna been 'dismissed' but pro-Prabhakaran forces are being sent to the East for the obvious purpose of permanently dismissing him and suppressing what is clearly an articulation of Eastern Tamil 'regional autonomy'. In this sense, Thamilselvan has also been proven wrong about that "resolved quickly" thing. But how keen is the East to actually split away? Over the past week Eastern political leader Colonel Karuna has repeatedly declared that the Tigers in the East would operate independently of Kilinochchi but were ready to compromise and remain within the larger LTTE movement and under the command of Leader Prabhakaran. Karuna, in his letter to the Supremo, has addressed him as 'my God' and the Eastern Tiger position has consistently been that Prabhakaran's chain of command is expected to run directly through Karuna and then to the East. This is certainly an 'autonomy initiative'. In fact the very survival of Karuna so far is indicative of the military capacity he has retained with him. Of course the large number of barrack-style huts that the BBC correspondent apparently counted in the Karuna base camp may not be actually housing the estimated "5000" fighters. The huts could just be camouflage to mislead the Sri Lankan forces. Nevertheless, the fact that Vanni Tiger units have so far publicly only mustered at the edges of the LTTE's Eastern region is a clear indication of the East's substantive 'independent' or 'autonomous' force strength. The awareness that they would meet immediate and lethal resistance and that such blood-letting would do permanent damage to the current solid unity of the Tamil national liberation movement is obviously holding Prabhakaran back - so far. I may be proven wrong by the time this column is published. The admission of a 'crisis' by Kilinochchi is indicative that there genuinely is a rift between the national and regional commands of the LTTE. What it really means is that the already existing differences have once again become a source of internal organisational tension. This particular fault line first emerged in 2002 over Kilinochchi's annoyance over Karuna's and Karikalan's failure to douse the fires of Tamil-Muslim rioting in the East. At that time, there was every indication that the two K's were guilty of tolerance of, if not complicity in, the anti-Muslim mob violence. This is not something unusual in Sri Lanka. After all, in July 1983, if the late Government Minister Cyril Mathew was suspected of complicity in the anti-Tamil pogrom (the Minister of Industries may have sponsored the massive destruction of industry!), his President, Junius Jayewardene, virtually confessed to being compelled to tolerate the pogrom for fear of being deposed by the extremists. I suspect that Karuna & Co. are in the same boat in a certain way. Karuna and Karikalan are popular Eastern Tamil leaders, so much so that although Prabhakaran edged Karikalan out of his official military command, the LTTE Leader could not publicly denounce him for fear of alienating an already disgruntled Eastern Tamil populace. Today, Karikalan has gone over to Prabakaran. But many others have stayed behind with Karuna. This is because the rift is not between the Tamil national command and a region (the East) but between the two major halves in the Tamil national community of the North-East: that is between the Northern Tamils and the Eastern or, culturally more accurately, between Jaffna and Batticaloa Tamils. As I have argued in previous columns, there exists a cultural difference that is defined inequitably with the Northerners claiming a cultural superiority over the Easterners and the Easterners long resenting this supremacism. The traditional cultural rivalry is now supplemented by new demographic and ethno-social considerations following the consolidation of a Tamil national community in the North-East in the wake of Cease-fire 2002. In short, the East is an ethnic mosaic with Moors occupying large tracts throughout the province, much of it economically strategic (Sinhalas also occupy some areas but are marginal to the current tensions because they are on the territory's boundaries with the adjoining Sinhala majority provinces (Uva and the NCP). It is this pressure on the Eastern Tamils to have to co-exist and share resources and hard-won local power with another ethnic community (which not only did nothing to help the Tamil independence struggle but may have even undermined it with State prompting) that is the prime cause of the Tamil-Moor tensions in the East, tensions which Karna and fellow leaders can ignore only at the risk of losing their base among the Batticaloa Tamils. It is these factors that have exacerbated the North-East fissure resulting in the'crisis' today. Another significant factor is that the East now supplies a good half of Prabhakaran's troops in the North. Since it is in the North that the LTTE holds large swathes of territory in a de facto Eelam and, consequently, requires a large conventional military force to defend against the Sri Lankan forces, it is there that the bulk of the Tiger units are concentrated, necessitating a considerable influx of Eastern Tiger units into the Vanni. This too is resented by the Batticaloa Tamils who feel that their sons and daughters are sacrificing their lives for the stability of the Northern region but that they, in the East, yet remain subordinate and secondary to the Jaffna Tamils in the long run. This military factor, however, is a key reason why Prabhakaran cannot afford to completely alienate Batticaloa. He did anger Batticaloa in 2002 when he ordered a severe clampdown on anti-Moor rioting and this prompted a kind of mutiny in the ranks of Tiger cadres in the Vanni with Eastern Tiger cadres loyal to Karuna and Karikalan threatening to withdraw back East. Thamilselvan at that time talked about "indiscipline" among LTTE units in the East. Today, he is having to talk about a 'crisis'. If the Eastern Tiger units withdraw from the Vanni, Prabhakaran will no longer have a large enough force for conventional warfare which is the only way he can maintain his hold on the current de facto 'Eelam' territory. Indeed, such an emasculation will permanently nullify the LTTE's capability to wage any successful conventional military confrontation with the Sri Lankan forces. A split in the LTTE will also weaken the unified Tamil political movement and its bargaining capacity so necessary for both the struggle for self-determination as well as for the purpose of negotiating an autonomy settlement. The Eastern Tamil leadership is also acutely aware of the fundamentals of Tamil politico-military unity and they too are unlikely to radically undermine the current unity. In any case, the current internal tensions are not likely to be reflected in the voting in the North-East April 2. I think most Tamils will vote for the TNA despite the North-East tensions. Because of difficulties of travel due to the combat situation, there may be smaller majorities, though. Analysts will examine the on-going crisis for its nuances and complex dynamics, but my concern is what I see as a larger socio-political tendency arising from the new post-war situation. What we are seeing is a most interesting and probably positive development, tragic though that it must come in the wake of assassinations and riots. In 2002, in the midst of the Tamil-Moor riots, we saw that first assertion of Eastern autonomy from Prabhakaran's iron rule. Now, in the wake of the assassinations of the UNF and EPDP candidates, we see an even stronger assertion of Eastern autonomy from Kilinochchi. Thus, what we may be seeing in this latest North-East rift is not so much a process of simple fragmentation (something not impossible, though) as a kind of devolution of power as well as a re-emergence of an already existing but temporarily subsumed cultural plurality. Given the tremendously negative outcome for democratic management of society from the massive concentration of power that we have seen during the war years (a concentration inevitable in a society beset by war as was Tamil society), it is good that we are now seeing a trend towards autonomy and plurality, although this autonomy should undermine the larger political unity. How much this will take the Tamil society at large towards a genuinely democratic national community remains to be seen. |
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