What Next for Srilanka?!...

Feb. 11, 2009 - PRLog -- The fighting nature of the LTTE has three aspects, positional warfare, guerrilla attacks and terrorist acts. Positional or conventional warfare is when trying to acquire or retain territory. What has been going on so far relates to the first aspect, of LTTE defending territory controlled by it. In this, the vastly superior Sri Lankan armed forces have been successful. Tiger territory has continuously shrunk and it is only a matter of time before they lose all they held. The Tigers will probably revert to guerrilla tactics and terrorism. Since they still have a leadership, there is every chance of a low-key insurgency continuing for a while. The LTTE’s future depends on Colombo adopting an effective carrot-and-stick policy — political and economic concessions to win Tamil hearts and minds, and harsh counter-insurgency measures to curtail violence. If Colombo persists with a hawkish approach alone, the Tigers will survive longer. The hands of hardliners will be strengthened after the LTTE’s downfall. Despite announcements by President Mahinda Rajapaksa of a political settlement after the Tigers are vanquished, the substance and unit of envisaged devolution does not seem adequate. There is no effective Tamil representation now. The existing organisations are either pro-government or pro-LTTE. The prospects for Tamils are bleak unless India steps in and presses for a settlement providing  devolution, resettlement and rehabilitation.

-- D B S Jeyaraj is a freelance Canadian journalist, who was born in Sri Lanka’s northern province

The Tigers will continue the war. The whole thing about the Tigers losing the battle is propaganda. The international press has been coerced into reporting the pro-government stance by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Karunanidhi has failed to support the Tamils. Colombo is misleading the country. The 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution is humbug. The Indian government is trying to hoodwink Tamils and the chief minister is party to that. Under the 13th amendment power will continue to reside in a Sinhala dominated Central government, within the framework of an unitary constitution. The 13th amendment is intended to secure a constitutional framework that will enable a Sinhala majority to manage the Tamil people more effectively than before.

-- Vaiko is president of  Marulamarachi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

'Chauvinistic forces will affect Colombo’s response'

The LTTE has surely lost the conventional battle. But it may not be easy for the Sri Lankan army to mop up until the trapped Tamils civilians get out of LTTE control. After the end of the conventional battle, the LTTE could resume guerrilla operations, but the fate of any political process would depend upon Colombo’s response to devolution of power and the possibility of the non-LTTE groups coming together on one platform to fill the vacuum created by its demise. The chances of the LTTE springing back politically before or after the end of President Rajapaksa’s term cannot be ruled out if Colombo remains stuck on the ethnic problem, which is more likely than not. Colombo does not give any sign of being serious about a proper and enduring (acceptable to the Tamils) political solution to the ethnic issue. There are international pressures, particularly from India, to move in that direction. But Sri Lanka’s internal politics and chauvinist political forces and the mindset of the Rajapaksa administration, particularly his brother and the army chief, may keep Colombo from going beyond cosmetic responses. People do become generous in the moment of victory but the Rajapaksa regime is unlikely to have the strength to do so. Failure will prepare fertile ground for the Tamil resistance to emerge again, though its leadership may be different this time. Even the nature of the resistance may not be as violent as the LTTE has been.

-- S D Muni is a foreign affairs expert, defence analyst and a retired professor from Jawahar Lal Nehru University, Delhi


The fight will continue. Even with ten people they will continue to fight. You can never say the Tigers are finished. There is still a good deal of fight left in them. The Sri Lankan government is doing something very wrong. When everyone has preferred a political situation to the Tamil problem, they have  gone for a military solution.

I think that since more countries are becoming aware of the genocides and deaths that are happening there, pressure from the international community is bound to increase on the major actors. Sri Lanka as well as India will be under a great deal of pressure to stop the war. India is the one that is  actually conducting the war. And the pressure is going to increase further, since the UN has also taken an interest in this issue. In fact, Sri Lankan Tamils abroad have been putting pressure on the Indian embassies and diplomats in their country of residence, calling for the war to end.

-- Viduthalai Rajendran,  leader of the Periyar Dravida Kazhagam.

I was in Sri Lanka for 11 months while shooting my film Aaniver, about people affected by the war. From my experience with the Tamils there, I don’t think the struggle for freedom has come to an end. Their mental strength is phenomenal. The struggle is not tied up with one man or one organisation. It is a wrong notion that everything ends with Prabhakaran. As for whether Colombo is serious about peace, well, when I landed, the first thing the driver said to me was “don’t speak in Tamil”. From my experience, being Tamil is illegal. Whatever they say about peace, whenever they kill someone, they label the person a Tiger. And the way we were treated at each check-post, the number of times we were checked, show you how they view Tamils. If they suspect you are a Tamil, you are finished. It takes an ordinary Tamil two days to pass a security check. But the Tamils will come back like a phoenix. If the support from TN had come six months earlier, more lives could have been saved.

-- John Mahendran,  a film maker who made Aaniver (2007) in northern Sri Lanka


After LTTE, we may have a puppet regime, like we have in the east. We can’t be too sure how this thing will play out because the only reports coming in are from the army briefings and the LTTE website. About Colombo’s approach to conflict resolution, Chandrika Kumaratunga’s approach had two components – military and political. But Mahinda Rajapaksa seems to have no substantial political vision. The key question is the type of devolution of power for Sri Lanka. From the kind of discussions that are going on, nobody seems to have learnt from the failures of the 1987 India-Sri Lanka accord. For example, after this accord, the 13th amendment led to a symmetrical devolution of powers when in Sri Lanka they need an asymmetric distribution. Now the real fear is that what will be offered will be less than what was given after the 1987 accord. It is not so encouraging.

-- A S Paneerselvam is a journalist


Assuming that the LTTE is marginalised militarily and politically, the Tamils would have to re-draw their strategies. This question does not arise in the case of Tamils of Indian Origin because they have no links with the LTTE and do not look up to it for leadership. But the LTTE’s downfall will make the position of all Tamils vulnerable. The root cause  of the problem is Sinhalese-Buddhist hegemony. Even Sinhalese Christians feel the pinch now. Step by step, they have abandoned any pretence of accommodating the Tamils. The current thinking is that there is no need for a political solution after the LTTE’s defeat. I hold the LTTE, its ally the Tamil National Alliance, and India responsible for the Tamil plight. It was, after all, India that trained and armed the LTTE and other militant groups in the first place in the mid-1980s in order to serve its own geopolitical interests.

-- Mano Ganeshan  is leader of the Democratic Peoples Party , a party of Indian origin Tamils

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