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| Sunday, 14 April 2002 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Histrionics with an eye on Washington Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA Maybe I shouldn't have speculated last Sunday about body checks. Those Tiger guys (no one dares call them 'The Boys' anymore) must have decided to go one better when the Great Day of their Great Leader finally came around last Wednesday at the LTTE Political Training College, Kilinochchi. They've even got journalists' socks removed and looked between the toes!
Security analysts will take note that all mobile phones and other electronic transmission-capable equipment had been detained by the Tiger security personnel at a security checkpoint a kilometre away from the venue of the media conference. Did the Tigers think that someone might have planted a homing device that could have brought in a missile strike or artillery strike or a helicopter-commando strike to take out V. Prabhakaran in the midst of (and along with!) the world's media? Come to think of it, it was (and is) feasible. There you are: I have long felt that fact is indeed stranger than fiction. That's why I am rarely entertained by any serious fiction. Anyway, at least this time round, Mr. Prabhakaran's bodyguards did better than those of 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. media shindig And the Tiger guys' efforts may have been worth it. The media shindig went off without a hitch, as far as the LTTE was concerned (the lack of bedding is something journalists are ever willing to put up with when their quarry is worth the wait). Their Lord (as the Tigers are now projecting Mr. Prabhakaran among the masses) and Master did look good in front of the cameras. Only that hawkish, hooked nose spoilt the effect. Otherwise, chubby cheeks and childlike, disarming smile and all, secessionist war lord Velupillai Prabhakaran, as seen in the TV coverage, could have been described as "cherubic" in appearance today, 28 years after he launched what became the most devastating war Sri Lanka has experienced in centuries, perhaps ever, if one prioritises sheer physical destruction over social collapse. Why do I start with the physical appearance of this man whom most Sri Lankan Tamils revere, Sri Lankan Sinhalese hate, Indians shun and the rest of the world regards as an obscure terrorist? Given the lack of any 'hard' news that emerged from Wednesday's media meet, many of the 300 plus media people who rushed to Kilinochchi, the world media crews especially, focussed on the marked change of appearance of the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Noted is the change from combat fatigues, military moustache over a rough tan and, belted Browning automatic pistol to grey safari suit, smooth-shaven, paler, chubbier cheeks, and pen in tunic pocket instead of sidearm. For media analysts, this change of appearance is in line with what they see as the general shift of the LTTE itself from a military organisation to a civilian-political one. I, for one, however, think a little differently. The change in physical appearance began some years back. And I believe that the LTTE has always been a politico-military movement. The LTTE could never have expanded the miniscule insurrection it began unless it, along with the other Tamil militant groups, had not possessed and effectively deployed a structure of political organisation and mass mobilisation. And as the military effort expanded, so did the political-administrative structure. It is the continued expansion and elaboration of its political-administrative structure that enabled the LTTE to establish the de facto mini-state that so effectively manages the territories and populations under its control - in the North-East, in the rest of the country and, overseas. Just as much as the State's military effort depends on its social (and economic) mobilisation capacity, so does that of the rebel movements. Indeed, one may argue that in the Sri Lankan case, the non-state entity has been more successful in its social mobilisation than has the State. no fundamental change Thus in my view there is no question of a fundamental change in the nature of the LTTE. Even in the intermediate future with a permanent peace, the LTTE will retain its military capacity in some form even as its civilian side may be modified to meet new needs and greater demands on command and control capacities. It is only in the very long term, presuming the success of a permanent peace, that the LTTE may hand over its military capacities completely to the future structure of governance of the North-East region. It is possible that the LTTE itself may then be subsumed by other, newer, political formation better suited for those new conditions of autonomy or independence. V. Prabhakaran's change of physical appearance began about three years ago and seems to have coincided with the change of attitude of the international community towards his organisation. It was when the LTTE unilaterally broke the 1994-95 cease-fire it concluded with the PA Government that world opinion began to shift away from the Tigers' previous acceptance as a "liberation movement" rather than a terroristic, undemocratic force. After the subsequent attack on the Sri Dalada Maligava and, after it rejected Colombo's offer of the most generous political solution package to date, the weight of world opinion drastically shifted away from the LTTE. The decision by the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada to ban the LTTE followed and the Tigers' and Prabhakaran's illegitimacy seemed complete. That was when Mr. Prabhakaran used his birthday speech, which is made in celebration of 'Martyr's Day', to suggest a compromise on the LTTE's goal of a separate State of 'Eelam' if Colombo offered a reasonable alternative. Not only did the LTTE soften its political stand but V. Prabhakaran and his top colleagues began to soften their warlike image and don civils. Even though its apologists would deny it and Prabhakaran himself did so on Wednesday - it is possible to argue that the LTTE's softened stance grew even softer after the global counter-insurgency (so called "anti-terrorism") campaign launched by the United States following the September 11, 2002 guerrilla strikes on New York and Washington. In previous columns I have described the nature of the threat to the LTTE from the US' counter-insurgency effort its effect on the LTTE's political capacity, its resource-mobilisation, its international organisational effort, its international mobility etc. Colombo, meanwhile, has continued to learn from its past mistakes, albeit in fits and starts, and at a slow pace that has been costly in terms of human suffering and societal dislocation. The famous or infamous (depending