BETA

The Liberation Tigers have been loosing territories since Mavilaru incident in June 2006 and now they have completely lost the Southern region of Tamileelam. The Sri Lankan forces are in a state of high morale with unparalleled resources and now ready to take on Vanni. The hawkish Sri Lankan ambassador Dayan Jayathilaka recently declared year 2008 as the ‘year of victory’. The following excerpts are from his undigested socialist ‘regurgitations’.

“The war can be won. We are at a rare moment in our country's history in which we enjoy a favourable confluence of factors: a President (and Defence Secretary) with political will and determination; an experienced and respected military leadership; massive popular support; high military morale; increased recruitment; high performance on the part of all three armed services….after a quarter century of military conflict, the Sri Lankan people are not about to throw in the towel and bring the boys back home, for the simple reason that the boys are fighting precisely for their home, and therefore a massive 84 % percent of a huge 75% of the island's people, a massive majority of the majority, support the President's war effort. So too does a significant (under the circumstances) segment (20%) of the main Tamil minority. The war is now a People's War”

In the backdrop of a series of battle field reversals, ‘international crack down’ and loss of few high value human resources (etc.Thamilselvan and Charles) for Liberation Tigers, Is Dayan’s assertion going to prevail?

My intention is not to construct any particular school of thought rather I would prefer to ‘discuss’ the current ‘impasse’ in the battle fields of Mannar, Vavuniya, Manalaru and Northern sectors and subsequent low morale of our expatriate ‘Udan pirappukkal’.

The reality of achieving the Tamileelam statehood

The process of making of ‘Tamileelam state’ can be categorised into two major processes.

 Physical liberation of Tamil homeland from Sinhala security forces

 International recognition of the Tamileelam sovereignty

So in order to attain the statehood, there should be a ‘favourable confluence’ of many factors; some of them including the crucial international recognition are beyond our control. The process of physical liberation of the Tamil homeland is the only one Tamils can execute with a relatively free hand and rest of process are beyond the control of Tamil nation. The Liberation Tigers are discharging their duty as freedom fighters; they are fighting to liberate the Tamil homeland physically. One cannot delay the freedom struggle until the ‘International community’ turns favourably toward secessionism. We have to do our duty whether IC favours or not.
On the other hand in international politics only driving force behind the diplomatic activities is the ‘national interest’ of respective countries. Just because Tamils are being killed every day by the oppressive Sinhala government doesn’t mean international community will come to our help.

As an oppressed nation we should continue the struggle to achieve the freedom and we should be able to ‘sell’ the concept of Tamileelam state to the IC and convince them that the new state will be a responsible member in future world affairs and sensitive to the current international politics based on globalisation and trade. The rest is beyond our control and we can hope for the best. We have additional ‘complication’ that is India, convincing our giant neighbour is some thing a ‘Himalayan task’.

The problem is most of our people believe that Liberation Tigers will do a last minute ‘magic’/’wonder’ and turn the IC opinion towards Tamileelam. Even though many senior leaders of the Liberation Tigers never touched this topic of ‘international recognition’; a former leader of the Liberation Tigers - political division and presently the head of War history division Mr.Yogi recently talked rather philosophically about this issue in ‘Nilavaram’, the flagship political discussion programme of the NTT. He said Liberation Tigers and Mr Pirapaharan are doing their duty that is fighting to liberate the homeland and on the other hand Liberation Tigers won’t fight the struggle in the assumption of some thing will happen favourably from IC. He further said they never started the war with Indians with a hope of getting the support of Sri Lankan government; he succinctly said ‘we have to do our duty and hoping for best; when we are in trouble an unexpected door will open and we have to use that’.

In essence ‘international recognition’ is largely beyond our control. That means we have to prepare ourselves to face a hostile India and IC by the time we have got rid off the Sinhala forces from our homeland. In other words; are we ready to run a de facto state for a considerable period? (Contrary to the common perception, the current ‘state in waiting’ Tamileelam apparatus cannot be claimed as a completely independent structure from the Sri Lankan economy) In order to sustain a free nation; we should be able to have a viable economy with a secured and uninterrupted supplies via sea and air route, which should be completely independent from Sri Lanka. The capital infusion by the Tamil expatriates will be more than enough for the nation building process. But we cannot sustain the nation for long without international support, at least we should aim for the status of Taiwan, IC might expect the Tamileelam to fulfil certain benchmarks before it considering for the recognition of statehood. Those benchmarks can be broadly categorised as good governance, democracy, human rights, press freedom, free market and compliance with international law.

As I discussed above, ‘international factor’ is very unpredictable and depends on the international political climate of that time. So we cannot assume that things will happen favourably but we can hope for a better deal if we ‘behave’ properly.

We will look into the liberation aspect of the Tamileelam formation, which is war.

To be continued

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