Thank you for your response as well. I think the basic issue here is we have fundamentally different approaches to analysing, understanding, and therefore resolving, the conflict.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

The tragedy unfortunately is that such civilised luxuries may not be avaible in Sri Lanka in the future. What anti-LTTE Tamils have had to face in the last twenty years is going to be the fate of anyone opposing this government. And that surely cannot be good.

you are free to select a few words from some diplomat etc. and make mountains, forgetting other words from same diplomat etc. in the real world ppl check actions.

same goes for your comments about indian policy. frankly as long as they know what ltte is, without amnesia, they do not have any choice but to selll/donate arms to gosl , crack down on ltte etc. and that is what they do.

if ltte do act like ira when it enters peace process instead of going on with killing, bombings, etc. and take steps to decommission its arms, it may make peace but in every attempt it did not keep faith. its commitment to peace is mere words only. may be when it is in the same weak situation as ira or when it lose its current leadership it may do what ira did.

when you say there are political causes for terrorism you are in fact justifying ltte. it had a choice like other minority politicians. it was not inevitable that it should choose terrorism if it wanted to fight for tamil rights. this is true even if earlier democratic politicians have failed. your argument is like saying if a person is hungry bc he was fired from earlier job ( may be unfairly ) he will inevitably steal. you probably do not see anything wrong in such a theft as well. most ppl do.
of course ltte is in fact not fighting for tamils but for itself like any group of criminals. that is merely its excuse. some fall for it

best answer to your justifications of ltte’s alleged ’cause’ is the political victories of other minorities through democratic means. in one instance, over one million ppl were enfranchised ( in country with 20 million ppl). that imo is great democratic victory.

tamils are not allowed that by ltte’s actions. may be you think such victories are too small and worthless?or too difficult and messy? may be you prefer an ‘all or nothing’ solution like the ltte ? well for your information democracy everywhere is messy , corrupt, and hard, you get some of what you want through hard work, tough negotiations, making ‘deals’, etc, so that most parties get some benefit. in a democracy ppl compromise ltte doesn’t as proved by its actions.

yes there are political grievances, but any sustainable solutions to them can only be arrived at in a democracy through democratic means, not by appeasing terrorism. sooner we have democratic tamil politicians willing and capable of working the system, and who are tolerably fairly elected and not appointed by ltte there is a way to address those grievances. ltte prevents that. you are free to defend them for preventing that.

you made a reference to conspiracy theories, may i ask what you are referring to bc i referred to actions not theories to back my statements. you on the other hand make use of speculations without a foundation on reality.

anyway thanks for your thoughts.

sonique:
“Again, what?!?!”
now what would fowler say to that… that ..what is it anyway? i don’t mind, but since you are so keen on ‘correct’ english you should mind,… i think.

I think that we may well have to think about the Govt’s success in their military strategy, if not as a given, then certainly as a future scenario that we must be willing to plan for, and ready to acknowledge as a foundation for peacebuilding. It doesn’t seem to be the case, to date at least, that the LTTE is capable of any great retaliation, and the Army, riding high of success, seems set to take the North in the fashion they liberated the East.

Your point about maintaining control of the land they liberate is a valid one, arguably more difficult in the North (without a Karuna figure) than in the East.

Sanjana’s point, and that you’ve pointed to earlier as well, remains valid in any one of these scenarios – that whatever happens on the ground, we need a political settlement at the end of the day. Nothing else, including war, will work to bring lasting peace.

Pity that I don’t think the government realises this to date, and may only realise it too late. Note for instance the public ridicule hurled upon Tissa, and the hate speech by Champika, a bloody MP for god’s sake !

Hope that saner counsel prevails, for all our sakes.

My own view is that if Karuna and the government hold the East, Publius’s argument is invalidated. But the story of the conflict from the 1980s is that neither the government nor the Tigers have been able to capture as well as hold territory. If either side was able to do this, then the matter may have been resolved either way, or at least, the trajectory would have been very different.

Therefore, what is interesting about the current phase of the conflict is whether all contributory factors such as the military balance in favour of the government, the support of the international community, the economic wherewithal to hold the East while the Northern campaign is sustained etc, would cohere to make the government’s strategy a success. If they do, then the traditional cycle would have been broken and we’ll have to see what that brings.

