Shadow War in Sri Lanka:
The Paramilitary Role
R.Cholan, USA
13 December 2005
"While vocalizing support for the peace
process (for international consumption), Sinhala leaders have done little to
actually advance it. After the
CFA was signed
(for which Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe
was amply criticized), nothing was done to promote the peace. There was
no public education on the benefits of a peaceful resolution. After
agreeing to a Sub-Committee on
Immediate Humanitarian and Rehabilitation Needs (SIHRN) nothing was done
to implement it. After agreeing to explore federalism as a possible
solution, nothing was done to promote this concept among the Sinhala masses.
In fact, what was done is the exact opposite.
Massive demonstrations against the Norwegian mediators, vigorous
propaganda against federalism, take-over of key ministries in the peace
process by the President on the pretext of �national security�, and so on
and so forth.It is in this milieu that the existence of the so called
paramilitaries, or the �other groups� must be viewed and understood. If
anyone believes that these paramilitaries are functioning without the
support of the Sri Lanka government and the Sri Lanka armed forces, they are
indeed hallucinating..."
�The Tamil paramilitary groups shall be disarmed by the GOSL by D-day + 30 at
the latest...
- Section 1.8 of the of the
Ceasefire Agreement [22 Feb 2002] In the tit-for-tat violence
and killings of the last several months in the northeast Sri Lanka, the only
blameless parties are the government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Sri Lankan
armed forces (SLA). It is a clash between the LTTE and the �other� Tamil groups,
and the GOSL and the SLA have nothing to do with it.
At least, this is the message one gets reading the English language media in Sri
Lanka. Reams of newspaper are wasted propagating this myth, and the English
educated Sinhala elite are lapping it all up, with not a murmur of critical
response. If this is what the Sinhala elite are doing, imagine what the Sinhala
rural folks, reading their monolingual newspapers, must believe.
The �other� Tamil groups
Who are these �other� Tamil groups? Who finances them? Who arms them? Who
provides them sanctuary?
�Oh, don�t you know? There is a large anti-LTTE Tamil constituency out there and
they support these groups�, is the Sinhala response. Wishful thinking, with
absolutely no grounds for this assertion, but that doesn�t dissuade them from
making the claim.
Take for example the case of Karuna Amman, the discredited former LTTE cadre,
who is being lionized by the Colombo media as the commander of the eastern
�faction� of the LTTE. As
Sachi Sri Kantha has shown in a recent article, Karuna has no clout even in
his own electorate of Kalkudah, let alone the entire east he claims to dominate.
Sri Kantha showed, with statistics from the 2005-Election, that Karuna could
neither get people in Kalkudah to reject the LTTE/TNA advice on the election,
nor could he influence those who went to the polls to vote for the candidate he
recommended. His influence in his own electorate is zip, zero. It is no wonder
that he doesn�t even live there anymore.
Douglas Devananda�s connection to the people of Jaffna, the district he
purportedly represents in the parliament, is even more dismal. Devananda is the
leader of the paramilitary group EPDP. His hideout in Colombo was recently
described by Philip Gourevitch (Tides
of War-After the tsunami, the fighting continues; The New Yorker; August 8, 2005):
�� I had an appointment to visit the Minister of Hindu
Religious Affairs, Douglas Devananda, at his home office, a fortified
compound on a quiet residential byway in central Colombo. The entry to the
street was guarded by soldiers, who tugged aside a metal barricade to let me
pass through an elaborate roadblock� His home was hidden behind high walls
posted with watchtowers and an iron gate piled high with sandbags and
blockaded by oil drums filled with concrete. As I approached on foot, a
narrow shutter slid open in the gate, and two eyes and a nose appeared in
the window. �American?� a voice asked, and I was admitted...
�half dozen fidgety young men wearing submachine guns were huddled in the
entryway. One led me through a labyrinth of short hallways that switched
this way and that at ninety-degree angles. There were more men with guns at
every corner. Outside, rain was threatening, and the air in Devananda�s den
was heavy with dampness. As we progressed, the smell of mildew grew
stronger, and mold stains claimed ever larger patches of wall. We passed a
screened-off antechamber filled with parakeets, an atrium with a blue-tiled
carp pond, and a dim room filled with tropical vegetation, where a
chattering monkey sat on a rock clutching a gnawed . Finally, we
reached a door studded with deadbolts, which clicked open by remote control
from within, and there, at the back of a long, wide, windowless room,
cluttered with furniture and stacked with papers, Devananda sat behind a
desk��
And yet, the Sinhala journalists and analysts want us to believe
that these men-in-hiding are real �leaders�, who command the adoration of the
Tamil people, and that their followers live freely among the Tamil people and
fight the LTTE. My question to these journalist hacks is: �what are you smoking
these days?�
For heaven�s sake please, let us all as Sri Lankans, not fool ourselves and at
least agree on this. These men are no leaders and they don�t have a base or a
following. What they have is a bunch of likeminded gangsters, who are in it
together for personal profit and some cheap thrill.
