Decline & decline of the Tamil Tigers

by H. L. D. Mahindapala

The increasing anti-Tiger forces within the Tamil community make one thing very clear the Tamil Tigers have lost their commanding grip on the Tamil people. Even in the Tamil Diaspora where the Tigers have their strongest base a plethora of anti-Tiger websites and organizations have cropped up to undermine the dominant voice of Tiger activists. The available evidence confirms that the monolith of the Tigers has fragmented and it is not confined to V. Anandasangaree, Douglas Devananda and Karuna Amman. It has percolated down to the grassroots making the politico-military perch of the Tigers rather precarious.

They are no longer sure as they were once of the undercurrents operating in their own backyard. For instance, in the north the Tigers have imposed a ban threatening the Tamil civilians not to go on board Sri Lankan vessels transporting civilians from Jaffna to Trincomalee.

Warning

S. P. Thamilselvan, LTTE Political Head, warned that the civilians travelling by boats between the North and East would become a legitimate military target if they were suspected of carrying Sri Lankan troops. But the Daily Mirror (March 13, 2007 ) reported that a large number of civilians are waiting to travel using the sea route between Jaffna and Trincomalee despite the LTTE warning that they should not use it. Quoting a military official it said that during the week, about 1,000 civilians including women and children travelled from Kankesanthurai to Trincomalee using the sea route by the Passenger Ferry, Jetliner Civilians are not ready to listen to LTTE threats anymore and they continue to use the sea route under the Navy's security, said the military official.

Clearly, the Tamil civilians are thumbing their noses at Thamilselvan. His voice has less power to control the people of Jaffna than the power and the ability of the Sri Lankan Navy to give what the people of Jaffna need. According to official figures, 11,086 civilians from Jaffna have been transported in Sri Lanka Navy vessels. Thamilselvan is bent on keeping Jaffna under siege conditions for them to exercise their power and impress the Western diplomats that the Tamils are behind them en masse and, therefore, they can dictate terms to the Tamils and the Sri Lankan government. But the Jaffna Tamils are sending another message: they are telling Thamilselvan to go to hell.

These acts of defiance are proliferating which would effectively diminish and undermine the power and authority wielded by the Tigers in the past. The Daily Mirror also reported that on a tip off given by a Tamil civilian troops recovered one suicide jacket, six hand grenades, two T-56 weapons, four magazines with seventy ammunition, one cyanide capsule and two military type uniforms from KUPPILAN area in the heartland of the Tamils. (March 12, 2007)

This confirms what Maj-Gen. Janaka Perera, the commander who threw the Tigers out of Jaffna in 1995, told me. He said that he could have not driven the Tigers out nor held Jaffna for long if the Tamil people were not with the Sri Lankan forces, albeit covertly and silently.

Tigers in the east

The situation is far worse for the Tigers in the east. The Karuna factor, combined with the rising people's pressure in the east, has made the Tiger presence in the east untenable . Perhaps, more than the Karuna factor, the fall of Vaharai, can be attributed to Tamil people abandoning the Tigers and defiantly crossing over to the government-controlled areas. The Tamil exodus is a demonstrable vote of no-confidence the prestige, power and image of the Tigers who have been parading as the sole representative of the Tamils.

The exodus in the east signifies that the Tamil civilians are no longer enamoured by Prabhakaran's war which is supposed to be waged on behalf of the Tamils. By marching out they have demonstrated that they are only too willing to abandon the Tigers at the first available opportunity. The Tigers put maximum pressure on the Tamil civilians to keep them as human shields but the mounting pressure of the Tamil civilians was greater and the Tiger had to let them go eventually. It is an ominous sign for the Tigers whose hit-and-run terror tactics depend primarily on the consent of the people.

Ideological waves

In addition to these ground realities, the ideological and the political waves on which the Tigers rose to power has waned considerably. Prabhakaran who was riding these waves have not yet realized that these waves peaked on February 22, 2002 with signing of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) an instrument of political power which was handed over by Ranil Wickremesinghe, the then Prime Minister, to legitimize Velupillai Prabhakaran's one-man regime in Vanni. In return Prabhakaran rewarded him by doing what the voters of Sri Lankan were rather reluctant to do drive Wickremesinghe into the political wilderness which is likely to be his permanent address in the foreseeable future.

