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LTTE’s demolition –Rajapakse’s challenges ahead |
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With the Tamil Tigers on the run, their complete elimination from the North of Sri Lanka, where they dominated for over two decadess is only a matter of days. The Sri Lankan forces have captured some 95 per cent of their territory and the LTTE fighters are confined to about a 100 square kilometre coastal belt in Mullaittivu. They have nowhere to escape. Prabhakaran, the elusive LTTE chief, is either hiding or has fled. He is left with limited options of either surrendering, or committing suicide or fleeing, if possible, through one of the super vast boats of the Sea Tigers. But, with the capture of the last remaining Sea Tigers’ base, the option of fleeing is also limited, if he has not escaped already. The leaderless LTTE may either fizzle out as a terrorist group or the committed loyalists may take to guerilla warfare. But, the Tigers’s days as a brutal force to take on the might of their country are just over. Prabhakaran who may be commanding the retreating LTTE cadres, does not seem to realize that the chances of the Tigers staging a spectacular comeback as they did in the 1990s and recaptured Kilinochchi and Mullaitthivu are remote. In the past, many of the conventional fighters of the LTTE came from the Eastern province and many of the terrorists from the Northern province. It is no longer possible for him to get new recruits from the Eastern Province which is already in control of the Government. It has no political future regardless of any vestigial capability it may have for hit-and-run terrorist attacks. The Sri Lankan Prime Minister has offered amnesty to those LTTE fighters who will surrender but this offer is not available to Prabhakaran and the top leadership of the outfit.
The Sri Lankan forces could hasten the completion of their mission but for the 1.5 lakh civilians trapped in the areas controlled by the LTTE whom they are using as a human shield. The international outcry and Indian concern in Tamil Nadu about the fate of Sri Lankan Tamils trapped in the crossfire, has forced the Lankan Army to go slow.
Although President Rajapakse may be upbeat and basking in the glory of military victory over the LTTE, he has more difficult challenges ahead. The military victory is just one step towards freeing the Tamils in the North from the LTTE’s shackles. A more challenging task is to meet their political aspirations, to integrate them in the national mainstream and remove the sense of discrimination they nurse against the Sinhala which was actually the root cause of Prabhakaran and his cohorts to take up arms against the Government. This is possible only if Rajapakse sincerely implements the devolution of powers package which has been in the making for some time. The imbalance was set upon the Tamils depriving them of the right they had acquired under the British once the colonial power was out. The successive Governments proceeded to establish a Sinhalese-dominated Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka, depriving the Tamils a rightful share in jobs and education. Sinhala was made compulsory for jobs putting the Tamils to a disadvantage. Each time a Sinahala leader tried to correct this imbalance, he had to backtrack under Sinhalese pressure. Even now, sections of the Government including in the armed forces, continue to be prisoners of a chauvinist mindset. Some fear that a military defeat of the LTTE could trigger a wave of Sinhala pride and jeopardize radical restructuring of ethnic relations in the country.
The sincerity of Rajapakse to meet the aspirations of the Tamils will be measured by the extent to which he implements the promised devolution of powers to Tamil regions after the war. He must act on the promise and quickly. Surely, the defeat of the LTTE, seen as a stumbling block to a peaceful settlement, would lead to greater international pressure on Colombo to chalk out a political solution to the 25-year-old ethnic problem and devolve powers to the northern and eastern parts. Rajapakse has before him a report of an all-party committee on devolution of powers and the Rajiv Gandhi-Jayawardene Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed on July 29, 1987 which envisaged the Tamil-dominated Northern and Eastern Provinces as one administrative unit with one elected Provincial Council, one Governor, one Chief Minister and one Board of Ministers. This will give the Tamils a sense of self-Government. In this context, the Government will have to overcome the legal hurdle of a court judgement which annulled the merger of the North and the East, which were united after the Indo-Sri Lanka accord.
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