On the other hand, if experience repeats itself, then the government will get bogged down in the Vanni, effective control over the East will be lost through attritional guerrilla warfare, and the entire exercise would lead to another stalemate, leading to perhaps a conflux that occasions another peace initiative on the basis of what is left on the battlefield.

Any of these things are possibilities.

Again, what?!?!

Nice try, but doesn’t wash.

The SPLM/A and its predecessors from the time of the Torit Mutiny, through the Anyanya rebellion, were in fact considered terrorists and separatists, under the Cold War rules of the international game, by one pole or the other. So were they treated by the departing Brits as well as their condominium partners the Egyptians. This was a significant cause of what led to armed conflict rather than peaceful power-sharing. The fact that in the last two decades or so the West began supporting them (helped not least of all by their clever exploitation of the Christian identity in lobbying the American Right), has to do with their ability to assert themselves militarily and politically, and the comprehensive failure of the Khartoum regime to secure international support due to their unacceptable behaviour. This vindicates Publius’s argument about international politics, not yours.

The KLA was and what remains of it still is considered a terrorist organistion. The point about the entire conflict resolution discourse (which you and your fellow-travellers reject in the pursuit of jingoism, ignorance of history both short and long term, and a complete analytical incapacity to draw the self-evident lessons from experience), is precisely in engaging groups like the KLA and LTTE (the IRA is an even better example, if what you want are parallels of brutality and international crime) and locking them into a process of conflict transformation.

Interesting that you should bring up Ibrahim Rugova in the context of your argument. If you do not recall Ponnambalam Ramanathan, Ponnambalam Arunachalam, GG Ponnambalam, SJV Chelvanayakam, S Nadesan and A Amirthalingam, and what happened to them in their commitment to non-violence and parliamentary struggle for a constitutional accommodation of Tamil aspirations, then you know where the ‘amnesia’ hat fits.

Having attempted political repression of power-sharing claims within a united country, and thus having pushed the debate into armed conflict, people like you are now justifying even more repression to militarily deal with essentially a political and socio-economic problem. This is not only remarkably stupid, but also decidedly masochistic. The way to deal with LTTE thugs is not to unleash and legitimise a thuggish government, but to see how we can bring it into the democratic mainstream and foreclose the opportunities that can be used by it to return to violence. More broadly, the concern is also as to how we can ensure the end of violence-exalting politics on either side of the ethnic divide. Therefore, the laborious argument about justifying terrorism, is utterly misdirected.

You have wholly misunderstood what I meant when I said “let’s wait and see”. What I meant was that we are in the midst of a conflict cycle in which it will be interesting to see how both actors on the military front will next act. Your misrepresentation of this is thus a display of your own paranoia and does not reflect any sentiment held by me. The problem with people like you is that you cannot see the wood for the trees. The fact that I represent a viewpoint that sees conflicts as capable of peaceful resolution through negotiation, rationality and good will, aligns me with the way the world has moved since WW II.

An approach, as Sanjana lucidly points out above, that focusses on the politcal causes of terrorism does not make one condone terrorism. It is for this reason that while I find the LTTE’s methods reprehensible (just as much as the war-mongering politics of the JVP and JHU it might be added), that I see great urgency in addressing the poltical elements that give the LTTE sustenance in the interests of a peaceful, just and united Sri Lanka.

So India has donated / leased another coastguard vessel represents in your view an endorsement of the unitarian-militarism of this government, without any conditions attached (apart from of course the trade and economic related concessions that India extracts for these token gifts of a military nature, in addition to ensuring that Pakistan is not the sole military supplier of Sri Lanka)?

That is a particularly foolish argument to make given that India’s consistent policy on the ethnic question has been, continues to be, and will be that the Sri Lankan government must (a) negotiate a political solution, (b) devolving maximum power, (c) along the ethno-territorial unit set out in the Indo-Lanka Accord and repeated in the Oslo Declaration, and (d) for the purposes of (c), the merger of th North-East must be re-established. More intelligent commentators of your particular worldview routinely base their analysis on this basis.

