International terrorism suffers huge blow after LTTE defeat
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The rise and fall of Prabhakaran
By M K Bhadrakumar
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran's death circa May 19, 2009, in circumstances we will never quite get to know, concludes a morality play.
As the curtain comes down and we leave the theater, the spectacle continues to haunt us. We feel a deep unease and can't quite figure out the reason. Something rankles somewhere. And then we realize we have blood on our hands.
Not only our hands, but our whole body and deeper down, our conscience - what remains of it after the mundane battles of our day-to-day life - are also dripping with blood.
Prabhakaran's blood. No, it is not only Prabhakaran's, but also of 70,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who have perished in the unspeakable violence through the past quarter century.
All the pujas we may perform to our favorite Hindu god, Lord Ganesh, for good luck each morning religiously so that we march ahead in our life from success to success cannot wash away the guilt we are bearing - the curse of the 70,000 dead souls.
Our children and grandchildren will surely inherit the great curse. What a bitter legacy!
A long time ago, we created Prabhakaran. We picked him up as an urchin from nowhere. What we found charming about him was that he was so thoroughly apolitical - almost innocent about politics. He was a simpleton in many ways, who had a passion for weapons and the military regimen. He suited our needs perfectly.
Which was to humiliate the Junius Richard Jayewardene government in Sri Lanka and teach it a hard lesson about the dangers of being disrespectful to India's status as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean. Jayewardene was too Western-oriented and behaved as if he never read about the Monroe Doctrine when he read history in Oxford. We didn't like at all his dalliance with the Israelis and the Americans in our very backyard.
So, we fostered Prabhakaran and built him up as a prick on Jayewardene's vanities - like Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale of the Deccans.
Then, as time passed, we decided that he had outlived his utility as we had come to develop an entirely different outlook towards the pro-Western orientation of the Colombo government by that time. Our egotistic leader in Delhi who detested Jayewardene was no more in power and the new soft-spoken leader didn't share his predecessor's strong political antipathies.
So, we arm-twisted Prabhakaran to tone down and fall in line with our changed priorities. But we didn't realize that by then he had become a full-grown adult.
He resisted our blackmail and pressure tactics. When we pressured him even more and tried to collar him, he struck back. He dispatched assassins to India and killed our beloved leader. And he became our eternal enemy.
Yet, we couldn't do anything to harm him. He had already become so strong - an uncrowned king among his people. So we waited. We are a patient lot. Who can match us in infinite patience, given our 5,000 years of history? Our cosmic religion gives us a unique wisdom to be patient and stoic and to bide our time.
And then, the opportune time came. We promptly moved in for the kill by aligning ourselves with Prabhakaran's enemies. We armed them and trained them in better skills to kill. We guided them with good intelligence. We plugged all escape routes for Prabhakaran. And then, we patiently waited as the noose tightened around Prabhakaran's neck.
Today he is no more. Believe it or not, we had no role in his death. How and when he died shall forever remain an enigma wrapped in a mystery. We will of course never divulge what we know.
All that matters is that the world woke up to the death only after the May 13 polling in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Otherwise, the parliamentary election results may have gone haywire against us. Strange are the ways of the Indian democracy.
We have had our revenge. Nothing else matters for the present.
What lies ahead? We will continue to make noises about a "political solution" to the Tamil problem that Prabhakaran championed through violent means.
Of course, let there be no doubt that we will periodically render humanitarian assistance to the hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians who have been herded into camps and may languish there till the dust settles down. We will demonstrate that we are indeed capable of the milk of human kindness. After all, the Sri Lankan Tamils are part of our historical consciousness.
But we must also be realistic. We know in our heart of hearts that the scope for a political solution in the fashion in which our leaders seem to suggest publicly is virtually nil.
The Sinhalese will never allow the world to dictate to them a political solution. More so, they will promptly and conclusively rebuff any attempt by us to seek a role in what they will now onward insist as strictly their internal affair.
Always remember that Sri Lanka is one of the last bastions of Theravada Buddhism and preserving that legacy is the Sinhalese people's precious tryst with destiny. At least, that is how they feel. We have to accept the weight of their cultural nationalism.
They see Sri Lanka as the land of the Sinhalese. How could they allow us Indians who wiped out Buddhism with such ferocity from the sub-continent interfere with their keen sense of destiny as the custodians of that very same great religion? Never, never.
If we try to pressure the Sinhalese, they will approach the Chinese or the Pakistanis to balance our pressure. They are capable of doing that.
The Sinhalese are a gifted people. We all know few can never match their terrific skills in media management. They have always lived by their wits.
