Letter to a colleague: on LTTE

Back from the long siesta... Oh well, what goes up has to come down. Anyway. Here is a letter I wrote to a colleague on LTTE and terrorism.
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Here is a piece by Aatish Taseer in New York Times on the LTTE saga: (Linky). I thought I would comment on the article.

I am not sure if you know about Aatish. He is the son of an Indian journalist and commentator, Tavleen Singh, and a (now deceased) Pakistani politician Salman Taseer. Salman Taseer, as long as he lived, did not openly acknowledge Aatish as his son and Aatish primarily grew up in India with his mother. Towards the end, the father and son reconciled. But then, as fate would have it, Salman Taseer defended a Christian woman who was also accused of blasphemy and insulting Islam. So Salman got killed by a jehadi named Mumtaz al Qadri, who is probably in jail now but with a lot of sympathy from the general population of Pakistan which still sees this act as wajib-ul-qatl (crudely translated as due punishment for apostates, blasphemers and their supporters). Salman also had a visceral hatred for many things India, and it was an irony that just like most things in Pakistan, the primary thing that defined Pakistan (not being India with Islam being in danger in India and safer in Pakistan) goaded someone to kill another defender of the same idea. 

That partly explains Aatish's empathy for the Sri Lankan Tamils, at least in this article. I think the most common theme missed by many commentators on Sri Lankan matters is that things flow back and forth over time. The momentary hopelessness of the Tamil polity in forging their destinies is somehow seen as a bad thing or a good thing, if one gets emotionally invested in the situation. But if one discards that approach and sees things from an observationalist viewpoint, the triumphalism that is very common in the Singhalese population is pretty much a self-goal. Further, the triumphalism is displayed not only against the Tamils, but also the Muslims (who are also mostly Tamils, but never accorded that respect by either the Tamils or the Singhalese for their own complicated reasons). For their part, the Muslims have remained divorced from the violence of the different Tamil outfits, but there is often a last straw that breaks a camel's back. 

I will probably give the Tamils 10 to 15 years of cooling-off time before they start getting violent again. The one thing that is keeping the powder dry is the skewed demographics as of now, due to the emigration of Tamils to Europe, Canada and Australia and also the losses in the various wars. The Singhalese believe that posting ex-Army people in Tamil territories in the North and the East amidst the Tamil population would give them early warning signals of trouble that could allow them to ship soldiers to flashpoints, which is why they are speeding up infrastructure projects in collaboration with China. There are often limits to every such contingency measure. When things go unpredictable and belly-up, it is often a new issue that noone had imagined would happen which could then be post-facto rationalized -- the classical black swan argument or the argument on how complex systems fail. It is often not a single reason that causes things to go belly-up, its often a collection of small things just like in the Titanic or Pearl Harbor. 

I am not sure if there is a theory of self contradictory outcomes somewhere in the sociology literature. But one such candidate theory would be: any action that is well thought out to make a certain outcome less probable would often produce a certain other outcome which in turn could make the original outcome more probable. I am pretty sure that a variant of Murphy's laws can be twisted to this form. In any case, in the signal processing literature, we have a variant of this tradeoff called the bias variance tradeoff (Linky). To put it in simplistic terms, if the goal of an algorithm is to game/predict a certain unknown outcome based on indirect observations that are random, one could hope that the policies prescribed on average produce the intended outcome (no bias). But then with a certain realization of the observations that is actually seen, the variation from the intended outcome may be too huge so as to defeat and render useless the average property of this class. 

I think the Singhalese are trying too hard to game this scenario into the far future in case things go wrong. But there are simpler means to achieve that than by planting ex-Army men and land grabbing in what are seen as Tamil territories. I think reconciliation and trust is a better approach with some carrots and sticks. But then, we would nt have had the problem of the LTTE in the first place if reconciliation and trust was there to start with. The LTTE in itself came up only after the meltdown of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact (the Banda-Chelva pact as it is called), the loss of trust by the Tamil people on a mostly-democratic outfit TULF, leading to violent outfits from which emerged the LTTE as the victor. 

I believe some form of reconciliation has been achieved in how the Government of India (GoI) deals with some terrorist outfits. Of course, some of it is purely accidental and somewhat deep-down philosophical in terms of approach and life, and not because of great planning. For example, when the Mizo National Front (MNF) abandoned violence in ~1986 in one of the northeastern states (with a mix of tribal groups of which the Mizos were the dominant demographically), the Chief Minister of the state resigned to pave the way for a MNF government followed by a general elections in which the MNF won the popular vote. This regime only lasted for a short while as the leader of MNF died of natural causes, but Mizoram has more or less remained peaceful relative to the otherwise violent Northeast of India. But to coax the MNF to the table, the Indian Air Force was used to shell civilian locations, one of probably very few (if not perhaps the only one) uses of aerial bombardment against civilians in India. 

