Prabhakaran’s Eastern Easter Offensive

Dayan Jayatilleka

"Regaining Sri Lanka, Losing Election!" How’s that as an epitaph for the Wickremesinghe administration? What the electorate rejected was the kind of society that it saw coming into shape under this UNP; the processes it felt were underway and had to be checked; the loss of a Sri Lanka in which the majority of people had any place; a disempowerment and disenfranchisement - nationally and territorially to the Tigers, socioeconomically to the super rich. It was a backlash against a sell-out on many fronts, a tearing up of the Social Contract and a threat to both identity and economic existence. It was a manifestation of profound alienation.

President Premadasa had a formula, the 3 Cs, which stood for Consultation-Compromise-Consensus. Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe followed a formula of 2 Cs: Cowardice and Cretinism. Cowardice towards the Tigers: as Barbara Crossette observed in her interview given to the enterprising reporter, Bandula Jayasekara, he failed to leverage 9/11 (and I might add, his special relationship with the US) to contain Prabhakaran. Cretinism towards the electorate, which has a Sinhala (and underprivileged) majority: after his speech to the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC, its Chairman, ex-Congressman Lee Hamilton, a veteran politician, told Prime Minister Wickremesinghe rather quizzically (and on camera) that in the USA that kind of stand on terrorism would get a politician thrown out!

Even in 2001 the anti UNP vote in the South exceeded the UNP vote, while the JRJ Constitution permitted the President to turf it out in a year. The Sunday Leader scooped the President’s game plan aimed precisely at that. Basic intelligence warranted a strategy of cooptation or non-confrontation with the latently powerful Executive — instead of which the UNP attempted the 19th amendment. It dictated tactical co-operation when she made the offer of a new architecture of cohabitation, however insincerely, in December 2003 — instead of which we had until far too late in the day, a display of peevish arrogance. It required an economic policy which expanded or at least did not shrink the UNP’s support base — in place of which school uniforms which were given free in wartime were reduced in numbers in peacetime, and even the last Budget slashed the votes for education and higher education by almost 50%! It necessitated the protection of the UNP’s traditional multi-religious support base — instead of which the anti-conversion Bill (the "panatha" as Christians called it) drove the Catholic vote towards the UPFA, as Dudley Senanayake’s abolition of the Sunday holiday shifted the Catholics to the UF in 1970.

The UNP’s election campaign was a disaster, from Mr. Wickremesinghe’s canvassing for federalism on Southern platforms (he should know that even the ANC dropped the F word while implementing much of the substance), to a long TV advert on the UNP’s peace achievement, which featured a white woman kissing a little Sri Lankan boy. There is no evidence of any change in the UNP after the resounding defeat. Thus it will crash and burn at the PC polls in May.

Now, onto far more serious matters. The Sri Lankan Armed Forces must urgently yet carefully study Mr. Prabhakaran’s dramatic military offensive in the East, because it provides a model of his tactics of surprise, speed and brilliantly creative manoeuvre. It is a precursor of the type of war that he will wage someday against the armed forces of the Sri Lankan state. From Karuna’s interviews we know three things: (i) Prabhakaran brought in 11 shipments of arms during the ceasefire, as preparation for war (not defence). (ii) He is committed to Tamil Eelam through war, not to federalism through negotiations, and was unhappy with Oslo. (iii) He was preparing for war if the " wrong person" won the elections (that’s from Karuna’s interview to Frances Harrison of the BBC).

Luckily for the democratic State, Karuna remains alive and may be an invaluable military and political asset over the long term, enabling us to (at least) rebuild the damage done to our covert operations capacity by Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. However, Mr. Prabhakaran is now bigger than he ever was. He is The Man. He has bested his best known military commander on the latter’s home turf, surprising him and incurring minimal losses. He has homogenised the TNA and militarily reunified the Tamil homeland (though not perhaps in the hearts of its people). He now dominates to an unprecedented degree, the Tamil politico-military space, Tamil collective existence and political representation.

Certainly he had a factor going for him in his superbly choreographed Eastern offensive that he will not in any future confrontation with the Sri Lankan Armed Forces: the psychological confusion that caused Karuna’s forces to melt away or be drawn towards the mainline LTTE formations as to a magnet. However the Lankan forces have been weakened too, first by Ranil and then by Chandrika. The electorate rightly never forgave Ranil for the Millennium City affair, which best exemplified his despicable collaborationism. President Kumaratunga capped his weakening of the armed forces when she took over the defence portfolio (in itself an excellent move) on November 4th. One of her first acts was to remove Gen. Sarath Fonseka from Jaffna (which incidentally is the precise point I decided to take my political distance from her once again). The JVP which has indicated in writing, its displeasure at the appointment of Mahinda Rajapakse as PM, did not see fit, in its patriotic zeal, to protest the removal of our most respected and experienced combat general from that most vital frontline posting! Nor has the JHU made his reinstatement in Jaffna a condition for their support in parliament!

