Heads –We Lose, and Tails –Tigers Win!

Heads –We Lose, and Tails –Tigers Win!
Or What worth, the CFA?

All right, there’s still a Cease-Fire Agreement. Just. Hanging by a thread, some might say... though that still might be a matter of opinion. But what worth is the CFA to us? To us, the ordinary citizens and denizens of Lanka? What worth indeed? In my opinion, none. None whatever! No, if you look at the larger picture and the long term effect with its possible huge losses, and not only at the short term gain (still perhaps for awhile) to the select few in Colombo and thereabouts ... the CFA is not worth even the paper it’s been written upon!

Yes, I repeat, “The CFA is not worth even the paper it’s been written upon!” Even if signed, stamped and delivered, courtesy our Norvegian friends. Incidentally the trustworthiness of Erik Solheim, et al – representing the His Majesty’s Royal Government of Norway, and the supposed ‘impartiality’ of the SLMM itself, is on par with the Tigers themselves ... Below zero level! You might say, at sub-zero levels that literally plumb the icy depths of their chilly hearts themselves!

One can bet your bottom dollar, if you have one, that the Tigers when they come to parley peace ... has only one objective in mind ... to procrastinate as much as possible (including signing worthless documents) to buy time until such time as they can amass enough arms, high-tech communication equipment, lightweight aircraft, naval vessels etc. PLUS build airstrips, underground bunkers, safe storage vaults in which to cache arms – and so on as to further strengthen and fortify themselves and build camps at strategic locations PLUS recruit more and more cadres as far as possible including small children of 10 years or so, against their will even ... going out to hunt and murder even not only any prospective recruit who thinks otherwise but even his/her close kith and kin who has dared to help that one hide PLUS of course decimating and eliminating both our intelligence operatives and regular armed forces members who try to hold firm, and will not be bought!

And while those responsible for leaks and security lapses and various other lapses such as that led to the publishing of a whole list of Intelligence operatives (that gave out not only their names but addresses as well) in the well known Sunday Leader paper of ours – in that so-called ‘Millennium House Debacle’ (for which those responsible, still see totally unrepentant and denying all wrongdoing – even by mistake!), but worst still perhaps, which allowed a woman suicide bomber (or perhaps a duped fool carrying a mobile ‘phone in which enough explosives had been packed in ... sufficient to explode when the ‘right call’ came through) to enter the High-Security complex that should have been (at least) our Army Headquarters, as the pregnant wife of an army soldier ... whose supposed army identity card, etc. had belonged to a soldier who had been reported dead in that harrowing Elephant Pass retreat of long ago (at least 5 years back, if I remember right) ... Surely, in this so-called high-tech age, with dozens of IT experts drawn from our universities and elsewhere, offering superb advice on everything from management to computerising thus and that – all with the latest and greatest possible), the army has some sort of supposedly very fine (and doubtless just as well expensive and expansive) database(s) that is supposed to indicate who is persona grata or non-grata within their camps ... especially at the HQ! A question that begs an answer pronto, my Dear Watsons at large!

How come those worthy IT experts and Information Systems and maybe Expert Systems designers and advisors on all matters pertaining to computers, computer literacy and awareness, and communicating and networking and purchase of high-tech communication equipment (video-phones, direct sky-linking via satellite and digital telephone lines and so-on), could not see to it that dead or missing soldiers id-card numbers be listed accordingly in their databases, and so for that matter those concerning those retired (honourably) or given dishonourable discharges or posted as having deserted (or marked as doubtful – having gone through several desertion/re-induction processes), etc.? Anyway, modern DBMS software allow the storing of not only the more ordinary types of information ... but picture clips as well ... and hell, a small .jpg file does not cost that much in storage terms ... especially within the context of totally well-normalised relational databases! And the same goes for holding information on known terrorists or ‘Sinhala Kotiyas’ or other such ilk in Tigers’ pay, or those members of the Underground World willing to take on to do anyone’s dirty work for them on the payment of a ‘small fee!

