In his annual Heroes? Day address on November 27, 2008, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Velupillai Prabhakaran declared that the Sri Lankan government was living in a ?dreamland? if it believed it could military defeat his organisation. As he delivered the gutsy speech, a nightmarish scenario was unfolding for him: the LTTE was fast being turfed out of areas it controlled in the Northern Province. It was driven out of its former stronghold of Eastern Province in the year before. Now, the Sri Lankan security forces were at the gates of Kilinochchi, the Tigers? political headquarters. Kilinochchi fell in January.
What?s remarkable about the LTTE leader?s dark prophecy is the astonishing speed with which it came true. On May 18, a day after the LTTE conceded that its struggle for an independent homeland has reached a ?bitter end?, Sri Lanka delivered the final blow. The state security forces killed Prabhakaran along with its other top leaders, including his son Charles Anthony, and recaptured of the last patch of land in LTTE hands in the Mullaitivu district. Though the pro-rebel website, Tamilnet.com, disputes Prabhakaran?s death, it has admitted the death of other top-tier leaders of the outfit in what it terms ?treachery?.
The air in Colombo past week was unmistakably triumphalist. President Mahinda Rajapaksa celebrated the victory cutting a cake at the presidential palace. A national holiday was announced on May 20. ?Prabhakaran?s dream of and violent campaign for Tamil Eelam… has been shattered with absolutely no hope of revival,? the government-run Daily News editorialised on May 19. ?The Eelam project is dead?, exulted The Island, an independent daily.
No doubt, the downfall of the Tigers needs no mourning. As a ruthless militant organisation, the LTTE used terrorism, intimidation, forcible recruitment, child soldiers, human shields and assassination of political opponents as standard procedures of warfare. Prabhakaran represented the folly that ended with his and his organisation?s undoing. He doctrinaire opposition to any solution short of a separate homeland called Eelam bedevilled two serious international mediation efforts and three major ceasefires. He used the ceasefires to regroup and rearm the LTTE into a formidable military force. It had long before usurped the ?sole representative of the Tamil people? mantle after murdering or squelching moderate voices in the community. It gave the Tigers sympathy and financial leverage abroad; it was also an excuse tailor-made to withdraw from every negotiation and ceasefire.
Yet, there is a sense of disquiet in the Sri Lankan Tamil community and abroad about the government?s victory. Does that mean that peace is assured? Is it simply the close of one chapter in the long-running Sinhala-Tamil discord that ended with the defeat of the LTTE as a conventional military force? Will the victory be taken to mean as a victory for Sinhala chauvinism that seeks to exclude the Tamils from the national political process or as a victory for national reconciliation? Has the demand for a separate Tamil homeland disappeared with defeat of the Tigers?
The brutal manner in which the Sri Lankan state conducted the war has convinced many that the homeland issue is far from over. Though the government?s decision to bar all independent aid workers and journalists from the war zone had prevented the full picture emerging, the fact that it was fighting an enemy as vicious as the LTTE don?t excuse it for the extraordinary levels of violence allegedly committed by the state. The government had also put a cordon sanitaire around camps that house Tamil civilians displaced from the ?liberated areas?. Satellite images clearly indicate war crimes and violations of international standards for internally displaced people on an outrageous scale, a concern also echoed by the UN Secretary-General on May 23.
The history of Sri Lanka bears out that the raison d??tre of Tamil extremism has always been Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism. From the Ceylon Citizenship Act at the time of independence in 1948 to the Sinhala Only Act language policy in 1956, it was a period of frayed nation-building. In 1958, when extreme sections of the Buddhist clergy forced the then Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike to abrogate his compromise pact with Tamil leader SJV Chelvanayagam, the call for a separate state was heard for the first time in mainstream Tamil political circles. The tipping point occurred with the pogrom in July 1983 when Sinhala vigilante groups went on the rampage in the name of jaathi-aalaya (love of race)?the episode morphed the ?Eelam? call to a savage militant struggle.
Since 1983, LTTE fancied itself as custodian of Tamil interests by sidelining moderate parties like the TULF. Yet, the elimination of the LTTE from the scene has created a big void in Sri Lanka?s Tamil minority population. Who will fill the void will depend on how the Sri Lankan government?and by extension the Sinhala community?accommodates the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil community through real devolution of power, as stressed by India. Judging from the conduct of the war by the Sri Lankan state, the omens are not very encouraging. And also, the cumulative evidence of forced disappearances or ?white van abductions? in the ?liberated? Eastern Province speaks loudly against it; so do killings of outspoken critics of the government like newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.
What the world knows, and what President Rajapaksa must take to heart, is that nearly all Tamils loathed and feared the LTTE. But no Sri Lankan strategy can defeat the militant ideology of Eelam unless the state becomes the protector of the Tamil community. War and politics make or break nations. Winston Churchill?s words, magnanimity in victory, have never been so important in Sri Lanka?s history.
?rajiv.jayaram@expressindia.com