The Tiger tendency to overrate their actions and underestimate the reactions has cost them dearly. They hoped to reap political benefits by passing a political death sentence on Wickremesinghe. But it boomeranged on them in much the same way as the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. These two events stand out as the two biggest blunders in Tiger politics. However, hardly anyone is complaining about what happened to Wickremesinghe because Prabhakaran and Wickremesinghe deserve each other. Their political rivals would readily agree that they should be allowed to stew in their own political juices.

Embracing bogus theories of confidence-building Wickremesinghe became a willing signatory to the CFA promoted by his NGO catchers, principally Bradman Weerakoon, his secretary, who draws his pay cheque (when he is not in government service) from the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist and pro-Tamil ICES founded by Neelan Tiruchelvam. Moral: If you want to know where your leader is going just take a close look at the direction from which his secretary is coming! Prabhakaran too misread the CFA. He thought it gave him the international licence to take the law into his hands and defy both national and international norms which were standing in his way to achieve his ultimate goal of Eelam. With his blinkered vision he went all out to undermine the instrument that gave him the power that he never had before. Between the two of them they worked for each other's decline.

Wickremesinghe was ousted by Chandrika, his childhood mate who used the CFA to hit him hard on his head. Prabhakaran too was undone by the CFA when he used it as a stepping stone to unleash his escalated violence to further expand his territorial and political power with the connivance of Erik Solheim, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Had he operated within the parameters of the CFA he would not have been in this position today, banned by the international community, plagued by desertions and splits, abandoned by disillusioned Tamil people and struggling desperately to reclaim the power and the territory that was handed to him on a CFA platter and lost subsequently due to his own arrogant, unrelenting violence.

India, Norway and his other assorted allies in the NGOs who have rushed to rescue him with various formulas and agreements have failed and will fail because Prabhakaran is his worst enemy. Prabhakaran has gone beyond the optimum will of the Tamil people into a demonic black hole of his own creation which demands insatiable blood sacrifices from the dwindling Tamil population.

Dehumanizing politics

More than anything else, Prabhakaran is now seen as the embodiment of just not Tamil fascism there has always been a strain of fascism in peninsular politics, starting from the upper-caste fascism of the feudal age to the low-caste fascism of Prabhakaran - but also the dehumanizing politics rejected by the civilized world down the ages. The cruel concentration camps hidden in the Vanni, the abduction of children, the persecution of Tamil adults, the elimination of Tamil dissidents make Pol Pot look like a latter day saint. After anointing himself as Sun God he has turned the Vanni into a mass slave camp where the Tamils have to dance to his drumbeat.

All the conceivable evils of Jaffna jingoism that went horribly wrong are concentrated in the essence of Prabhakaran's violent politics. Through his intransigent politics he has descended to such low depths that he is incapable of taking any remedial measures to save himself or the Tamil people. He has dragged the Tamil people to depths of despair with no promise of relief except more blood, death and destruction.

The Tamils who were shrewd enough to understand that their salvation was in economic growth and they were very successful in going down that path - were misled by their misguided leaders down an unattainable political path that has ruined their image, deprived them of their rights, and their gains of the past. The Tamils today are floundering in this failed political experiment not knowing how to get out of it.

Humiliating situation

Worst still, they are in the grip of a political Frankenstein. The Tamils had never faced a grim and humiliating situation of this magnitude under what they called the Sinhala-dominated government. In his over-ambitious drive to be the sole representative of the Tamils', which means eliminating all other Tamil rivals, Prabhakaran has never hesitated to wear the iron fist and the jackboots to keep the Tamils in line. Unlike the Tamils, the 'Sinhala-dominated governments' (their phrase) have resisted both Sinhala and Tamil forces threatening illegal grabs for power from peripheral forces using violence. And this has been achieved without turning the state into an authoritarian regime. Even under extreme violent conditions, facing right-wing coups, left-wing uprisings and separatist ethnic violence, 'the Sinhala-dominated governments' have maintained a democratic balance which, by any standards, is remarkable for a Third World country.

But in the very first experiment of Tamils running their own administration under their own leadership they have failed to maintain the elementary civic decencies prevailing even in primitive societies. They set out to establish their ideal state which they said could not be attained under a 'Sinhala-dominated government'.

Political nightmare

The deluded Tamils in the diaspora invest millions in what they call a de facto state which has turned into a political nightmare for the Tamils. This de facto state (a euphemism for the first Sri Lankan concentration camp) is in a pathetic condition unable to even provide an aspirin or a grain of rice to the Tamils.

They raise a howl if the 'the Sinhala-dominated government' fails to provide the basic essentials to the Tamils in the 'de facto state'.

