A new era of hope begins tomorrow

After 32 years of divisive and destructive politics unleashed by the Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976, and after decades of defeats and despair there is promise, at last, in the air that the 60th Independence Day will dawn with lasting hope.

There is hope because the Tamil Tigers are on their last legs, having lost their earlier power (1) to hold on to territory, (2) to defend their territory against advances from the Security Forces, (3) to ride the waves of the Indian Ocean at will,(4) to dictate terms to the Sri Lankan government, (5) to indulge in the myth of running a super state that can take on the whole world and (6) and, above all, to deliver their promises to the Tamil people.

Their last remaining tactic is to attack unarmed civilians which is going to be counter-productive. No one is going to read such acts of terrorism as an exhibition of power. It is clearly the act of desperados hitting in all directions without earning the respect they need for them to survive as a viable force.

This will only strengthen the case of the offensive launched by the Sri Lankan Forces to finish them off once for all. The Tigers are not going to win sympathy from any quarter - certainly not from the international community which they need desperately at this point - if they go down this brutal path.

Informed Tamil sources claim that it is Pottu Amman who is now directing the operations to strike terror among civilians because the Tigers cannot combat or counter militarily the onslaught of the advancing Security Forces.

Pottu Amman is playing infantile games like detonating bombs in Dambulla. It is meant primarily to send a message to the Independence celebrations. The time when such violence would have paid dividends was before 9/11. Now it is self-destructive.

Tamil sources also say that Prabhakaran has lost his grip on events. He is now in a free fall. Thoppigala made it abundantly clear that Prabhakaran has fallen from the commanding position he held when he signed the Ceasefire Agreement.

After Thoppigala there has been no queue on the doorstep. Isolated and weakened he is sinking deeper into his Mohole in the Vanni.

He rose to unexpected heights thanks to his political fathers in Jaffna (S. J. V. Chelvanayakam et al) who paved the ideological path for him to use subhuman violence. The forces of mono-ethnic extremism articulated and politically engineered by the Jaffna Tamil elite found its militarised expression in the brutal violence of Prabhakaran - the first born political child of the fathers of Tamil separatism.

Peninsular politics has been another gruesome example of the children fathered by extremist politics devouring the fathers. Prabhakaran eliminated the cream of the Jaffna Tamil leadership - from the fathers (A. Amirthalingam etc.,) to the sons (Neelan Tiruchelvam etc.,).

It is the genuinely non-violent Tamils who have been paying for the violence endorsed by the bogus Gandhians who fathered the Vaddukoddai Resolution. The Tamil leadership of Jaffna must accept full responsibility for leading the Tamils like lemmings to their deaths.

If they had guided their peninsular Tamils with a genuine commitment for non-violence and steered them towards co-existence in a multi-cultural society instead of pushing them towards mono-ethnic extremism the Tamils of Jaffna, and Sri Lanka as a whole, would have taken the pacific road to a future without the unnecessary agonies that had plagued the nation for decades.

But unfortunately, the self-styled Gandhians of Jaffna, who unashamedly distributed wooden pistols at their "non-violent satyagrahas" (the Tamils today are paying for this hypocrisy!), have dragged the Tamils of Jaffna to the lowest depths.

The news that scream from headlines indicate that their political dreams have turned into nightmares.

"On Wednesday (January 30)", the Sri Lanka Army news portal reported, "that hundreds of troops of the 55 and 53 Divisions in NAGARKOVIL and MUHAMALE stormed the first defence lines of the LTTE in both places and physically ejected some 35 bunkers killing or injuring at least 25 - 30 Tiger terrorists." This is a big breakthrough on the road to Kilinochchi.

The Tamil Tigers have withdrawn into the second line of defence. And "barely two hours after the fall of first line of defence SLAF Kfir jets pounded the Tigers' Coordinating Headquarters at Weddukadu, two kms south of Muhamale," said the Army website.

That is in the north. In the west the Forces are clawing their way into Madhu and Mannar. Running short of manpower the Tamil Tigers are throwing school-goers and even teachers into the front line, according to Army sources.

If the news in Sri Lanka is bad for the Tigers it is getting worse in S. India - the last post of hope for the Tigers. Even M. Karunanidhi, the Minister of Tamil Nadu who has been their best bet, backtracked last week under threats from the Congress Party, its chief ally in the state assembly.

