TAMIL NATIONAL FORUM
Selected Writings -
Fr.
Chandiravarman Sinnathurai
Half-empty or Half-full glass:
it boils down to how you view things
[This piece is humbly dedicated to the
memory of a true hero of Eelam Tamils,
Mr V Vigneswaran – a nirāyuta-pāni; assassinated on
the 8th April ’06 in Trincomalee by racist cowards. Mr
Vigneswaran lived and died for the
idea of
Tamil Eelam. May his courageous spirit live
forever!]
15 April 2006
 "...In
the end, the penny begins to drop. Everything boils down to ...finance,
trade and economy... Plato once said
war exists
and will always exist because it comes from human passions. He further
added that it belongs to...
our need to assert and exert dominance or supremacy... The acceptable
‘sophisticated trend’ however, is to act
locally on readiness for war but to think globally of peace. One’s
talk is not expected to match one’s walk. Weird that! It is said
that diplomatic ‘sophistication’ makes one to enter into peace agreements
that often lack clarity, suffer from ambiguity, and permit contradictory
interpretations. In all of these “Idiyappa Cikkal” [problematic as
spaghetti, like string hoppers] the word PEACE has become the most
politicised and pilloried. It seems one has to run with the trend of
multi-layered talks and
peace negotiations if one’s aim is to win
the desired goal. In this round-about game of raja-tantrum however,
one’s intentions can be diametrically opposite to what you might be willing
to say openly...."
Half-empty or half-full glass: It boils down to how you view things. On the
bright side, in spite of looming war clouds, Tamil Eelam is an inevitable
reality.
The SLG (Sri Lanka Government), the US and the EU are grudging to recognise the
reality openly. In the intervening time of course, they would do all that is in
their power to tighten the screws up. The whole idea is to starve the Tamil
Resistance movement of its oxygen. Among other covert operations monitoring and
blocking the flow of finances including shipments of defence equipments and
hindering information on the one hand and on the other disseminating
disinformation in order to encourage Tamil quisling armed factions, LTTE
renegade Karuna faction in particular to have a free-hand in forming themselves
as “credible” alternative voices. In short this is a classic divide and rule.
It’s a ‘diamond cut diamond’ policy.
Rumour has it that renegade Karuna is being tutored in Chennai by some
‘veterans’ as to how to win hearts and minds in the Eastern province. Such
hysteria might make Karuna the prime candidate for the post of global village
idiot. The current climate nevertheless seems best suited for double-crossers
and turncoats!
The long-term working hypothesis of the West however, is to intimidate the LTTE
as a proscribed terror group and to shun it from all international forums. This
proscribed “Pariah status” coupled with travel ban slapped on its forehead is
expected to eventually bring the LTTE to their knees — at least that’s the
theory. The SLG and the US in particular is said to have instinctively agreed,
solely based on geo-political greed, to gradually build psychological pressure
on the Tamils to a breaking point. The rationale runs that once they feel
cornered the Tamils might be urged to ask: Is autonomous Tamil Eelam really an
economic viability? The SLG with the help of the West would shake heaven and
earth in order for the Tamils to arrive at a negative conclusion. All these seem
to be purely academic. Indeed it sounds far fetched. There is every possibility
for these miscalculated moves turning into a
monstrum-horrendum.
What the West would like to ideally see, quite frankly, is a cash-strapped De
facto Eelam state. To point to a current example. Even though Hamas has won a
landslide electoral victory -- most unexpectedly through democratic means, the
West has got the manipulative clout because it has got the purse strings! It is
safer to keep things on the leech.
There is always political leverage in the carrot-and-stick game. In this policy
formation there still lays a perplexing question. Can’t the Arab petro-dollars
fund the Palestine “state”? Why should the Palestinians rely on Western
hand-outs while the Arab Petro-dollars are buying out multi-billions worth of
prime real estates, and top niche businesses (in most cases status-quo
institutions) in the Western capitals? Cash seems to flow in one direction only
— not to mention the Swiss bank accounts. The answer perhaps is located some
where within the <inverted commas>.
The two-state solution and the talks of road-map to peace
with the assistance of Norway have managed only to miss theoretical
bulls-eye of conflict resolution.
