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The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

Terrorism cannot be accomplished to the sounds of Chopin and Bach. Liberation Tigers want to do that, but in today's world civilian killings are not collateral damage.

When pregnant mothers died along with army men, the LTTE recognised it had coveted the low ground.

Sarath Fonseka was army man to the core, in contrast to his somewhat small made predecessor, the flamboyant singing ex commander of the army Shantha Kottegoda. We are not saying Kottegoda was small beer compared to Fonseka's hundred-proof. But Fonseka was a hate figure to the LTTE.

But, the LTTE killed a gaggle of pregnant women to get at him. In a terror sensitised world, that was the equivalent of matricide, fratricide and infanticide put together.

One could now commit the theory to the bonfire. The LTTE was terrorist to the core. When civilians are killed, George W. Bush is put on notice, first, and then Condolezza Rice acts upon it.

It's tactically possible for the LTTE to try to spin events of last week and attempt not to let the terrorist image stick.

But, the United States is not buying. The European Union is not buying either.

It's clear that the Norwegians are in isolation buying the LTTE's spin. Circumstances of last week seem to indicate that the LTTE works carefully and diligently in cahoots with the Norwegians.

Take this script: Ulf Henriccson, SLMM Head, blasted the LTTE and implied that its a Tiger canard to say that 40,000 have left their residences in the Sampur area, after ariel bombings by the Sri Lankan army targeting Tiger bases.

He said in the clearest terms quoting the Government Agent that there are 16,000 in Sampur of which a fraction left the area.

But there is reverse swing that seems to work on every public delivery of a SLMM statement, and the next day, the SLMM in an apparent second thought accused the government of 'extra judicial killings.''

A little native wisdom could construct that sequence of events in this way: The SLMM chief Ulf Henriccson was a good man. He arrived in Sri Lanka, and attempted to do a good job. In what was probably the first major assessment in his tour of duty, he said what he said about the 40,000 figure of the exodus from Sampur being "highly exaggerated.''

Having done his work, he was on his way home, singing to himself some Viking ditty perhaps, when he was accosted by the Norway-LTTE friendship association, and taken to the Grandmaster of this sect.

He was sent into trance there, and when he woke up, he had been transmogrified into a Hagrup Haukland clone. He took leave of the grandmaster, and immediately spun a story about "extra judicial killings by the Sri Lankan forces.''

Believe it or not? Though it strains credulity, this seems to be about the best way to explain why perfectly clean Norwegians disembark in Sri Lanka, and begin work in cahoots with the Tigers. The LTTE has exploited the natural Norwegian tendency to go with the perceived underdog, and would have also exploited a series of Norwegian designs on this country.

But the countervailing force is the LTTE's terror campaign which has in the eyes of many transformed the Sri Lankans to status of underdog. It's a certainty that the LTTE's campaign for supremacy is not being fought in the theatre of war exclusively.

The movement's intellectual flank is the NGO movement. Leadership in these NGOs are focused on portraying the LTTE as a military juggernaut that has cached billions of dollars of Diaspora money. All of it is tosh, but its very intimidating, and a threat in heavy circulation these days claims 'the LTTE has as much money as the Sri Lankan army.''

With the BBC and others as propaganda flank, the LTTE could fight its campaign with a few bomb blasts that would keep the issue in the media's front burner.

The real war is fought in the psychological space, and thus space is bifurcated into the left brain, devoted to NGOdom, and the right brain, devoted to media dominance. If the LTTE takes control of the collective right brain and the collective left brain of the international community, it has won its war.

But, with the terrorist attacks, the LTTE having pressed all the wrong buttons, has released the hormonal energy that has elicited the primeval response in the collective cerebral cortex.

Translation: Everybody is grossed out. Again, the LTTE cooked its goose, which is why it has flailed its wings, and in a self-flagellating way, offered itself for another round of negotiations. (Please see political column, in this newspaper.)

This is a dramatic psychodrama on overdrive, going by all that has been portrayed above. But, it's a psychodrama without denouement. There is no catharsis in this. Extreme bloodletting generally has to be cathartic, but it appears that this is a recurring theme.

The collective psyche replays it without adjustment or allowance. Every act of violence, is treated as if it was entirely novel. The polity is almost energised by it.

There they go again then for talks. Join the bandwagon -- this is war and peace, tours and travels, sponsored by the international community. The next act: Sampur children are thrown at the Tigers just out of the cage.

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