on your ideological lenses) political 'Package' offered by the previous PA regime only served to provoke rage among Sinhala hardliners, and deter the UNP from lending support. This experience taught a lesson which the UNP seems to have learnt well: simplistic efforts at democratic transparency (as preached by the liberal civic groups) could be cumbersome, if not counter-productive. In any case, as its own actions in the past have so well demonstrated, the UNP is the master of deception and covert manipulation - viz. J.R. Jayawardena's early 'Dharmishta' and 'Democratic Socialism' sloganising, the 'Naxalite' stunt, and most significant of all, the covert way in which the 13th Amendment brought in the first substantive devolution effort. In fact, if so-called transparency is the method of the na‹ve liberals (and those fawning, demoralised Leftists), deception and duplicity is the style of those political formations (such as the UNP) that are at the very heart of the capitalist system. Thus, the new government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, changed tactics and with brilliant (so far) success. All the concessions that the LTTE had demanded as 'pre-requisites' for substantive negotiations, the new government promptly granted the moment the LTTE declared a cease-fire last December. Chandrika Kumaratunga and the PA had adopted a high moral position and refused to bow to such conditionality. Whether the UNP, at that time, would have co-operated with the PA regime and allowed it to unilaterally grant those concessions (as the UNP has now done with the PA broadly acquiescing despite the President's grumblings), is a good question. While some may argue that the UNP, at that time, was more bent on undermining the PA's peace effort, it is possible to argue that the international pressure as well as the domestic Tamil constituency pressure was such that the UNP could not have actively opposed the granting of these concessions if it had been done then. Anyway, this time round, the UNP government did not hesitate or prevaricate. It moved so quickly that even the SInhala ultra-nationalist groups did not have the time to react. And the immediate benefits of the cease-fire (only immediate, superficial benefits, though; the deeper benefits await a more substantial stability) have been so tangible that no one has been able to credibly oppose the Government's actions. And if the granting of the concessions was not enough, the conclusion of the Norwegian-brokered cease-fire agreement has seen such a profound transformation of the country's political-strategic situation that the Sinhala hardliners opposed to peace and ethnic equality are yet gasping in surprise. In fact, it is the outcome of this combination of sweeping security concessions and the Cease-fire Agreement that left nothing very new for Prabhakaran to say during Wednesday's media meet. LTTE supremacy The 2002 Cease-fire Agreement has implicitly (only implicitly) recognised LTTE supremacy over the areas it controls. The forces of both sides will remain frozen in their positions and when the team of Cease-fire Monitors from Scandinavian countries begin formalising the lines of control, there will come into being a kind of permanent de facto situation of autonomy. Furthermore, the Government has implicitly acknowledged the LTTE's exclusive right to undertake political organisational activities in other areas of the Tamil population-dominated Northern and Eastern provinces, including all zones currently held by the Government. Already 'political offices' of the yet proscribed LTTE are being opened with much fanfare and raising of Eelam flags in various parts of the North and East. At Kilinochchi, the Tigers insisted not only that they be de-proscribed prior to the direct Government-LTTE talks planned for May in Thailand, but also that the main subject of discussion should be how they would take exclusive control of an 'Interim Administration' for the combined North-East region. If things do get that far, and it is too early to say yet, then V. Prabhakaran's Tigers would be at the head of an informal i.e. 'interim' - near-confederal structure administering a region that will extend beyond the LTTE's current areas of military control to the boundaries of the combined North-East Provinces. But neither the calls for de-proscription nor the prioritising of an interim structure are new. They are part of the LTTE's long-stated agenda for peace and Colombo had already hinted that it is on the verge of granting both. Even the previous regime of the People's Alliance had indicated a readiness to grant an LTTE-headed interim command structure. In fact one time frame suggested was for as long as a decade. No wonder Prabhakaran, Tiger Chief Negotiator and ideologue Anton Stanislaus Balasingham, Political Wing Leader Thamil Chelvam and the rest could spontaneously smile and posture in front of the world's sensation-hungry media in Kilinochchi last Wednesday. The voluble Balasingham, at one point, could not resist declaring: "Ranil Wickremesinghe is Prime Minister of those who elected him and Mr. Prabhakaran is both President and Prime Minister of the North-East!" While such bombast will surely provoke unease among the Sinhalese majority, the lengthy and tragic flow of events on this island yet compels a mass sense of resignation over the future scenario of an uncertain peace and an uncertain, ad hoc, new political configuration. The peace is explicit, however, while the political configuration remains more implicit and de facto. For Prabhakaran and associates, however, it is only a partial victory, given the constraints of the new global geo-politics under America's policing. Already, blunt warnings about good behaviour have come, direct from Washington as well as from its ambassador in Colombo. Given the rise of a global counter-insurgency, far more effective than the Sri Lankan State's two-decades-long efforts, the limits to the LTTE's nationally-based insurgency are firmer, narrower. In fact, there are indications that the LTTE's own nationalist-secessionist discourse may be modified to accommodate new definitions of 'secession' that may not meet the old ideal of absolute national sovereignty. Hence, the histrionics at Kilinochchi had a slight nervous tinge to it. It was not merely Prabhakaran's and the LTTE's lack of media savvy. There was probably an awareness of the limits of whatever triumph they could dare claim. But while a totally free, separate Eelam seems even more remote today than before, the LTTE and the Tamil people could be poised to enjoy a state of near sovereignty. The process, though, from the interim to the permanent and from the authoritarian to the democratic may be long and tortuous just as the war has been. |
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