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| Sunday, 22 January 2006 |
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Have claymore will play more Light Refractions by Lucien Rajakarunanayake The killings taking place in the North and East today are not the subjects of fun. Yet, there is more than graveyard humour in the insistence by the LTTE, and especially S. P. Thamilchelvan, that attacks on the security forces taking a toll of nearly 80 in the past few weeks is all the work of the people of Jaffna and not of the LTTE. Indeed Jaffna has changed considerably from the old world of houses behind fences of palmyrah branches where hospitality was a part of the people's over twenty years of armed conflict have certainly changed that. The people of the peninsula are certainly more hardened by war than they were by the hard work of obtaining a rich harvest of from a harsh and unyielding environment. Cottage industry At the rate the mines explode and the grenades blast in Jaffna today, Thamilchelvan's explanation about it being the work of the people, gives the impression that the people of Jaffna are now manufacturing claymore mines as a cottage industry and having grenades just for the fun of throwing them. Claymore mines are found on fences of homes, hanging on trees and on bicycles, primed for detonation when a vehicle carrying security forces personnel passes by. Grenades are hurled at bunkers and vehicles. There are also the LTTE's ubiquitous pistol gangs that hardly ever miss their targets, invariably its political opponents of today or in earlier days. If one is to believe that all is the work of the people, then all or most residents of Jaffna must be having claymore mines in their homes, just for the occasional pleasure of targeting a passing group of army or navy personnel. It will be helpful if Mr. Thamilchelvan, with his permanent Cheshire cat smile of satisfaction, lets us know whether the householders of Jaffna have learnt for themselves, possibly with the held of Do-it-Yourself manuals, the skill of making claymore mines. Have they also mastered by themselves the method of producing grenades? Free access It would be much more likely that the claymore mines, Johnny mines and grenades are supplied to them by the LTTE, and the people compelled to have them within or close to their premises to be detonated or hurled at the security forces, by LTTE cadres now well spread out in the area. The presence of these LTTE cadres who can carry out these attacks and pass them off as the work of an angry populace was made possible thanks to the Ceasefire Agreement that allowed them free access to Government-controlled areas, to carry out "political work". The CFA did not spell out it was political work of the explosive kind. One dare not say this is a gaping hole in the CFA for fear of being accused of being a war monger, by people who have staked monopoly rights over the peace agenda of this country a la LTTE. There was a time at the height of the war in the North, when imaginative people deprived of electricity and torch batteries, pedaled away on stationary bicycles at homes to keep the bicycle dynamos running for power to hear the news on their radios. To believe Thamilchelvan and others clearing the way to talk of the situation in Jaffna as signs of an upcoming people's uprising, one must believe that the creative energies and technical skills of the people of Jaffna have now been transformed to the manufacture of claymore mines or grenades with huge lethal power. Putting the blame It is a situation where one must imagine the Jaffna parents who are always most interested in their children's education, telling their offspring to put their books aside and learn to assemble claymore mines in their backyards. Are they also telling their children to practice and master the art of sniper fire, to swell the LTTE's ranks of sniper shooters? The LTTE's baloney about people carrying out the increased attacks on the security forces came a cropper when the Dvora Fast Attack Craft of the Navy was attacked by a craft carrying suicide killers, taking a toll of 13 Navy personnel killed. It is hard to believe the attackers in the suicide craft being the "people of Jaffna" and not well trained members of the LTTE's suicide killers. The LTTE can get away by putting all the blame for these attacks on the people of Jaffna because it has the people living in fear of them. Compelling them to detonate a claymore mine may not be more difficult than ordering them not to vote at the last Presidential election. It is also possible for the LTTE to lay the blame for its killings on the people of Jaffna, as many of its killers are indeed the children of northern parents, forcibly inducted into the ranks of those carrying arms for the LTTE. So the story of the people of Jaffna being the latest experts in the use of claymore mines, and even manufacturing them in their homes will soon be part of the latest legend to come from and about the ever restive North of Sri Lanka, or will it be a legend about the power of the Sun God? |
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