Author: MJ Akbar
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 3, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/173507/Congress-has-clearly-lost-the-Lanka-plot.html
Lesson of the week: It is perfectly possible
to simultaneously fool the United Nations, Mr P Chidambaram, much of the media
and Mr M Karunanidhi with the same ploy, and within the same 24 hours. The
outbreak of self-congratulation in Delhi when Colombo announced that it would
cease using heavy artillery and air power against the trapped Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam was not really self-delusion, because the mandarins of Delhi
are not foolish. It was a desperate attempt by ruling coalition politicians
to chalk up talking points for the election in Tamil Nadu, where this Government
is being blamed for abandoning the LTTE. Typically, Mr Karunanidhi over-egged
the pudding by undertaking a fast. The fastest thing about the fast was how
fast it ended.
The only Union Ministers from Tamil Nadu not
in electoral trouble are those who defected to Ms J Jayalalithaa. The others,
whether from the Congress, the DMK or smaller parties, are anxiously shopping
for any fig leaf to hide their impotence. Delhi's spin doctors even tried
to hype up the "heavy artillery" announcement as a ceasefire. This
spin stopped turning when Colombo clarified that it would never agree to any
ceasefire. Why would it cease fire when it has V Prabhakaran in its crosshairs?
The Sri Lankan Government and Army have not fought its most difficult war
in order to make Mr Chidambaram Home Minister or Mr Karunanidhi Chief Minister.
Colombo has measured Delhi's impotence carefully,
and knows that Delhi will swallow any fudge it hands out, because there is
nothing else it can do. The rest of the world can make the perfunctory noise,
but that is about it. Some pompous types in the European Union hierarchy tried
to flex verbal muscle. Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's President, could
well have asked, qua Stalin, how many divisions does the Pope have?
For the record, the LTTE is a terrorist organisation
in the books of most Western Governments, including those who have long permitted
LTTE operatives to collect a 'war tax' from Lankan Tamils living abroad. This
money, much of it repatriated, has financed the LTTE for two decades.
Colombo's 'concession' is meaningless because
the war has entered a phase when heavy artillery is useless and aerial strikes
counter-productive.
The combat zone, at the moment of writing,
has been reduced to about five square kilometres of beachfront on the north-eastern
coast, in which perhaps 50,000 civilians have become double-hostages. Prabhakaran,
leading the rump of the once-fabled LTTE forces, is using them as his last
shield against the victorious Sri Lankan armed forces. The war has entered
the close-combat stage, where each LTTE post and boat will be identified and
eliminated through a process of attrition, even as efforts continue to offer
civilians a route out of the trap.
Why would Colombo stop a war at the very moment
when it has drained the growl out of the Tigers? Prabhakaran must be ruing
the day when arrogance, or misjudgement, stopped him from accepting a deal
through negotiations. Both Colombo and the world community gave him this chance,
the former under compulsion, but nevertheless agreeable. Prabhakaran now faces
the option that made his tigers, and tigresses, an object study in asymmetrical
warfare, with their trademark use of the poison pill. We cannot say what he
will do next, or indeed what realistic options exist for him. How long will
the human shield of terrified civilians hold? Will the trapped Lanka Tamilians
revolt against the person who was once a demigod? The armed forces surrounding
the last battlefield have time, and morale, on their side.
It was perhaps bad luck for Delhi that this
war came to a climax at just the moment when India's long general elections
are also heading towards theirs. I suppose the Election Commission did not
factor in events across the Palk Straits when it decided that Tamil Nadu would
be among the last States to vote. Delhi is busy formulating, and discarding,
plans. In one of them, Prabhakaran would escape and then be forced to negotiate
with Colombo. But such a scenario is riven with difficulties. Would escape
be possible when the Sri Lankan Navy is keeping a 24-hour vigil on the waters?
If he did escape, would the assassin of Rajiv Gandhi receive a warm welcome
from a Congress-led Union Government? Open arms? I think not.
I hope not.
New Delhi lost the Sri Lanka plot some time
ago. Rip Van Winkle would not make a good Foreign Minister. You cannot wake
up suddenly after a long sleep, and imagine that last-minute hysterics are
an adequate substitute for two years of lazy drift. Foreign policy is a continuous
pursuit. A crisis needs to be monitored on a regular basis. Foreign policy
means shaping events towards the national interest long before denouement.
Mr Chidambaram's recent statement on China's
role in Sri Lanka was mystifying. Is this the first time that he has heard
about this? Then he has not even been reading the daily newspapers properly.
China has been arming Sri Lanka for many years, as messages from our envoy
in Colombo will surely have confirmed. Delhi did a whole lot of nothing when
the first shipload of arms arrived in Sri Lanka, because it had no alternative
strategy to offer towards a solution. Colombo played it brilliantly: It got
arms from China even as it persuaded the UPA Government to give it a favourable
trade status. India nourished Sri Lanka's war-starved economy. Perhaps Delhi
never expected the LTTE to collapse before the Sri Lankan forces. Did Delhi
become a victim of LTTE propaganda?
The price of miscalculation in a game-changing
crisis is very high. You have to be extraordinarily lucky to escape payment.
The Chidambaram-Karunanidhi partnership may have run out of its share of luck.
- MJ Akbar is chairman of the fortnightly
news magazine Covert.
