BETA

This piece of blog is not going to deal with the arrest of Karuna by the UK authorities and possible prosecution against him for the crimes he committed in Tamileelam. There is an overwhelming desire from Tamils all over the world to see Karuna being prosecuted by the UK government for his crimes. According to well informed Tamil sources in UK, a legal advice had been sought from eminent barristers and they have opined that there is a possibility this prosecution trial can bring unwanted bad publicity to the Tamileelam struggle. The Human rights watch and Amnesty international are pressing hard to prosecute him and eventually prosecution can become real, so we have to wait and see the unfolding events.

Back to my topic, I have special interest in the topics of Counterinsurgency (CI), psychological operations (PSYOPS) and Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When I was doing a background reading on these topics I came across a comment of veteran journalist Taraki Sivaram on the state of counter insurgency strategy by the successive Sri Lankan governments. He mentioned about his experience in US with an expert on counter insurgency; that officer said that he could not understand why the Sri Lankan government is having trouble in floating an anti LTTE paramilitary organisation in its fight against LTTE and Sivaram replied to him that Sri Lankan situation is very unique in this nature. He further elaborated that in Sri Lankan situation, who ever being propped by the authorities will face a credibility problem because those puppets won’t be able to convince the Tamil people that there is an alternative solution to this ethnic problem; he succinctly said ‘the unitary constitution of Sri Lanka leaves no room for any kind of alternative solution to this ethnic question’ also he mentioned that Eelam Tamils are ‘different kettle of fish’ and difficult to out manoeuvre!!
Strangely he made this comment before the infamous Karuna rebellion.

Since Karuna’s betrayal to the Tamileelam cause; there was a renewed hope amongst the intelligence communities, counter insurgency experts and politicians to form a grand alliance under the leadership of Karuna to challenge the Liberation Tigers politically and militarily. Because they believed Karuna was part of the Liberation Tigers for nearly two decades and one of the senior commanders of the organisation so he knows very well how to deal with Mr Pirapaharan and Liberation Tigers. There were frenzied activities in Colombo, Chennai, New Delhi and in many western capitals to coordinate the anti Tiger elements to work together and probably under a single unified command. That’s how London based Kovil Melam (Temple Drum) Krishnan got involved with Karuna and he was instrumental in liaising with RAW to bring the ENDLF cadres from Tamilnadu refugee camps to jungles of Welikanda. Krishnan is a freelance intelligence operative working for Sri Lankan and Indian intelligence agencies. Simply they (Karuna faction and ENDLF) could not work together and eventually that grand project was dropped by the authorities due to a daring assault on camps of TMVP/ENDLF cadres in the jungles of Welikanda by Liberation Tigers and the disappearance of Rangaiya, senior ENDLF operative.

By this time political landscape in the south had undergone dramatic changes; the Rajapaksa junta came into power with a mandate of vowing to protect the unitary nature of the constitution and for an ‘honourable’ peace with Tamils. The hawkish defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa made a paradigm shift in the policy of counter insurgency strategy practised by the successive governments so far. He sanctioned some of the worst CI practices which were used in other parts of the world (US operations in Latin America and currently anti Terror operations) by US and its allies to be used against Liberation Tigers.

To be continued

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