Equally, they are fantastic practitioners of diplomacy. We suspect that they may in fact have an edge over us on this front, for, unlike us who are dissimulating from day to day as if we're a responsible regional power, and dissipating our energies in pastimes such as hunting down Somali pirates in distant seas, they are a highly focused lot.
They have the grit because they are fighting for the preservation of their country's future identity as a Buddhist nation.
Only last week, they showed their diplomatic skill by getting the Russians and the Chinese to stall a move in the United Nations Security Council to pressure them.
The Europeans fancy they can try the Sinhalese for war crimes. What naivety!
We asked the Sinhalese in private many a time how they proposed to navigate their way in the coming period. They wouldn't divulge.
But we know that it is not as if they have no solution of their own to the Tamil problem, either. We know they already have a blueprint.
See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provinces of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara. The Tamils are no more the majority community in those provinces.
Similarly, from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of the northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil provinces.
The Tamils will be made into a minority community in their own northern homelands. They will have to live among the newly created Sinhalese settlements in those regions to the north of Elephant Pass.
All this will indeed be within Sri Lanka's "federal structure". Sri Lanka will continue to adhere to parliamentary democracy.
Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent.
The Sinhalese are good friends of India. Our elite and their elite speak the same idiom. We both speak English well, play golf and like chilled beer. We should, therefore, wish them well.
As for the blood on our hands, true, it is a blessed nuisance. But this is not the first time in our history that we're having blood on our hands.
Trust our words. No lasting harm will be done. Blood doesn't leave stains.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey. -
Originally posted by angel7030:
wha, so serious ar?? u scold my Uncle Chia ar??? he said me this and that, i also tarhan, respect Uncle ya
oh just throw the ball back at him....sometime for peope to make statements without liabilities you need to throw the ball back let them taste their own words.
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oh just throw the ball back at him....sometime for peope to make statements without liabilities you need to throw the ball back let them taste their own words.
If you are american you must inform me, otherwise I won't spare the criticism.
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Originally posted by Atobe:
Earlier this Tuesday morning - the present Sri Lankan President has already announced in a live broadcast that it is now time for healing, and to bring the Tamils residing in Sri Lanka into the national process.
Can there be a Sri Lankan equivalent to Nelson Mandela - when Nelson Mandela was a prisoner of conscience in his own homeland, even as he was imprisoned on terrorism charges for fighting against South African Apartheid Laws ?
There is no such figure from the Tamil side in Sri Lanka.
It will require the present Singhalese political leadership to provide the political will to include the Tamils into Sri Lanka political process.
In the Swat Valley - only the rebel Pashtun tribesmen that embraced the Taliban way of live have remained to fight the Pakistan Government to regain control of this lawless territory - while the bulk of the Pashtun population has become internal refugees fleeing from the battle area.
The Pakistani Military far outnumber the remaining Pashtun rebels and the assorted Taliban fighters from various Muslim countries that include the crowd from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda.
With the Afghan, ISAF and US military on one side of the border, and the US Air Force drones fighting alongside the Pakistan Military - the death knell will soon sound for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda crowd.
Like it was in Sri Lanka, it was money, determination and sheer numbers that helped the present Sri Lanka political leadership to focus the military to win the fight against the LTTE.
The same is happening in Pakistan, with political encouragement and incentives - as well as military aid - from the USA and her allies that include EU and Japan.
well time will tell how much political wisdom does the Sri Lanka leadership have.
I am not sure you can compare Pushtun with the LTTE. They were there for much much longer than LTTE. Much larger tribes. ethnic ties across Eastern Iran. They have enough men to pick up fallen Rifle. It will take beyond military solution to intergrate Pushtun into the modern society.
My prediction......
The only way Pakistan can do is to force a another peace agreement to have a symbolic present in the Swat Valley. I think the current leadership will be assinated and ISI will assume control of Pakistan. And Infact ISI will be the new Taliban. An unexpected twist in the Geopolitics that change the region..... Wow...la...
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Did you know...
Malay Peninsula and Sumatra were invaded by Rajendra Chola I of the Tamil Chola empire in 1025.
Before the fourteenth year of Rajendra’s reign c. 1025, the Chola Navy crossed the ocean and attacked the Srivijaya kingdom of Sangrama Vijayatungavarman. Kadaram, the capital of the powerful maritime kingdom, was sacked and the king taken captive. Along with Kadaram, Pannai in present day Sumatra and Malaiyur in the Malayan peninsula were attacked. Kedah (now in modern Malaysia) too was occupied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_Chola