by Foxwatch
While the pillars of statehood — sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence, national self-respect — crumble by the day, we are being stampeded along the trail to self-destruction by the LTTE and Norway, who now rule our country. Rarely in the field of human conflict could so much harm have been done to so many by so few. In the meantime the helpless citizenry alternates between spells of euphoria, despair, confusion and apathy.

Confusion

Adding to the disorientation is a tangled web of contradictory signals — lip-service to peace instantly nullified by terrorism and criminality on the ground, lies, gobbledygook, bombast and servility. The result, to sanitise a lively phrase, is that we hardly know our bottom from our elbow.

Spin Doctors

All this did not happen by chance. The spin doctors have been at work for months. In a brilliant article entitled "The United State of America Has Gone Mad" on January 15, 2003 in The Times, UK, John le Carre, author of the famed The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, wrote of the skill of the White House spin doctors in transferring public anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein:

"How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election."

Startling Similarities

The parallels with Sri Lanka are startling. Our own hurrah boys, through their own great public relations trick, have succeeded in deflecting public anger from the LTTE terrorists to the patriots who point out the dangers of reckless appeasement. It may even be that a majority of Sri Lankans have been brainwashed into believing that it is the critics of the peace process, and not the LTTE terrorists, who are responsible for the conflict.

Balasingham Rampant

Psychologist-journalist Balasingham is a spin doctor who knows both the Sinhala and the liberal western psyche inside out. He knows the Sinhala laziness to do their homework, their consequent vulnerability to misinformation, their proneness to let their leaders get away with inane quips when questioned on big issues, the ease with which leaders succumb to flattery, and the aptness of the ditty "Sinhalaya modaya." He also knows that the western liberal, with a guilt complex rooted in centuries of colonial exploitation, and anxious to make amends, is a sitting duck for the skilled brainwasher with lurid tales of oppression. Blessed with such fertile soil, Balasingham has blazed a trail for spin doctors everywhere.

Et Tu, Japan

So (see the le Carre quote above) the Sri Lanka public too is being misled, browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The similarity extends to "the carefully orchestrated neurosis" possibly carrying the conspirators into the next election. Balasingham has even succeeded in implanting key misconceptions in the minds of the international community. The latest victim has been Japan’s special peace envoy. To quote TamilNet of January 19, " Yasushi Akashi, Japanese special peace envoy said Saturday that the ...LTTE... participates in the peace talks with dedication, sincerity and with an open heart." Akashi deserves our thanks for dispelling so soon whatever hopes we may have had about Japanese expertise on peace.

The Misconceptions -Eelam

Now to pinpoint the realities and expose some of the myths that are sustaining the peace circus. First, contrary to the spin doctors, the LTTE has not given up its goal of a separate state of Eelam. The misconception arose from seizing on a throwaway line of Balasingham’s at the opening round of peace talks at Sattahip, while ignoring his immediately following remarks. When Prabhakaran later made his annual Heroes Day address on November 27, 2002 he made it quite clear that the LTTE’s goal remained Eelam, saying, "The objective of our struggle is... Tamil homeland, Tamil nationality and Tamil right to self-determination. We have been insisting on these fundamentals from Thimpu to Thailand." This tripod constitutes Eelam.

Evidence that Eelam looms ever larger surfaces every day. The LTTE website EelamNation headlined a report dated January 10 on the second Rose Garden peace talks "Peace Talks between TE and SL." No prizes are offered for saying what TE stands for. TamilNet of January 18 reported: "The Jaffna morning event [the first year anniversary celebrations of Pongu Thamil (Tamil Resurgence) movement] started at...Jaffna University, with...the Jaffna district political head of the...LTTE...hoisting the Thamileelam national flag."

Fools’ Paradise

Much of the euphoria on the state of the peace process is founded on the delusion that the LTTE has forsaken Eelam. The truth is that with all the peace talks and the hoopla the LTTE staunchly maintains its goal of Eelam, while the people of Sri Lanka bask in a fools’ paradise believing they have abandoned it.

No Decommissioning of Arms

Second, the LTTE has not showed the slightest inclination to decommission arms. On the contrary, it has reacted sharply to the reasonable proposals of Major General Sarath Fonseka (see below) on the HSZ, and

Reality check

Balasingham had the effrontery to say on BBC TV on January 8 that the Black Tiger suicide killers "are also bargaining power ..to pressurise government to bring about a settlement.." Evidently the GOSL is negotiating with a gun held to its head, and the wide grins, handshakes and bonhomie are for the cameras only.

High Security Zone Scam

Third, the LTTE pressure on the GOSL to permit resettlement of displaced persons in the High Security Zones (HSZ) has nothing to do with rehabilitation and everything to do with evicting the army from the Jaffna peninsula. The expulsion of the army has been an obsession of Prabhakaran’s all along — naturally, because the army is all that stands between him and Eelam. He was particularly vitriolic in his Heroes Day speech of 1998: "We cannot allow the Sinhala aggressive army to occupy even an inch of our homeland... we cannot permit the footprint of the Sinhala aggressors to remain embedded in our sacred soil." In the 1999 address he said, "By peaceful atmosphere we mean a condition of normalcy characterised by...withdrawal of troops occupying Tamil lands..." In 2000, he said, "...we will not allow our traditional lands to be occupied by alien forces...our liberation movement is determined to liberate Jaffna..."