It is the primary duty of a state 'de facto or de jure' to care for the people and to protect them from persecution, oppression and fascist jackboots. If they claim it is a de facto state then they must accept all the responsibilities and the duties of a state. After all a de facto state should be as good as a de jure state when it wields power in caring for the people. It should be held responsible in the same way as a de jure state.

If the pro-Vanni propagandists and the NGO pundits accept Prabhakaran's one-man regime as a de facto state then they cannot pass the buck to the de jure state and absolve the de facto state from the responsibility of serving the needs of the Tamil people.

Besides, if they state that it is responsibility of the de jure state to care for the people of the de facto state then they must accept its corollary that the jurisdiction of the de jure state should reign supreme over the mythical de facto state. Having said that ,it must also be recognized that the Tamils, wherever they are, remain as citizens of the Sri Lankan government and it is the responsibility of this de jure government to care for them. And despite many obstacles thrown in its path it has seldom failed to honour its responsibilities.

UN experts on civil wars in other regions have commended the Sri Lankan governments for being unique in caring for those held in rebel-held territories. Whatever the changing criteria of a successful/failed state may be the bottom line is that a state which cannot provide security or the basic necessities of its citizens does not have a right to exist, be it? de facto or de jure.

Those pundits who describe or accept the Vanni regime as a de facto state has never condemned it as a failed (de facto) state. But the democratically elected state which provides free education free health services, free social services etc., is condemned as a failed state. If so why is it that the vast majority of the Tamils (and the NGO pundits) prefer to live in the 'failed state' and not in the successful de facto state? These pundits are like those who praised the states in the Soviet bloc as the ideal states and condemned the Western bloc as failed states, though none of them ever dared to live in the successful socialist states of the Soviet bloc. For instance, Picasso, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party painting doves for the Soviet Union, lived happily in Paris.

This is where the politics of 'the Sinhala-dominated government', with all its faults, is morally superior to the perverse politics of the de facto state of the Tamil propagandists.

Their de facto state is not only incapable and/or refusing to the supply the essentials to its people but also obstructing the supplies of goods and services sent by the de jure government to the Tamil people.

In any case, the fallacies of all the arguments of the de facto state stand exposed when Daya Master of the Tiger hierarchy is rushed by 'the Sinhala-dominated government' for urgent medical treatment.

'The Sinhala-dominated government' is also superior in that it is fighting tenaciously to remove the road blocs put up by Terroristan so that the supplies of the goods and the services can be delivered to the Tamil people.

Besides, the humanitarian crises that the diplomats, the Churches and the NGO cry about are creations of Terroristan.

The Vanni de facto Terroristan creates the crises to reap political and military gains and when the de jure state moves to overcome these crises they are blamed for not appeasing the obstructionists in the Vanni.

To the credit of the 'Sinhala-dominated governments' it must recorded that they have never gone to the extent of denying the fundamental rights as in the Terroristan of the Tigers in the Vanni which prohibits the ownership of even a telephone, or the right of a child to go to school instead of attending Tiger camps.

It is the iron fist and the jackboots of Prabhakaran that have made 'the Sinhala-dominated government' more acceptable to the oppressed Tamils agonizing under a pseudo-Eelamist experiment that has crushed them like insects pinned by Prabhakaran when he was conducting his experiments in killing as a school boy.

Unlike other revolutionary leaders Prabhakaran did not embrace violence through an ideology. He was born violent, according to his Indian biographer. Nor is he endowed with a democratic personality to accept dissent and liberal politics. He is an authoritarian figure who must live by the sword and, if the Biblical prophesy is correct, die by the sword.

There isn't a more telling symbol that embodies his authoritarian politics of violence than the flag he designed with an Indian street artist in a street in Chennai, S. India.

His stunted imagination could only conceive of a tiger roaring like the MGM lion through a ring of 33 bullets, crossed over head with two guns fixed with bayonets.

The abject poverty of his intellect and imagination is expressed in these stark brutal images without any accompanying humane symbols. Is this the flag that the Tamils are going to wrap round them as their ultimate expression of civilized human beings? Undoubtedly, the Tiger flag is truly representative of Prabhakaran and all what he represents. But is it representative of the Tamils who like to parade, from time to time, as Gandhians?

Can the Tamils follow a man who has designed a crude flag only for violence?

The Tamils today are stranded on the ruins and ashes of the failed political experiment symbolized in their crude flag.