In My View

End state for Sri Lanka

The big guns are blazing for the final time. Termination of the 25-year-long conflict is near. Clearly, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is getting ready for its final stand in an area that is shrinking every day around Mullaithvu. Sri Lankan army is notching up significant successes, after decades of being at the receiving end.

The end is coming at a dramatic pace. Even the LTTE could not have expected that environment around them could degrade so fast. That clearly was a strategic misjudgment for which the Sri Lankan Tamil ‘army’ is paying a heavy price. In retrospect, it now seems Velupillai Prabhakaran’s inability to read the political milieu has brought the downfall of the force he built as a ruthless fighting machine.

Primarily, three elements constituted that political situation. First, in the post-9/11 world, the public opinion had sharply turned against forcible changes of governance regimes. In the Indian sub continent, Nepal witnessed a similar change. But qualitatively, the Maoists of Nepal showed more flexibility in dealing with the politics of the times much better than the LTTE. The former came overground and joined the democratic discourse with the same aplomb which they showed fighting the Royal Nepalese Army.

The LTTE had its last chance at a similar transformation in 2005-6 when it made peace with the Sri Lankan government. It could have then turned itself into an overt political force seeking broadbased autonomy and devolution of powers from the Colombo government. Instead, it sought accretion to its military power, negotiating multi million dollar arms deals.

This emphasis on a military solution to the problem had possibly led the LTTE to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. After the dust settles down in the battlefields of Sri Lankan north, Sri Lanka experts would measure how that single act had cost the organisation crucial support of the Indian Tamils, and how it had proved decisive when the end-game was near.

In the penultimate days of the LTTE’s existence as a quasi-legitimate representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Indian Tamils show little sympathy towards their cause. This is especially evident in the way the two main Tamil political parties, DMK and the AIADMK had conducted themselves in the recent past. If the DMK supreme and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi has publicly disavowed the LTTE, Jayalalitha, the AIADMK leader has maintained a deafening silence after initial stirrings of expression of concern.

Finally, the LTTE was done in by the vertical split in its ranks, led by ‘Colonel’ Karuna in the eastern province. This tactically degraded the security situation for the organisation as the Sri Lankan army was relieved off the pressure of having to fight the civil war on two fronts. Plus, Karuna challenged the LTTE’s claim of being the sole homogenous arbiter of the Sri Lankan Tamil fate. His desertion from the organisation’s ranks also released the Sri Lankan army assets that were all deployed in the north, targeting the remaining leg of the LTTE.

It is a different point that this military victory will not bring the desired end state for the Sri Lankan government in this battle of attrition. While the victory on the battle fields would remove the conventional security threat posed by the LTTE, but it would not mean a sudden change in the allegiances of the Sri Lankan Tamil population. The Colombo government would then have the harder task of establishing trust with the Tamil population of the country that would still begrudge the demolition of their legitimate platform of protest.

So it is imperative for the Sri Lankan government to conduct the rest of the operations with a high degree of care that no excesses are committed against the civilian population. This is especially important in light of the 250,000 Tamils who have been moved to Mullaithvu alongwith the LTTE forces, and who the Sri Lankan government claim to have been held hostage by the latter as ‘human shields.’

The Sri Lankan army has created a ‘safe zone’ within this embattled area on which, they have said; they would not do any shelling. They expect that the civilians with the LTTE would be moved to this area for the sake of security of these people. But they also say that the LTTE has apparently asked its soldiers to fight in civilian clothing, so that their death in combat can be projected to the world as the killing of civilian population.

The US, UK, Norway and Japan has urged the Sri Lankan government to desist from attacking the ‘safe zone.’ They have also exhorted the combatant sides to show utmost caution.

So has India. Minister for External Affairs, Pranab Mukherjee, had reiterated a policy of caution with the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had come to New delhi a few days ago. The presidential delegation gave a full scale briefing on the war situation to the Indian counterparts. And possibly, advocated patience with the Indians on the face of the LTTE propaganda. The future thus is now.