Sunday discourse by Philip Fernando for Asian Tribune

Garrison town of Thunukkai has fallen to the armed forces, so the Asian Tribune reported. Prabhakaran now seems to linger inside a bunker waiting in vain for USA, India and someone else to intervene. There will be none. The political vacuum he succeeded in creating doomed him. He bumped off Alfred Duraiappah, A, Amirthalingham, Neelan Thiruchelvam, Lakshman Kadiragamar, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle and all the Tamil moderate leadership ruthlessly. His evil wizardry in marketing terrorism was his own booby trap that swallowed him as his options for negotiations dwindled. Now he is battered, cornered and seemed as if he is at the end of a shortened tether.

Prabhakaran hoodwinked the international outfits for far too long. But no wizard can package deadly contraband till kingdom come. Living at his wits end, only international pressure pushed and shoved him towards a negotiated solution. He could not shift to the political track; there was none to go to.  

The weight of his multi-fanged paraphernalia with its suicide squads, child recruitments, credit card embezzlements, bank-robbing banditry, extortion guises for fund raising, and paid fifth columnists inside and outside Sri Lanka collapsed under the weight of its own immoral terror project.  

Columnists who wrote glowingly about Tiger prowess are equally guilty as Prabhakaran for foisting a myth that LTTE is invincible. Those across the Palk Strait wrote of Prabhakaran the “wizard” every time his goon squads made a stealthy raid somewhere. Remember! The glorified accounts of the raid on Anuradhapura air base that covered acres of news print on Sunday morning. Time and again they scooped Tiger wizardry. Some even feigned threats for writing such inane stuff, thinking that government would come after them. The Sri Lankan government fortunately did not want to waste its breath on such hapless disinformation sources. Times reveal that the armed forces are at the entrance to Kilinochchi now.  

Sri Lankan security forces have coordinated their multiple formations brilliantly. Commandos have been used in lightening strikes in tandem with conventional operations and our forces maintained a very high degree of morale despite fierce fighting. Their air raids were devastatingly deadly.  

If the LTTE had had a worthwhile political wing with a popular appeal, no vacuum would have been created in the North and the East for others like Douglas Devananda, V. Muralitharan alias Karuna and Sivanesathurai Chanthrakanthan alias Pillaiyan to fill. He opted for undiluted terror. He was trying to wade off torrential rain with a broken umbrella. Balasingham and Tamilselvam were mere puppets dancing to Prabhakaran’s tune.  

The Rajapaksa government, which Prabhakaran thought would be easy fodder for his cunning machinations (that was why he asked Tamils not to vote for Ranil in 2006), took the battle straight to Vanni, knowing that LTTE's political ‘Achilles heel’ was the battle front. No freedom fighter worthy of that title would venture to fight it to a finish unless he had sufficient ground forces and weaponry to practice what he preached. Ultimately, Prabhakaran fooled himself more than he fooled the international outfits with his rhetoric. To lose militarily without a political action plan tantamount to suicide-a practice he promulgated with uncanny design. The oft repeated axiom that those who preach by the word shall perish by it, has not become archaic yet. 

Prabhakaran’s scan respect for the lives of his own cadres, hence his wanton murder of thousands of innocent victims struck a deviant, destructive and despicable chord needing a longer analysis some other time. Those made to die for a cause which the leader himself knew was unattainable and not within reach even in its wildest dreams, was a treacherous act not worthy of a human being. 

Prabhakaran made one big blunder when he assumed that India would throw its weight behind him like in 1987. There are no grounds what so ever for anyone to intervene because there is no scope for negotiations without a political apparatus. He exhibited hallucinatory traits to even think that the friends of the LTTE would intervene now. A cranky old attorney has now being hired to fight things in US courts or vilify the Defense Secretary of Sri Lanka. Futile is the only word that can describe that attempt. 

In 1987, India justified its direct interference to take the LTTE off the hook trying to create a political solution through an alternative to war against terrorism and the LTTE was forced to accept it. But before long India realized the LTTE was not for any political solution and resorted to war at the slightest provocation. Peace talks became a pretext for going to war later.  

Today, the LTTE has demonstrated beyond any doubt that it is too stubborn, fool-hardy and intransigent to accept a reasonable solution. Worst still, nor can Prabhakaran accept any of the solutions, so far offered to him including federalism, because his own hardened cadres would revolt, they are too brainwashed and blinded to accept anything except to fight to the bitter end. Eelam has been solidly etched across their foreheads for far too long.  

Prabhakaran tried a unilateral truce attempt recently which Rajapaksa government did not want to touch even with a barge pole. So Prabhakaran is in a soup, rather an empty cave. The four bunker walls separate him now from an ignominious end. Norway is no where to be seen. According to American jargon it is “No way! Jose (pronounced hosay).