Targeting the banned LTTE, Tamil Nadu Law Minister Duraimurugan told the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Wednesday (January 30): "Any speech supporting the banned outfits or propagating their ideals is a crime under the Unlawful Prevention Act and legal action will be taken against those who indulge in such acts," In the adjoining state of Kerala, Police are hunting for Mathivathani, the wife of Prabhakaran who is supposed to be hiding there, knowing that the advance of the forces into Vanni is imminent.

The military failure of the Tigers is compounded by their abysmal failure to grasp the ground realities facing them. The loss of India is the last straw that has broken the Vanni camel's back.

With no friends around to rescue them and unable to face the inevitable advance of the Sri Lankan Army, B. Nadesan, the head of the Tiger Peace Secretariat, has written to Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, saying: "It should also be obvious to the international community that there is only one path open to regain the rights of the Tamil people and that is for the international community to recognise the sovereignty of the Tamil nation.

"We, therefore, urge you to consider recognising Tamil sovereignty as a constructive approach to end the unending five decades long, large scale, and serious rights violations against the Tamil people."

Wishful thinking, indeed! Ban Ki-Moon, with all his good intentions, can't even find troops to police crisis-ridden countries like Sudan. Besides, whether he has the inclination and the time to re-arrange his international agenda and prioritise the claim of the former cop of Kirillapone Police Station, just to please "the world's most deadliest terrorist group" (FBI), is an issue that need not give sleepless nights to the Government of Sri Lanka, There is also ample room for hope because the international dynamics has changed dramatically, gently removing the Western interlopers who failed miserably to bring their vaunted peace through their amateurish and fatally flawed Ceasefire Agreement.

Whether India will step into the vacuum in a meaningful manner is yet to be seen. The moves made by India so far, however, have not been favourable to the Tamil Tigers. The mending of fences on both sides of the Palk Straits has been to the advantage of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Rejecting the dithering of other political leaders for decades President Rajapaksa launched his firm, decisive and unwavering policy of "gahuwoth gahanawa" which has not met with any aggressive opposition from India.

Nor is the international community rushing to rescue the Tiger terrorists. President Rajapaksa's uncompromising counter-terrorist offensive -something which was long overdue - has paid off convincingly.

Whatever the future holds his forces have reached a peak that the Tamil Tigers cannot reverse. He has achieved what the pundits thought could never be achieved. His achievements have changed the political map which, in the long run, is bound to marginalise the Tamil Tiger terrorists to a point of Dwindling irrelevance. Of course, there are miles to go before the nation can rest.

Making peace will be more difficult than making war. But President Rajapaksa's no nonsense approach, cutting out all the theoretical and fanciful fluff of the Western diplomats and their lackeys in NGOs, has proved that only aggressive counter-terrorist strategies could finally restore the required political balance and the ambience to negotiate a solution.

If the war is stopped at this peak point it would be an insult to the sacrifices made by the soldiers who died to save the lives of their fellow-Sri Lankans. The choice now is to stop the war and prolong the agony without creating the necessary space for moderate parties on all sides to workout a lasting solution or to fight the war to a finish an end the bleeding of 30 years. This war is the surgical operation that was needed from the beginning.

The aspirins and the band-aid solutions of the international community and their hired agents in NGOs have failed to yield the expected results of peace.

The closest comparison to the current offensive of the Sri Lankan Forces is World War II. The Western powers who fought against the war-mongering Hitler making unending demands - mark you, a war in which Sri Lankan soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder to defend the powers who are dictating to us today -- did not abruptly stop their offensive after landing troops in Normandy on their high-sounding moral concerns of human rights.

The cost of human lives was the last in the list of their concerns. They did not stop the war even after crushing Hitler. They went on mercilessly to crush Japan and bring the Japanese down on their knees by dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - two totally unnecessary war crimes knowing that the surrender of Japan was imminent. The defence put up for dropping the atom bombs was that it saved the lives of the Western soldiers.

The lives of the Asian did not matter to them as long as Western lives were saved. The Western powers pursued their vengeance even at the peace conference in San Francisco and it was little Sri Lanka which stood up for Japan and pleaded for justice and mercy.

Sri Lanka is not asking for gratitude or mercy from Japan or any other nation. Sri Lanka is asking for justice to all communities and just not to one armed terrorist group, or their fellow-travellers mouthing mono-ethnic extremism of the Jaffna Tamils. Gareth Evans, Louise Arbour, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Jayantha Dhanapala, the hired Napoleon of R2P forces, and the usual claque in NGOs hanging behind them for perks, are threatening reprisals if the Sri Lankan government does not stop the war.