So next time you decide to venture out, please cut out the tiresome conspiracy theories, and try and reflect a little more on our experience before impugning the intentions of those who are equally committed to a united Sri Lanka, and even more committed to a just peace than the ethno-religious supremacists and miltary adventurers now wielding power in Sri Lanka.

Pubius, referring to

“Staying this course on the part of Colombo, would have a very high probability of legitimising the case for a level of autonomy so extraordinary that even if the LTTE never quite circumvents the geopolitical considerations in realising full legal sovereign statehood, the Northeast would certainly reach a kind of state-like character ipso facto.”

Don’t things change substantially now that Karuna and the government seem to run the show in the east with regard to a state-like character in the Northeast?

nor did any of them engage in kinds of acts of terrorisms associated with ltte, al queda, or some palestinian terrorists. so there is a distinct distinction between ltte and rebels of sudan and kosovo. those are the facts on which i based my statements. i

to wait for ltte words to come true this time after their predicted failures to do so time and (time) again, while they go on with their oppression of the tamils under their control and attack the others either through terrorism, guerrilla, and conventional military means, do require a bout of amnesia.

‘international community ‘ more correctly actual individual foreign governments, general public, and gosl, cannot and will not, forget that unlike some other actors of negligible significance politically. they will not “wait and see” for ltte to come good. to expect an ‘intervention’ as in kosovo, sudan etc or even by india, and terrorists here having the ‘last laugh’ is to day dream, though some terrorist apologists are lobbying for it ( which should be countered ). i always base my statements on actual actions of those mentioned not on some far fetched speculations. btw india announced it is giving (another) ship to sri lankan navy. that fact says more about what is actually happening, than contradictory posturing of some diplomats or politicians for the consumption of various groups.
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those here who expressed the sentiment that ltte terrorism was ‘justly’ caused, ( bc of very real and substantiated anti tamil discrimination, riots , etc perhaps) ,or taking the ltte’s claims at face value, should work out the logical implications of that statement and realize its highly racist, and damaging (and double edged) nature. even at the most basic level it implies intentionally killing innocents can be ‘just’ and that a whole ‘race’ support it. it is also wrong, as actions and feet of tamils and others in north and east, and the political victories through democratic means of once worse off other minorities in sri lanka have shown. may be they should look at themselves for developing some the qualities they accuse the government of lacking.

as always look at the substantiated actions to base your statements, you wont make such errors that way .
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i on the other hand do make errors in english, so sonique etc. who were discussing last sentence of my first comment :
my apologies. i will be the first to admit my english is ‘bad’.
you on the other hand are such experts that after ( lets see…) the title of the post (what would fowler say?) you find my sentence gibberish, ”profound’ etc. oh well.

At serious risk of violating the submission guidelines, here are two of my favourites:

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” If that isn’t the best opening line in English literature, then this is one of the best closes: “I can’t go on. But I must. So I will.”

And one for Sittingnut: “I cursed the day I was born, and, in a bold flashback, the night I was conceived.”

Perhaps a better student of Beckett than me will do a post one of these days around which we can discuss this immortal genius…

‘I don’t think a military solution is possible without a parallel political strategy. The LTTE has significant capability to attack, using terrorist means. We should not underestimate that. I think there would be costs (to pay) to a military strategy. The most important thing in our view is to come up with a credible (political) process.’

———————

And here’s the (same) US Ambassador stating the less obvious:

‘The government is committed to peace. Every time I speak to (President Mahinda Rajapakse) and senior members of the government, they assure me they are committed to a peaceful settlement. I have no reasons to doubt that.

‘The military believes in a military solution but the policy of the government is to pursue (a negotiated settlement). At this point of time, without a proposal, there is nothing to negotiate over.

———————

And here’s the (still the same) US Ambassador on the LTTE:

‘As for the LTTE, I cannot say if they are committed to peace. Their record of 20 years shows they have never seriously pursued the peace option. The government will have to soon give them a chance to see if they are ready to negotiate in good faith.’

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From http://www.indiaenews.com/srilanka/20070225/40845.htm