Section 1.8 of the CFA
The one and only reason for the existence and the survival of these armed groups
is the refusal of the GOSL to honor one key clause of the ceasefire agreement
(CFA) of 22 February 2002.
Section
1.8 of the CFA
reads:
The Tamil paramilitary groups shall be disarmed by the GOSL by D-day + 30 at
the latest. The GOSL shall offer to integrate individuals in these units
under the command and disciplinary structure of the GOSL armed forces for
service away from the Northern and Eastern Province. [Emphasis added]
This should have happened by the 24th March 2002. But to this
day, nearly four years later, GOSL not only refuses to comply, but actually
recruits, funds, arms and protects these gangsters. If not for this prop, these
men would have neither the motivation, nor the means and resources, to operate
inside the northeast. These groups are nothing but mercenaries who work for the
money Sri Lanka government doles-out, and for the power and thrill of holding a
gun or a grenade in their youthful, misguided, hands.
Anyone who doubts the SLA involvement should look at the case of the two
paramilitaries, Puhalventhan and Gnanatheepan, who surrendered to the LTTE on
December 6, 2005. The two have said that the Karuna Group to which they belonged
was attached to a Sri Lankan Special Task Force (STF) camp in the area, from
which the group conducted raids on Muslim and Tamil villages. If this is a Tiger
invented story as Sinhalese are wont to believe, why were two sisters of
Puhalventhan,Yogeswary
and Vathany, gunned down just a day after his defection.
Collaborators
The existence of wannabe collaborators in any community is nothing new in human
history. During WW-II, the reputedly united England had its own citizens spying
for the Nazis. The Hindu newspaper group collaborated with the British against
the Indian freedom movement. All nations have had their fair share of turncoats.
It is in fact in the human nature for some individuals to act against their own
communities for selfish reasons in times of turmoil and stress, and especially
when there is a profit to be made.
John Stuart Mill, on �resistance� against governments in
his
treatise on Representative Government (1861), wrote:
�Even
if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for
fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist
alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most
by bidding for the favour of the government against the rest.�
The poverty stricken and ill-educated youth of the northeast,
who were reduced to this state in the first place by decades of discriminatory
policies of the GOSL, are an easy prey.
But for the GOSL to exploit them at this juncture, when there is a peace
initiative in progress, is immoral. It goes against the spirit of the peace
process, unless of course, wrecking the peace process is their ultimate aim.
Actually, Sinhala behavior so far, since the CFA was signed, makes one think
that this may in fact be their goal.
Sinhala Political Action While vocalizing support for the
peace process (for international consumption), Sinhala leaders have done little
to actually advance it. After the
CFA was signed
(for which Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe
was amply criticized), nothing was done to promote the peace. There was no
public education on the benefits of a peaceful resolution. After
agreeing to a Sub-Committee on
Immediate Humanitarian and Rehabilitation Needs (SIHRN) nothing was done to
implement it. After agreeing to explore federalism as a possible solution,
nothing was done to promote this concept among the Sinhala masses.
In fact, what was done is the exact opposite.
Massive demonstrations against the Norwegian mediators, vigorous propaganda
against federalism, take-over of key ministries in the peace process by the
President on the pretext of �national security�, and so on and so forth.
It is in this milieu that the existence of the so called paramilitaries, or the
�other groups� must be viewed and understood. If anyone believes that these
paramilitaries are functioning without the support of the Sri Lanka government
and the Sri Lanka armed forces, they are indeed hallucinating.
The sophomoric thinking in the Sinhala ruling circles seems to be � use the
Tamil paramilitaries to conduct a �shadow-war� and hope like hell that the LTTE
resumes fighting. Like the ignoramus padre Bandaranaike who un-bottled the
racist genie in 1956, for which all Sri Lankans are still paying, these folks
don�t have any idea what they can unleash this time.
If the Sinhala people sincerely desire peace with the Tamils they need to
demonstrate their sincerity. First order of business: tell their government to
call off the paramilitary cur.
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