Yashushi Akashi, despite misleading rumours, has assured Palitha Kohona, that it is not in the business of cutting off aid to Sri Lanka. The Western powers who fought all their wars to a finish, except when they were defeated as in Vietnam, are threatening punitive action against the intensification of counter-terrorist strategies to end the 32-year cycle of violence which, if fought to its logical end, has all the potential to create the necessary space for peace.

In fact, it is the only realistic option available to the nation as well as the international community. The violence in Sri Lankan has been alternating between low-intensity warfare and the three high-intensity Eelam Wars.

The Tigers are now in Eelam War IV. Their agents abroad are collecting money saying it is for the war to end the wars against the Sri Lankan government. Clearly, the ill-informed threats of the Western diplomats are misplaced.

Any move to twist the arm of the Sri Lanka government - even with the R2P forces tilting at windmills - can only accelerate and perpetuate the bloodletting. And if that happens let the blood be upon the heads of the Western powers whose solution contained the Ceasefire Agreement brought more misery than peace to the war-weary people of Sri Lanka.

Any move of external forces to stop the offensive can only result in saving Prabhakaran - the primary source of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka. What else can be the meaning of stopping a war against an intransigent and incorrigible enemy of peace? If, for instance, the Western powers stopped the World War II on D-day after landing on the beaches of Normandy without going down to Berlin who would have been saved? And what kind of peace would have been achieved?

Can these foreign agents, especially the NGO pundits, guarantee that stopping the war will bring the Pol Potist regime to the negotiating table? Can these bull-headed Minotaurs, living on human flesh, guarantee the victims of Prabhakaran's an end to his violence by stopping the offensive of the Sri Lankan forces? Can Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and his hired side-kick, Rohan Edrisinghe, assure the Tamil parents that Prabhakaran will stop recruiting children if Sri Lanka forces come to a halt tomorrow? If the war comes to an end with a regime change in the Vanni will not the Tamil children have a greater chance of leading normal lives than under Prabhakaran's fascist regime?

Incidentally, when will Edrisinghe, the pontificating legal pundit of Saravanamuttu's Centre for Policy Alternative, initiate legal action against Prabhakaran for war crimes and crimes against humanity?

They know that Prabhakaran will not give up violence. They know that he will not climb down from his demand for a separate state which, as they know, can be pursued only through violence.

They know that he can survive only through violence and that he cannot survive in an environment of peace.

So what do they hope to achieve by stopping the war? If Churchill and Roosevelt, together with Eisenhower and Montgomery went to sleep after landing their troops on the beaches of Normandy, or on arriving on the skirts of Germany and waited till Hitler committed suicide, could they have achieved the peace they were hoping for at the time they wanted it? What could Margaret Thatcher have achieved if she sent the ships to the Malvinas and let the troops idle on board the ships in mid-Atlantic Ocean?

So why is it perfectly valid for these Western moralists to use war an instrument for their ends, however costly it may be in terms of human lives, and not valid for other nations? Have they renounced war as an instrument of their foreign policy to give a moral lead to Sri Lanka? They won't even give up the apocalyptic nuclear weapons in their armoury which was declared illegal in the landmark judgment of, Justice C. G. Weeramantry of the International Court of Justice.

The atom bomb they dropped on Hiroshima instantly killed 140,000, followed by 80,000 more death due to the after effects of radiation and injuries. Without meaning to justify the death of any single human being, it is necessary to point out that after decades of the violence in Sri Lanka the figure stands at 80,000.

The history of Western wars and the history of other nations have established beyond any shred of doubt that wars led by intransigent megalomaniacs can be ended only by counter-wars. There is no alternative.

The alternatives available in national, regional and international formulas have been tried and exhausted. The consensus is that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the brutal child of the irresponsible Tamil fathers, must be removed.

Raising human rights issues, threatening to cut aid, pushing the Quixotic R2P forces will not help the cause of peace.

World War II was fought on the promise that it was war to end wars.

True enough there has been no world wars since then though there were localized wars. When the Sri Lankan war ends there will be no other wars in Sri Lanka. True, there will be skirmishes led by the rag-tag leftovers of Prabhakaran's defunct army. But that will be more of a nuisance value than a serious threat to the nation as such.