And talking of ‘Sinhala Kotiyas’ or other such ilk in Tigers’ pay... it is pertinent indeed to ask as to how many of those are acting as ‘moles’ within the security establishment or as data-entry operators perhaps and even as so-called IT experts advising the Army, etc. on their computer matters and modes of communication general and Information Systems in particular? Whether through sheer incompetence or through outright knavery, those who betray our people and our armed forces to the ‘enemy withal’, by being the ‘enemy within’ should be brought to account! And here, one must not allow some such people’s skill in ‘networking of a different sort’ or mouthing insincere platitudes or dissembling or posturing in public... to literally get away with blue murder ... while amassing millions, nay billions of ill-gotten gains to themselves! And incidentally, checking as to how much in Fixed Deposits, etc. are held within the country by each and every individual (via the National ID card number (or passport number) through the entire banking- network, Central-Share-Registry, Land-Registry, etc. of Sri Lanka), might help in preventing both security leaks of all sorts, as well as netting in a possibly huge number of income tax evaders and other cheaters of the Inland Revenue Department! And while at it, guess that the esteemed Inland Revenue Department too perhaps bears some looking into on its own ... especially so, considering the spate of possibly bogus but decidedly peculiar ‘reassessments’ that I had been getting lately PLUS the fact, that any correspondence of my own regarding the same (directed to the Commissioner-General of the Inland Revenue Department, himself) seem to have ended in somebody-or-other’s Waste-Paper-Basket!

And indeed, it is to the WPB, that we must toss the CFA into! For as people like Mr. R.M.B. Senanayake (for instance) in the Island paper’s Midweek Review lately (28th June 2006 – Wed) had pointed out, there is a lacuna in that worthy CFA! That there is no watchdog with real teeth capable of biting off the head of the LTTE (in real terms that they will understand, rather than being merely banned on paper) for all the gross violations of it (ie. the CFA) they had been carrying on with impunity ... almost from Day 1! [My words, not Mr. Senanayake’s! But it’s still only a more colourful rendition of his very own .. except perhaps for the ‘from Day 1’ part.] Since the LTTE are no paper-tigers themselves, by carrying on like this ... is only giving the Tigers a license to kill. maim or mangle with impunity, while getting ready to devour our country peace-meal in easily chewable tasty bits and pieces, while their mouthpieces dupe us into believing that peace at any cost is worthwhile, and that dear Prabha et al are sincere in talking peace while getting ready to carve out the country piecemeal between themselves and their ‘White benefactors’ (especially those well Norvegian swells)!

For while dear Erik Solheim, Helene (what’s her other name) and the rest of the SLMM (Sri Lanka Murdering Mission) are busy whitewashing the Tigers (with some able assistance from some of our local ‘Help-Kaarayas’), while whining that the Tigers won’t stop their ‘little warnings’ or reining-in their supposedly civilian-fronts doing the dirty for them because our own Security Forces now dare to give back a little tit-for-tat, no longer kept completely in check as once they were – whatever the Tigers did ... perhaps due to our country now being in the care of new political leadership of some spunk (as opposed to the previous no-spunk attitude of the then powers-that-were when it came to saving their own skins and preserving their own gore at he expense of our security forces’ and intelligence operatives and helpless citizenry trapped in the no-man’s-lands that are the so-called border villages or the sp-called ‘uncleared territory’ under Tiger control, but even any Tamil whoever (almost except one or two like Karuna Amman) who dares to cross Prabhakran’s will ... and very likely, bartering away the children of our country as yet unborn or only tiny tots of two or three years old perhaps or maybe even nine or ten, or bordering on sweet sixteen even...

And while I myself will probably never have a child of my own, born out of myself ... whatever medical miracles that might still come to be ... I still care enough about other people’s children in general, and my own dear ones’ children in particular, to wish that somehow they might yet be able to miss the Tigers’ yoke entirely – always supposing that they or their mothers-might-have-been had not ended breathing their last in concentration camps or even simply butchered wholesale by those merciful stripe friends of ours in one of their innumerable fiendish senseless massacres that occur at random intervals – with without the benefit of any cease-fire agreement! After all, who can view without tears stinging their eyes, those pictures of corpse after little corpse laid out in a line at Kebethigollawa? Or the picture of a teenage aunt trying to comfort her little niece for being bereft of her poor father? Or a poorly-dressed peasant woman fainting during the last-rites (paansakula ceremony probably) of her young farmer-son killed by the Tigers, along with five other such poor young men as he ... who literally earned their ‘bread’ by the sweat of his brow, toiling in the hot sun with no proper sanitation, drinking water or even any labour-saving equipment (let alone GPS fitted laptops and mobile ‘phones) save perhaps a tractor two in bad repair which probably had to be shared among their entire community, each waiting patiently for his turn ... irrespective of actual expected time of rain, etc. compliance with which will ensure a bountiful harvest ... and very likely hired at exorbitant cost from the local Mudalali to whom also they might owe a good deal more money (at compound interest) for such saving graces as seed paddy, insecticides, weedicides, etc.? And while Colombo dances merrily in the absence of bombs for themselves (courtesy Peace-talks and that wretched CFA), the war goes on for those people remorselessly, endlessly, as it has for over two decades now. And the provisions of the CFA had only strengthened the Tigers’ hands!