Insulting the Army

With the direct approach being too much even for the GOSL to swallow, the LTTE adopted a complementary track, devising innocuous-sounding disguises for army withdrawal, such as "relocation" of bases. When this failed to produce results, they hit upon "rehabilitation of displaced civilians" — with which they have struck gold. The trick is to insist that so-called displaced people (more probably LTTE cadres) are settled in the HSZ. Major General Sarath Fonseka’s logical reply was that existing HSZs should remain intact so long as the LTTE retains the firepower to attack key bases, particularly Palaly airport and KKS port, and that any reduction of army strength should be matched by a corresponding reduction in LTTE capability. This seemed to halt the trickery. Incredibly, the GOSL then allowed itself to be outmanoeuvred, and insulted their own army by seeking a second opinion from retired Indian Lieut-General Nambiar, who cannot possibly know half as much about security in the north as Major General Fonseka. The LTTE’s agreement to his engagement, and the remarkable speed with which Nambiar’s appointment was announced, point to a pre-arranged scam. More ominously, it raises questions about a possible change in Indian policy — we must of course take with a pinch of salt India’s statement that the Lieut-General is acting in his private capacity. The highly professional Indian establishment takes a dim view of loose cannons.

Federal Panacea

Fourth, the newest misconception is that the LTTE’s agreeing to consider a federal system is a major breakthrough, and that federalism is the magic potion to end the conflict. The new constitution which will be required to set up a federal system is somewhat underplayed this time around, and the word devolution, once almost Holy Writ, is being shunned. Perhaps the spin doctors have decreed that too much talk of a new constitution and devolution would evoke negative connotations of the rejection of the abortive constitutional draft of 2000, which incorporated extreme devolution to the point of abdication of power. Nor would the spin doctors want to remind the UNP-UNF that the deal they now applaud would be an advanced version of the proposed constitution which they burnt in Parliament in August 2000.

Analysing the Text

Let us check whether there is much to rejoice about in the focus on a federal system. To make a rational assessment, one has to examine the nitty-gritty of the allocation of powers between centre and regions. To enthuse about a federal system in the abstract, without knowing this allocation, is like singing the praises of a bottle of medicine without knowing what it contains. Let us look for pointers in the relevant text of the official Norwegian statement, which reads.

"Responding to a proposal by the leadership of the LTTE, the parties agreed to explore a solution founded on the principle of internal self-determination in areas of historical habitation of the Tamil- speaking peoples, based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka. The parties acknowledged that a solution has to be acceptable to all communities.

Guided by this objective, the parties agreed to initiate discussions on substantive political issues such as, but not limited to:

• Power-sharing between the centre and the region, as well as within the centre

• Geographical region

• Human Rights protection

• Political and administrative mechanism

• Public finance

• Law and order.

Final Act

Several points emerge. The GOSL seems to have accepted two of the Thimpu principles and more — self-determination (forget "internal", which was a Balasingham ploy which the GOSL swallowed) plus not only Tamil but Muslim homelands. The GOSL has also agreed to an overt federal structure (compared to the covert federal system the PA tried to smuggle in by stealth in 2000), thereby going way beyond the constitution which was rejected in 2000.

There is a significant difference compared to the 2000 constitution in the reference to "region" in the singular in the first two bulleted items above. Does this portend a leapfrog over a Union of (admittedly jerry-built) 9 or 10 Regions to a federation of two entities, one the centre and the other the sole "region"? Is this the asymmetric devolution unsuccessfully peddled so far? This would facilitate the next step to confederation, recognition as a nation (another Thimpu demand) and the final act in this Greek tragedy, successful UDI.

Orange Alert

Far from rejoicing, the alarm bells should be ringing. The available indications are that the GOSL has been tricked into a phased acceptance of the Thimpu demands and a new constitution which will provide for just two entities, which will pave the way for a confederation, which will clear the decks for an UDI. Unless this process is thwarted, the LTTE would have their Eelam.

Socialist State of Tamil Eelam

A word on the nature of the proposed state of Eelam. The vision of enormous corporate opportunities in Eelam may be dimmed if the LTTE adheres to the principles spelt out in the Vaddukkodai Resolution. The Resolution states:

"Tamil Eelam shall he a socialist State wherein the exploitation of man by man shall be forbidden, the dignity of labour shall be recognised, the means of production and distribution shall be subject to public ownership and control while permitting private enterprise in these branches within limits prescribed by law, economic development shall be on the basis of socialist planning and there shall be a ceiling on the total wealth that any individual or family may acquire."

How curious that the champions of the open economy and the leaders of the global war on terrorism should be moving heaven and earth to instal the world’s deadliest terrorists in their own socialist state.

Summary

The LTTE remains firmly committed to Eelam. They refuse to consider decommissioning arms, or even disbanding their suicide killers. The LTTE is now spearheading a scam aimed at humiliating the army by evicting it from the north. Asymmetrical devolution, leading to federation, confederation and UDI seems to be in the pipeline. Those are the grim realities concealed by the spin doctors.

Epilogue

Back to the le Carre article, and another comparison between events in the USA and Sri Lanka. He wrote: "The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press." With the obvious substitutions, this could apply to Sri Lanka as well.