That is something that the nation will have to wear for some time. However, the biggest noises will be made by the NGO hirelings. Like Prabhakaran they dread the ending of the war.

Peace is anathema to them because they will lose their perks and the overseas funding. Like Prabhakaran they thrive in the debris of the war. This war is like the beggar's wound to them: if it heals they lose their most lucrative source of income.

How is Kumar Rupesinghe, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jehan Perera etc., going to maintain their life-style if the war ends tomorrow? Poor chaps! If you see them around - most probably sipping free drinks at diplomatic cocktails - don't forget to throw some spare coins to fill their empty pockets.

If the war stops now it is not these foreign-funded agents who will pay for the consequences of Prabhakaran re-arming and re-igniting another war and another on some pretext or the other.

The unrealistic and unworkable proposition of making constitutional amendments to wean the Tamil away from Prabhakaran will to work for the simple reason that Prabhakaran has eliminated all those Tamils who want to pursue the constitutional path. He has killed Tamil constitutionalists like Neelan Tiruchelvam and he has made numerous attempts to kill Douglas Devananda who is in the democratic main stream.

By their own confessions and calculations an alternative constitutional arrangement is to undermine Prabhakaran.

How many of these NGO pundits will put up their hands to guarantee that those Tamils coming up in the constitutional process to undermine Prabhakaran will be spared by Prabhakaran? He will kill those Tamils and then the NGOs will blame the government for letting it happen.

Stopping the war from the government, without any chance of stopping it from Prabhakaran's end, is a futile exercise that will serve only the NGOs to keep the war going for them to make some money on the side.

They want to keep Prabhakaran in the business of war because if he is not there they lose their arguments and more importantly their sources of income Earlier they were discouraging any military offensive - the Government even invited them to lecture to the military establishment on abandoning war as a strategy to achieve peace - on the assumption that the Sri Lankan forces would decimated if they ventured to confront the Tamil Tigers. But now that this theory has been debunked they are making a direct bid to stop the offensive.

For instance, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, one of the NGO pundits, has stopped crowing about the Army deserters. His latest columns indicate that the poor fellow is depressed. He is despondent that no one is taking him seriously.

Despite his put-on accent, he sounds as if he has been baying at the moon. Understandably, Nick Gowan, the BBC presenter, finds it difficult to get his tongue round jaw-breaking Sri Lankan names. But, it must be said, that when he recently introduced "Paki-sorty Sara-van-a-mutt-to" he got the "MUTT" part right!

Then there is Kumar Rupesinghe, drawing, according to media reports, a million rupees a month as salary (for what?). His best efforts are now devoted to cut a card-board figure on million-rupee ads. He has stopped his peace rallies which were held ONLY in the south.

With his film star secretary (Rs. 400,000 a month?) he is now posing as a paper tiger, recruiting members through advertisements to a front that is going backwards. He is hoping to throw the masses into the streets in a show of his political strength. In the real world out there, he is the kind of poseur who wouldn't be hired, even by a Mariakadday circus, to play the role of a clown.

These NGO hirelings are stuck in between the threats of the international community to cut off aid to Sri Lanka at best and Prabhakaran's dogged refusal to face the reality of getting back to the negotiating table, at worst.

In the meantime, India has endorsed, without saying so in so many words, that it has no objections to the current offensive. India's Foreign Minister, Pranab Mukherjee recently declared that (1) India's policy is zero tolerance on terrorism (read: go ahead and hammer the day lights out of the Tiger terrorists) and (2) India will not criticize the abrogation of the CFA (read: we are happy to see the end of it because we did not want to be a part of the Ceasefire Agreement from the start even though the West was pressuring India to join.) India has signalled that they prefer to stick to the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement without getting their fingers soiled in the CFA. By and large, the general consensus, with niggling here and there, supports the military offensive advancing to effect a regime change in the Vanni and to remove Prabhakaran from the political equation.

With the international and the national thrust against Prabhakaran advancing closer to the Tiger gates there is all the reason to look out for tomorrow's dawn. The forces on parade will salute the leader who gave them the opportunity to prove their worth, after being ridiculed for decades.

They will display their prowess in front of their Commander-in-Chief to proclaim proudly that the fault was not theirs but in the failed, weak and gutless leadership that hides behind poojas in temples today.