As the Eastern campaign – the Ampara hook, surprising Karuna in his traditional homeland of which he knows every inch - shows, Prabhakaran has (as I have long suspected), honed his tactics and fighting force to something approximating an Israeli level of deadly prowess. I refer to the Israel of ’48, ’56, ’67 and ’73, not the later messy wars. Only a joint and adequate Indo-Lankan response can rollback a Tiger offensive, but the long awaited Indo-Lanka defence pact is not a NATO/Warsaw Pact type of mutual defence agreement, only a far more porous, lightweight, minimalist one, woefully inadequate to deal with the threat on the horizon.

Mr. Prabhakaran is likely to find his window of politico-diplomatic opportunity opened by President Kumaratunga, with the incoming change of Constitution. While the criticisms made so brilliantly by Dr. Nihal Jayawickrema and Prof. Suri Ratnapala shed light on why that constitution will lack legitimacy (and this will be a bonus for Prabhakaran) that is not its most dangerous aspect. The electoral and strategic picture after the Easter campaign is of an invisible Berlin Wall. The South and the Northeast, the bulk of the Sinhalese and the Tamils, have voted in diametrically opposite directions. It is similar to, but even worse than 1977. Then too Mr Amirthalingam’s campaign on the basis of the ’76 Vadukkodai resolution for Tamil Eelam didn’t really obtain a mandate in the East. That didn’t stop the polarisation and the spiral into protracted deadly conflict. It is worse today because the gap between the (Tiger–controlled) TNA and the UPFA Govt is far wider than that between the TULF and the UNP in 1977. At the time, Messrs Thondaman, AJ Wilson and Neelan Tiruchelvam acted as connecting links at least for a few years. The picture today is of West and East Pakistan after the 1970 election and Bhutto’s populist–ultranationalist rhetoric.

The effort to overthrow the existing Constitution and install a new one will bring the lava bubbling to the surface. The TNA will want a nominally federal but actually confederal system: the ISGA. The UPFA will be unable to respond in the most sensible way possible, which is "Oslo and no further", i.e. federalism and no more. This is because it is in the thrall of the JVP and reliant on the JHU, which are both hawkish to the point of a fundamentalist fanaticism of the issue of ethnic (Tamil and/or Muslim) autonomy. It is not only federalism but also any kind of autonomy/ devolution even of a semi-federal or non-federal variety that they oppose.

Degree makes the difference: quantity turns into quality. For instance, what is wrong is not the open economy, but neo-liberalism. Similarly, Chandrika was not wrong to form an alliance with the JVP, just as Ranil was not wrong to negotiate with the Tigers, but Chandrika was grievously wrong to cave in and give the JVP the golden share that she did, just as Ranil was criminally wrong in appeasing and colluding with the LTTE, turning the UNP into virtually a solidarity outfit or front organisation of it. The JVP’s preference votes/seats expanded exponentially not least because the state media gave them a high profile, thereby giving the JVP a piggy back ride on the SLFP vote base and causing SLFP preferences to go JVP-wards. Now the JVP is positioning itself to make off with the SLFP’s traditional support base among the Sinhala peasantry (and the Church’s base among the seafaring community), while making inroads into or challenging the decision making power of the Presidency itself (e.g. the decision to appoint Mahinda Rajapakse as PM). Mahinda’s high preference vote in the JVP stronghold of Hambantota, where he came in first, in contrast to Anura Bandaranaike’s besting by Vijitha Herath in the Bandaranaike’s pocket borough of Gampaha, shows that the SLFP voters do not necessarily value their candidates who appease the JVP over those who stand firmly for the SLFP’s distinct identity (as Mahinda does).

It is when Sri Lanka moves back to a system that is weighted against the minorities and in favour of the ethno-religious majority (abolition of PR, restoration of the first past the post system, minimal devolution), or when the issue of devolution proves intractable and lends itself to protracted deadlock, that Mr Prabhakaran will make, through the TNA, his case to the world. The Sinhalese (State and/or people) are unwilling or unable to grant internal self-determination; therefore external self-determination becomes necessary and inevitable. The Sinhala polity would have proved his case for him. India will vacillate, finding it politically problematic (Tamilnadu, but not only) to support a Sinhala Govt that has not included devolution to the Tamil areas in its new Constitutional order. It may be militarily unwilling to get involved to the degree necessary to bail us out, and diplomatically unsure of what its ally the USA feels on the subject (and whether that matters). While the factions compose, recompose and struggle and the debates play themselves out in the Indian system, Prabhakaran’s blitzkrieg would have achieved its objectives.

When Prabhakaran cuts loose, the UNP will smirk and rub its hands in glee – but the electorate will penalise it still further for any defeat at the Tigers’ hands. The SLFP will have proved itself ineffectual. Only the JVP, the most serious and purposive formation on the island outside of the Tigers, will continue to thrive, on wounded national pride. The island of Sri Lanka will be divided between the Tigers in the Northeast and the JVP in the South.