By applying the Palestinian experience to the
De facto Tamil
State one finds that there is juxtaposed a twin factor
1) Political independence
2) Economic independence or inter-dependence.
The achievement of the first depends, in our reckoning on the
battle for Trinco. Secondly, a complex hard question has to be faced: Can the
Eelam Central financial institution fund its own state public services such as
hospitals, transport – land, sea and air; banks, schools, universities, security
etcetera?
In order to yield a realistic response to the second question, at some opportune
moment the newly established Eelam state will require finding its way into the
international monetary system. Of course Tamil Eelam is not intending to be a
reclusive state in a globalised economy. The answer to this question very much
relies on the next strategic question. In the event of such an independence and
economic boom how would it affect the geo-political interests of the US and the
balance of power in the region? The fundamental question however is tucked away
in multi layered existential reality – national, international including
geo-political interests.
In the end, the penny begins to drop. Everything boils down to money, money,
money. Finance, trade and economy. It is tragic, the West, US in particular has
become morally delinquent owing to their coldly calculated self-interests.
Plato once said war exists and will always exist because it comes from human
passions. He further added that it belongs to human nature, to our arrogance and
anger, our need to assert and exert dominance or supremacy. In light of Plato’s
word one need to think of the world at large, while narrowing it down to SLG and
the US and the EU. The acceptable ‘sophisticated trend’ however, is to act
locally on readiness for war but to think globally of peace. One’s talk is not
expected to match one’s walk. Weird that!
It is said that diplomatic ‘sophistication’ makes one to enter into peace
agreements that often lack clarity, suffer from ambiguity, and permit
contradictory interpretations.
In all of these “Idiyappa Cikkal” [problematic as spaghetti like string hoppers]
the word PEACE has become the most politicised and pilloried. It seems one has
to run with the trend of multi-layered talks and peace negotiations if one’s aim
is to win the desired goal. In this round-about game of raja-tantrum however,
one’s intentions can be diametrically opposite to what you might be willing to
say openly. This shows what an illusive, fragile and a dangerous planet we
inhabit! The value for the life of a human being has diminished to the extent
that people become expendable commodities. Ideologies of greed and profit over
people have often over taken human kind.
In the current climate of hostilities, civilian murders and race riots
especially in Trincomalee, reveal the true intentions of the SLG. It is
preparing and provoking the battle for Trinco. The US and the UK fully
understand the strategic importance
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Sinnathurai07.htm> of this battle. The
Trinco airport (and airbase) has always been on the strategic international code
map for airports since colonial days even before Colombo ever became an
international airport! [Not forgetting the sea port].
Should the battle for Trinco is lost by Colombo then eventually the so-called
peace negotiations will have to be transformed into amicable partition talks. We
can ‘lolly pop’ as much as we like. Evidence at hand regarding strengths and
weaknesses of both sides suggests that this could very well be the ground
reality.
In the mean time SLG in collaboration with the US will try its best to short
circuit the Eelam project. The primary objective however, would be to coerce the
Tamils to settle for the stars instead of the “moon”.
So just before that final scenario the ‘peace bandwagon’ has to be on the road
until “the goin’ gets tough because the tough gets goin’”. Nonetheless the West
would want one thing to be clarified. What sort of independence are we talking
about?
There can of course develop an interesting set of scenarios. If we are thinking
hypothetically of the morning after the “post decisive battle for Trinco”, then
we are seriously talking in the ball park of the not too impossible event of
partition. At this stage SLG might be swiftly changing gears in terms of
possibly linking its direction towards Pakistan with its cunning talk of
“protecting the interests of Moslems”. This is a ploy to distract and destroy
the people in the East Eelam and to inflame the Islamic terrorism! For economic
geo-political reasons there are strong signals already in the woodworks of SLG
re-aligning itself with China.
Now where would this changing scenario place the young Eelam State in the
international scene?
Where would the Tamils look up for aid and alliance in the process of further
state formation, development and fortification? Where will it pledge its
allegiance? The considered response to these questions lays in the prudence on
the part of the Western nations - US and its allies. Ah, but until ‘the
rubber hits the road’ the pragmatic unanswered question remains: Who will
hold the purse strings?
In the final analysis: Profit making is the essence of democracy. We stand to
sing from the same hymn sheet:
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day.
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way,
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!
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