For while the SLMM is quick to pounce on our Government and our Security Forces for any retaliatory attacks, house-to-house searches for possible Tiger suspects, or examining of identity cards at security checkpoints on high roads and elsewhere (including sensitive locations not just army camps), or searching for claymore bombs, suicide-bomb-kits or explosive-laden mobile ‘phones even perhaps ... when it comes to any transgression by the LTTE themselves, the very opposite is true. Like T.S. Eliot’s Macavity Cat, the lynchpin of the Cat Underworld, whenever a crime is committed, ‘he’ simply is not there! The spoor left behind on the Tiger’s Trail may very well led to the very entrance of ‘his’ lair, but ‘he’ simply is not there! This you see is not a simple case of eliminating the Man-Eating Tiger of Lanka on the grounds of for the ‘good of the many’, but an even more wilful case of sheer filibustering and manipulation and outright deceit on the part of our Tiger apologists by pretending that the Tiger simply was not there! That always, it was some third party (with or without the connivance, incitement by or the guidance of the Tiger leadership) – even if only a ghost! A Tiger ghost, indistinguishable from the Real Thing itself! The Naked Flesh-Eating Tiger, with his Naked Aggression, with bared fangs and Sabre Teeth!

There’s no such thing as those who will simply not see! Or so they say! See no evil, hear no evil, think no evil, lest the Tiger pounce on thee, and devour thee! For what matters whether others live or die, as long as you yourself is free ... to lead the good life, and dance the good fling, and ‘enjoy yourself’ at others’ expense even ... if needs must be?

And for those who think that the ‘ordinary people’ don’t matter (save as consumers for their products or to be duped at elections), maybe reading something like Ms. Ameena Hussein’s “Just another ordinary bomb” just might help. [Ameena Hussein’s “Just another ordinary bomb” last seen at Writeclique.net by my own-self.]

So, who dare will try and catch the Tiger by his tail? For one thing is certain, with the kindly help of the SLMM and the Tigers’ local apologists and those who still try to clamber to the hot seat of power by riding the Peace Train, the Tiger will try to land you in his belly instead! The same goes for those who will try to bell or tame the Tiger, or ride him to power by turning him to a meek purring pussy! The realty is different; but this alas, our local Tiger apologists and those on his or his big Brothers’ payrolls, still don’t seem to understand!

Even if they or some of their minions incited mobs here at Kiribathgoda and Kelaniya and possibly elsewhere to lynch innocent Tamils ‘caught around’ here for crimes committed elsewhere by a few misguided (and even then, possibly meglo-maniac) brethren of theirs up North in Jaffna or thereabouts ... and even go on to lynch those Sinhala girls (or maybe even boys) who tried to help save a few poor Tamils such .... pinning any blame on the Tigers for any such lapses is well nigh impossible! Unless perhaps years and years later, perhaps for instance with some intent in garnering the support of some then prominent descendant or other close kin of one whom they murdered during the time of the CFA itself – such as Lakshman Kadiragamar for instance, the Tigers themselves admit culpability, and seek forgiveness... such as Anton Balasingham did very recently (in the trailing days of June 2006) with regard to Rajiv Gandhi of India. And I can’t but help wonder, how long for instance would they take, to ask pardon for the murder of such people not only like Amirthalingam, Neelan Tiruchelvam and Sarojini Yoganathan ... but even such luminaries like Ashraff, C.V. Goonetilake and his wife, Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Gamini Wijesekera (former Secreatry-General of the UNP), Lucky Algama, Ranjan Wijeratna and (former President) R. Premadasa? Not to mention their bodyguards, and a score of others ... including other politicians and politicians on the make ... and a host of innocent bystanders? Plus of course those who were injured badly or at lost an eye like Mme. Chandrika Kumaratunga (her two bodyguards died while saving her)...

