In My View

War is over, the cause is not

Vellupillai Prabhakaran is dead, but long will live the dream he spun for an independent Sri Lankan Tamil homeland. That dream can only be absolved if the Sri Lankan government in Colombo shows the perspicacity to win the war and not just the battles. For, this is a crucial moment in Sri Lankan Tamil history. The people are battered, bruised and thoroughly demoralised.

Atleast two generations of Tamil youth who only knew violence as a state of existence are now cowering in fear of retribution. The “cognitive dissonance” - as the American social psychologist Leon Festinger had coined it - for the Tamil people of Sri Lanka is so stark, that unless they are helped not to rationalise the emergence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); their progress into the three-decade long civil war; and their ultimate decimation, the folklores would increasingly get into the realm of mythmaking, thus surviving in the consciousness of the people to the detriment of the Sri Lankan state.

While the military victory of the Sri Lankan forces bore the stamp of strategic and tactical aptitude of the Colombo leadership, it now has to be translated into a much larger realm. There is a reductionist American term for this realm; “winning hearts and minds” of a disaffected people. The British had a better term, ‘integration.’

The Tamils of the north of Sri Lanka need to be integrated into the national mainstream, which albeit dominated by the Sinhala majority now has an opportunity to expand to include the minorities.

At the pain of being called repetitive, it still has to be said: unless the Sri Lankan polity with its jingoistic Sinhala fringe and reactionary Buddhist clergy decides that the integrity of a country is not about just gaining challenged territory but about regaining the loyalty of a painfully subnationalist population, this war will be lost again. The onus for this difficult task devolves on the same singleminded Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, who so skillfully ran the violent war. It is upon him and rest of the political class of Sri Lanka to arrive at a national consensus that the Sri Lankan Tamils are as much Sri Lankan as those who wore the uniform of the country to take on the LTTE.

The early signs are promising although seem to give the sense of being cosmetic. The central message that was propagated about the Eelam War IV was that it was not being waged against the Sri Lankan Tamils, but against the intransigent LTTE. After battle pictures of former LTTE leader, Karuna – someone who would have been killed by the all-consuming Prabhakaran had he not fled in time to his eastern enclave - being the first visitor to the devastation of the north shows a certain sensitivity that could go a long way in putting a salve.

Rajapaksa, and the political class of Sri Lanka would have to keep in mind that the LTTE has done the biggest disservice to the Sri Lankan Tamil communities by killing the moderate leadership of the likes of towering, Appapillai Amrithalingam. Hence, they would have to nurture to health a new Tamil leadership that could guide a rudderless community to peace, stability and prosperity.

The LTTE’s record of the ‘protracted war’ is nefarious. They became a killing machine that danced to the tune of one single band master, Prabhakarn. Occasionally showing tactical brilliance, Prabhakarn often missed the strategic picture. He was so consumed by his own propaganda about the “Eelam” that he lost sight of the political nature of his ultimate goal. He thus failed to seize opportunities that came his way, even when the writing on the wall was stark: that redrawing of national boundaries was a relic of the post-WW II world, not to be repeated unless natural.

He thus failed to pick up the international cues for laying down arms and walking the ‘democratic’ path to power; in the process losing his constituency that argued for him.

Prabhakaran did not even relent when he lost the eastern province to Karuna. It is a telling statement on his generalship that he could not read the new status of the Sri Lankan armed forces. Released from fighting a two front civil war, they could not now concentrate their limited resources solely on the north thus creating the possibility of a major military victory over Prabhakaran.

Nor did Prabhakaran anticipate that post-Tsunami his manoeuvrability with small boats will be lessened as the devasatation caused to the fishing communities of the region would be incredible. Plus, the international partnership forged over the post-Tusnami relief operation would hold to the extent of challenging the ingress of his supply ships.

But at the end, it has to be said that Prabhakarn died a warrior’s death. Not for him the quick exit of a Hitlerian suicide. Nor was there an operatic performance of a dramatic attempt at escape. He died fighting the battle that he fought, often dishonourably, for decades without a qualm. Even if the Sri Lankan government manages to not martyrise him, they would not be able to stop him from surviving in the pantheon of free people.