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BANGALORE
-- With Sri Lanka back on the brink again with the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) making major gains in the Jaffna
peninsula, the pressure is on India to pre-empt the little island
country from splitting into a northern Tamil nation and a southern
Sinhala one. Some 40,000 Lankan troops are trapped in Jaffna and
India, at the time of writing this report, is awaiting a formal
Sri Lankan request for help in evacuating them, providing
conditions are created for a cease-fire in the peninsula. Even so,
experts foresee a long-drawn standoff in Jaffna. Though aerial
bombing has slowed the LTTE, it has not stopped it.
Five
years back, the Lankan army had driven out the Tigers from the
peninsula, scoring a major victory in their battle against the
LTTE fighting for a separate Tamil homeland. This time round, the
exhausted troops are at the receiving end even as the LTTE cadres
continue their relentless and bloody war, having made use of
several previous cease-fires to accumulate more firepower. Once
the LTTE columns bulldozed their way through the strategic
Elephant Pass on April 21, the Lankan army's morale was in shreds.
Tamils
constitute 18 per cent of the Sri Lankan population. The ethnic
divisions in the island are as old as its independence from the
British over 50 years ago, with violence erupting time and again.
The year 1983 was a turning point with the emergence of the LTTE
as a major player in the conflict, forcing then President Junius
Jayawardhane to seek US and Israeli help to fight the Tamil
militants.
In
1987, India burned its fingers when it sent its peacekeeping force
(IPKF) to Sri Lanka, following an accord signed by Jayawardhane
and then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Not only did the
Lankan people resent what they perceived as Indian interference,
but the IPKF, as one veteran soldier put it, “was forced to
fight with one hand tied behind its back.” When Ranasinghe
Premadasa was elected president in 1988, he armed and colluded
with the LTTE to force the Indians, already demoralized because
they had no clear mandate and were asked only to disarm the LTTE
and not eliminate it, out of the island. The IPKF's withdrawal in
1990 was a major propaganda weapon for the LTTE leader, Velupillai
Prabhakaran.
Rajiv
Gandhi later paid for the misadventure with his life, when a human
bomb, trained by the LTTE, exploded herself as she was touching
his feet at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, on May 21, 1991. Gandhi,
then out of power, was in the middle of a comeback election
campaign. Outraged Tamil Nadu voters bundled the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (DMK), the regional ruling party, out of power. But the
subject of Eelam, the proposed Tamil homeland, is an emotive one
for these very voters today.
India's
coalition government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, is
generally in favor of carving out a solution within the framework
of “Sri Lanka's unity and territorial integrity.” But the
government is at the mercy of a couple of Tamil parties who are
trying to gain political mileage by declaring their support for
Eelam. In fact, one of their leaders created a furore recently
when, in a reference to the assassination attempt on Sri Lankan
President Chandrika Kumaratunga in which she lost an eye, that she
has to be lucky each time “while we have to be lucky just
once.”
If
political considerations are forcing the Vajpayee government to
tread carefully, there is near-consensus this time round in Sri
Lanka on the question of Indian intervention. Both India and the
United States have formally ruled out support for Eelam. The
Clinton administration has voiced its concern over the escalation
of fighting in Sri Lanka, especially over the fate of civilians
caught in the strife, and is in close consultations with India. It
is also supporting Norway's initiative to make way for dialogue
between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government. Incidentally,
both the US and India have banned the LTTE as a terrorist
organization.
The
question now is, though India is trying to remain aloof from the
conflict, can it afford to do so? Should Jaffna fall to the LTTE,
the Indian navy, which is already on the alert, will have to move
in to evacuate the Lankan troops. Moreover, there is the problem
of refugees. Already there is a steady trickle of them who manage
to get past the Coast Guards. Thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils, who fled the fighting in the
past, are now living in India.
There
is some irony in India's predicament. During LTTE's initial years,
it was India that propped it up, letting Velupillai Prabhakaran
commute freely between India and Sri Lanka. The Indian government
did nothing when Prabhakaran exploited Tamil Nadu politics to suit
his purposes, dislodging the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO)
from DMK's sympathies and making use of then Tamil Nadu Chief
Minister M.G. Ramachandran. Later, Prabhakaran went back on his
acquiescence to the Rajiv Gandhi-Jayawardhane accord.
Even
as Prabhakaran grew increasingly dictatorial in his territory, his
Tigers resorted to extortion to fund the cause. Not only local
civilians, but also Tamils living abroad had to shell out as much
as 10 per cent of their income. Prabhakaran also eliminated all
moderate Tamil leaders of Sri Lanka, like Neelan Tiruchelvam and
Amrithalingam. His hold on the LTTE has been absolute since then.
His cadres are mostly young people, thoroughly indoctrinated, who
worship him. They're prepared to die for him and each has the
notorious cyanide capsule dangling from his or her neck. Who can
forget the BBC documentary that showed a teenager, who lost her
arms in fighting, saying that she is prepared to pull the trigger
of her gun with her teeth for the sake of her "Anna"
(older brother)?
President
Kumaratunga, in an interview with The
Hindu, said: “He would like to be king of Sri Lanka,” and
that it would be worse than having “Hitler and Idi Amin put
together.” She said: “It was an Indian government some time
ago that supported the terrorists on their soil, gave them not
just refuge, but arms and training so that they could come back
and start the war.” She also said that India could still have
some influence on Prabhakaran if it really tried. Prabhakaran,
incidentally, is still a wanted man in India in connection with
the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.
Experts
warn that an LTTE victory could have horrendous implications for
not only Sri Lanka, but also India. They predict a witch-hunt for
Tamils in Jaffna who "collaborated" with the government.
On the flip side of the coin, Tamils who have fled to the south
will be vulnerable to Sinhalese attacks. Should LTTE realize its
objective, wrote veteran journalist Prem Shankar Jha in The
Hindu, Jaffna will be the most ruthlessly militarized society
in the world, with a worldwide system for collecting foreign
exchange to purchase arms. He warned that an end to fighting would
come as an anti-climax to the LTTE cadres who have been bred on
“violence, hate and the cult of self-sacrifice and death.” The
LTTE, to keep them occupied, would encourage them to complete
their quest for a Tamil homeland, namely, the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu itself, whose coast is within easy reach of LTTE's
speedboats. Jha predicted that the LTTE would insinuate itself in
Tamil Nadu's polity and that democratic Tamil parties would
“find themselves caught, like the Akalis (in Punjab) between a
small but extremely violent secessionist movement, and a
reluctantly repressive Indian state.”
The
LTTE is known to have connections with insurgent groups in India
like the People's War Group in Andhra Pradesh, the Nagas and Bodos
in the northeast and the militants in Kashmir and Punjab. An LTTE
victory will be a tremendous morale-booster for these groups which
will step up their militancy. India cannot afford to combat all
these insurgencies simultaneously. The Vajpayee government should
weigh all these considerations and act fast. Jha again: "Help
from India will give Sri Lanka the will to continue fighting. But
only if the goal is to eliminate the Tigers once and for all. This
is not an easy choice. But the days of easy choices and endless
temporizing are over. What India will soon face is a fight for its
own survival."
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