I agree with Madam, in that it is extremely irksome and galling, not to say mentally debilitating to the point of exhaustion, to take refuge behind high walls and bullet-proof-vehicles ... and having to resort to TV broadcasts and point-to-point communication via Satellite link-up ... For a politician not to be able to feel the pulse of the people or do an occasional walk-around is to sound his own death-knell to his political career, whatever armchair pundits advising of trying to fight a war with high-tech sophistry might say. Mind you, that while at times one might be excused in feeling that too much security is provided to politicians (and while one just might feel that the occasional despatching to Heaven of some of the pompous or hypocritical among them might indeed be a blessing to the country as a whole, if not to their immediate families and hangers-on), while far too little security is provided for capable generals, admirals, air-marshals and so on... two pertinent questions might be raised here, or perhaps three.

Firstly, will a mere bullet-proof car will be proof enough against an explosive-laden human being (whether getting ‘activated’ by himself alone or by remote-control) or even a sufficiently powerful grenade, etc. lobbed at the car or a claymore bomb on which it is unlucky enough to ‘tread’ upon? Bullet-proof vehicles are fine against amateur gunmen acting alone, or as ego-boosters to pompous asses bent on whizzing past the ‘public’ in a dazzling display of pomp and grandeur in the hope of impressing on that ‘public’ of the importance of his Member of Parliament, Minister or whatever ... but alas, totally impervious against the onslaught of today’s new generation of high-tech explosives... My advice to the Defence Ministry is to not to waste too much money on those antiquated modes of defence, and re-deploy such money intended on such further such purchases to something far more useful to the country. As for the honourable Members themselves (whether questioning the Government’s existing security arrangements or defending the same) is to follow the lead said to be given by a former JVP minister of agriculture (as reported by another party colleague of his in an interview to the Irida Divaina sometime back), and return those armoured vehicles with tinted windows, etc. to the Ministry of Defence, and pay his official visits in a vehicle in which he can ride in comfort while enjoying the scenery passed ... while his minions take the ‘salute’ from the ‘better car’ riding behind ... At any rate, if a bomb is hurled thus, it will be probably at the stuffed-shirts behind! Of course, if the entire entourage choose to ride in old rickety Volkswagens or whatnot or (perhaps somewhat newer, but partly Sri Lankan made) Micro-Cars ... without benefit of outriders, blaring of sirens and so on, advertising the presence VVIP-s in the cavalcade... then even a practised terrorist or armed assassin or hired killer might be hard put to identify these as being of a ministerial mission! The same goes in part to those carrying important security high command personnel ... though here some tinted glass windows or better still, loose clothing of the (civilian) casual kind (such as a large loose colourful tee-shirts might offer a lot more protection than a band of practised commandos and outriders giving away the presence of just who might be travelling in such pomp and pageantry in that convoy! And dare I say it? A little lack of sticking exactly to a rigid routine (by way of travel-route and starting-off time) might help considerably! And of course, a soldier (from the top to the very humblest level) must be wary of the company he keeps … or the wife whom he takes to himself … or the family into which he chooses to marry into or take into his bosom! For from time immemorial, scheming women or those who can be easily bought have proved to be the downfall of more than armies or leaders of men … Occasionally, a whole country has been brought to her knees because of one man or woman!

For instance, our own King Don Juan Dharmapala is a superb illustration of the point I make. And in today’s political scene too, there are still many a sadistic Don Juan Dharmapala-s still striving to climb up to the very zenith of the political firmament! Men who are prepared to do virtually anything or sacrifice virtually anyone to gain their narrow political ends! Or lust for Power or Prestige! Even to try and totally destroy somebody who at the beginning never intended them any harm, or even did some slight unintentionally … except perhaps by way of getting out of a difficult question posed jestingly, replied in more or less the same vein without thinking too deeply. Never realising, that saying, she preferred stars in the eye to that in the sky! And a sadistic fool who out of pricked vanity or a piqued ego, go all out to destroy and torture somebody … perhaps might be excused for being willing to barter his country’s freedom and future, merely so as to be ‘crowned as king’ of part of it – for a time … For I am sure, with dear Prabha pulling the strings from the other side … it will only be for a time … before the LTTE-leader pulls the plug on his dupe, for All Time!

Secondly, let me also raise the possibly heretical question, as to whether all those sentries and patrolmen whose lives had been lost or mangled in claymore explosions, ‘outraged civilian attacks’ (instigated by the LTTE itself in al likelihood) on police/army outposts, army camps, etc. and other vulnerable strategic locations (which haven’t abated one bit even during the so-called CFA) – for instance that former ruggerite and OIC (Police) of Jaffna – Charlie Wijesekera who was brutally bludgeoned to death, when he went in unarmed to settle a dispute instigated by the LTTE , or ‘arresting’ 3 Sri Lankan policemen who foolishly went in to ‘their territory’ to nab a suspected foreign-born paedophile of the worst possible sort, on information given by some Tamil-speaking Catholic Fathers (Padres), relying on an assurance given by the good Fathers themselves ... Much as some people (who measure the value of everybody and everything by terms of mere money, power and prestige alone) might find it hard to believe, even a humble Private or Ordinary Tar’s life might be valuable to somebody or other who loves him truly, as much as the highest 5-star (or 10-star even) ranking general would be to his family! Not that I mean to disparage our Army Commander or even the late Major-General Parami Kulatunga ... but once they too surely had been on a slightly more lower plane of rank! Like the vegetable seller in Ameena Hussein’s story, caught up in the bomb-blast of at some politico or other’s meeting that he had been foolish enough to attend, he too just might conceivably be missed by someone … even if only by a girl in his village, at whom he used to smile, when happened to pass her on his way home. And having being literally vaporised out of existence, or caught by some LTTE sniper’s fire, or having been ‘arrested’ and detained by the ‘LTTE Police’ for the crime of straying in to territory without permission … and then being forgotten by everybody except perhaps those to whom he had really been close or cared by, Sri Lanka might have managed thereby to lose another Ulysses S. Grant or Horatio Nelson in the making!

Anyway leaving aside all considerations of future prognostications or my foolish notions of egalitarianism aside, can a general worth his salt, can get away with always trying to lead his men from behind, and still keep the respect of his men at all, whatever pundits and self-styled security experts might say? And certainly no good ‘general’ would even try! For while it is permissible (and even desirable) for a soldier to feel a little trepidation and wariness all the time, and even occasionally be acutely conscious of a hard lump of cold fear in the pit of his stomach … such as when the enemy is closing in, he should always bear in mind, that he has enrolled in the army or navy or whatever … *for the purpose of defending his Country, and Her People and Her Honour ... while respecting the enemy and those who abet them, as far as possible within the limitations and parameters present in war-conditions. And while fear is the key to a good soldier’s ability to survive impossibly hostile or adverse conditions, one thing a good soldier does not like to do ever, is to be seen as cowardly, and hide like a rabbit holed up in its warren … when the farmer lights up the fern in the hope of smoking out the rabbits or suffocating them within their den.

For with the way that the CFA is being monitored and ‘implemented’ right now, it’s a case of heads – we lose, and tails –Tigers win! Hands down both times! A sort of ‘Catch-18’ situation! With we being those caught in the Tigers’ Net, and I dare say, ultimately within the Tigers’ belly itself, like that young lady of Niger, who thought that she could ride the Tiger to suit her own ends … but alas, miscalculated, having failed to read the mind of the Tiger right … thereby being deposed as a disposable sacrifice at the right time!

Like I said, “Heads – we lose, and tails –Tigers win!” If we go on this way! Or perhaps we should think of being something along the line of ‘Tiger Men and Tiger Women’ ourselves ... Tiger Men and Women, of a very different sort! And then, it will be not only a case of being one more Economic Tiger out of the Deepest Secret Heart of Asia, but being able to exult saying, “Heads we shall clearly win, and tails the LTTE will be made to decidedly lose, as sure as fire is fire … As long as Sun and Moon and Earth shall last!”

Priyanthi Wickramasuriya