The current model of dealing with what the GoI deems as the pro-talks faction of one of the major outfits in the Northeast, the ULFA, is also precisely this. The pro-talks leaders were all safely put up in Bangladesh, hosted by the various Islamist regimes under Zia-ur-Rehman, Hossein Mohd. Ershad and then Begum Khaleda Zia from the late 70s and early 80s till now. When a change of regime happened in 2009, GoI coaxed the Bangladeshis to hand over these people in return for a land swap agreement with net loss of territory for India (the final fruition of the Indira-Mujib accord of 1974) and water sharing on the Teesta river which is absolutely critical for Bangladesh. Neither of these has fruitioned now for Bangladesh, but that is a different story. The GoI has treated these ULFA leaders with a good amount of respect, even though electorally if they contest today, it will be a walkover for the current regime in Assam. I think the GoI will be happy to see them form a political party and burn their credentials over a period of time, as every terrorist outfit always does if it takes the democratic approach.

Historically too, that approach has been followed by the GoI in different forms. The Communist party formed the first democratically elected government anywhere in the world in the southern state of Kerala in 1956. Nehru, despite being a Fabian socialist and a good friend of Stalin, Brezhnev and Khruschev, was deeply suspicious of dictatorship of any kind, even the Proletariat one. So it did take a fair amount of moving away from his position via rhetorical gymnastics to allow the CPI to take over the Kerala government. The CPI takeover of educational institutions from the Catholic Church and the consequent violence led to the Constitutional use of an approach (now sparingly used, thankfully) to disband the state government. But I think the CPI has been coaxed into democratic politics with all the barrel of a gun speeches primarily restricted to rhetorical fanfare. This is a remarkable transformation which the Maoists accuse the Communists of. In fact, the Maoists would treat the Communists as their biggest enemies before attacking any other party in India today.

The same can be said about many other political parties in India in different states: DMK in Tamil Nadu, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, Akali Dal in Punjab (which then splintered into many outfits with different consequences), Asom Gana Parishad in Assam, and so on. Even the definition of a successful terrorist outfit is not well defined. I believe the most successful ones are some of these political parties, DMK especially. Despite all these attempts over the years, India still has approx. 50-60 terrorist outfits, a good ~30 of them would be based out of the Northeast, ~10 Islamist outfits, mostly from J&K, ~10 Leftist outfits, and a few Hindu and Sikh ones. 

Its amazing that these attempts at neutralizing outfits, Indian style, has not been studied that much. There are a large number of lessons to be learned, good, bad and ugly, and one could try to discern conscious policies from historical accidents. The limits of predictability in policy making and the consequent agnosticism that brings into the picture have not been well understood, either in the Indian context or elsewhere, which is why we see folks keep getting too protective of their own ideas and turfs. Again, signal processing literature rescues us by allowing an inevitable Cramer-Rao lower bound to any estimator/predictor.

Further still, the metrics used for defining success for the outfit as well as the government is also needful of reassessment. A terrorist outfit would do well to transform to a political party that can pilfer the state coffers at will. The government would want this eventuality to happen as it would enhance the State's claim to suzerainty in a theoretical sense and would also be de facto assured in a practical sense with certain caveats. Yet, despite a commonality of eventual goals, we do not see all terrorist outfits abandoning themselves overnight. I think this is because terrorism is a cat and mouse game where from a game-theoretic viewpoint, the Nash equilibrium is clear. But both parties are greedy to seek a solution in the Pareto boundary that favors only itself. 

To connect it back, this is precisely what Prabhakaran was. Even amongst the greedy terrorist outfit chieftains, he was greedy beyond explanation. Which is one reason why the people who were coaxed into condoning him and his actions, either of their own free will or unwillingly, will have to bear the cross for his sins. But then this is just another short-term momentariness in a long-term back and forth, which could be easily predicted to a certain degree under the caveats mentioned above. 

Sri Lanka's Killing Fields - October 2011 Report

Image courtesy: http://www.guardian.co.uk

All anecdotal accounts from India talk about the horrible human right violations on the Sri Lankan Tamilians. The Sri Lankan tamilians were first treated horribly by Government of Sri Lanka, then by their own 'movements' that championed their cause to only let them down in the long run. LTTE systematically obliterated other Tamil groups first, and positioned itself as the sole savior.

Meanwhile,  Channel 4's Sri Lanka documentary cleared by Ofcom. Dorothy Byrne of Channel 4 complains about the PR lobbying by Sri Lankan government and others:

Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, which was broadcast in June and featured graphic footage of alleged war crimes, faced a demonstration outside Channel 4's London headquarters – which she claimed had been organised by the Sri Lankan ministry of defence.

Flash back to the 80s and 90s....

The Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu saw a tremendous opportunity to sway the emotions of tamilians in Tamil Nadu to get votes. Vaasanthi in her book "Cut-outs, Caste and Cine Stars" quotes Karunanidhi:

If the Center can support the Palestinian struggle for a homeland , why does it not back the movement for a Tamil Elam?

As the Dravidian parties vied for attention by spreading awareness of the Sri Lankan tamilians conditions and demanded that India do something about it, the leaders in New Delhi were worried as it eerily reminded them about the demand for 'Dravida Nadu'.  MGR for his part offered patronage but was opposed to Tamil Elam and any armed support. During the IPKF operations in Sri Lanka, many of the Tamil Nadu politicians complained about the Indian Army 'excesses'.

For their part the Tamilians of Tamil Nadu, initially had sympathy towards the Sri Lankan Tamilians, but as LTTE decimated the other tamil groups and violence along the coastal regions of Tamil Nadu increased because of bomb blasts, looting and fratricidal war between Tamil Groups, the Tamilians in Tamil Nadu began to distance themselves with the thought "I am Indian, only next a tamilian".

Tamil Nadu, its people and prominent leaders turned against Sri Lankan Tamils after LTTE assasinate Rajiv Gandhi. Karunanidhi sobs to Vaasanthi and she writes in her book:

I trusted them, amma. We were all genuinely moved by the Tamil's plight. These boys [Pirabakaran and his associates] looked so innocent and gentle in their manner......... I was too shocked when such a massacre happened right here in our streets. From then on I decided to have no more truck with them. I stopped seeing or talking to them.

The poor Sri Lankan Tamilians first had to suffer at the hands of Buddhist Sinhalese, Government of Sri Lanka and its army and then their own movement committed atrocities against each other to the extent they did little for the true cause. India was helpless. Or was it? I for one wish India showed some spine and had decisively acted to make an impact.

Fast forward to 2011....

Tamil National Alliance leaders are meeting US & UN officials in America. A UNRIC report laments the bloody past of a beautiful island. Alan Keenan, Senior Analyst and Sri Lanka Project Director for the International Crisis Group (ICG) says:

We need an open political structure in Sri Lanka. The president and his two brothers control all the most important ministries and around 75 % of the national budget. This is not a positive scenario for addressing the damage done to Sri Lanka’s political institutions from decades of war and terror. Equally worrisome, there are no signs the government is especially interested in addressing the political marginalization and grievances of minorities by including Tamils and Muslims equally in political life, not only nationally but locally. And if they are not interested in correcting the mistakes of the past, their policies risk sowing the seeds of future conflict.

The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation sees it blames it all on LTTE supporters. It is the bad luck of Sri Lanka, that LTTE chose to be the champion of their cause. Every sane group or individual, on hearing the name of LTTE steps back and stops talking about Sri Lankan Tamilians. Ironically LTTE helped the Sinhalese more than the Tamilians. Sad.

An attempt made by few western countries to appoint a Human Rights commissioner for commonwealth countries was ended up a in a failure due to strong protest staged by majority of members including India and Sri Lanka. At the commonwealth meeting representative of those countries pointed out that such an appointment would lead to interference of internal affairs of member countries. The attempt made by some  pro-LTTE elements to discredit Sri Lanka was also failed. Majority of members have extended their support to Sri Lanka and praised the country’s economic growth following the end of terrorism.

While others see the attempt to set a Human Rights Commission as Western Imperialism and considers Gaddafi was a friend in need. While a whole lot could be written about USA and UK and their hypocrisy, Libyan Dictator and Sri Lankan Army make strange bedfellows. Sri Lanka cannot cite Libya, UK and USA's actions and inaction and excuse itself of its treatment of fellow citizens and its own war crimes.

  It would be recalled and must never ever be forgotten that when the sanctimonious affluent western nations such as United States and Great Britain strained every nerve, muscle and fibre of their beings to prevent us from liberating our country from the cancer of terrorism by starving us of funds – i.e. by preventing the IMF from giving us the standby facility of some US $ 500,000,000/-, it was Gadaffi who came to our aid by offering us money. It was only thereafter that the IMF agreed to give us that facility.

On the other hand, a couple of days ago, there was joy in certain quarters that the noose tightened on Rajapaksa:

Colonel Qaddafi appeared to be a saint compared to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and how he would extricate himself from the mess he embroiled himself into, only time will tell

Gaddafi and Sri Lanka's ties did not go unnoticed after Gaddafi's death. Media compared China's muted response to Sri Lanka's demand for an explanation. GoSL's stance on its own human rights was pointed out.

Gaddafi was a close friend of the government of Sri Lanka and of President Rajapaksha. One of the last politicians to have a photo opportunity with Colonel Gaddafi was President Rajapaksha’s heir apparent, his son and M.P. Namal Rajapaksha.

Only a few countries condemned the killing of Gaddafi in such a cold blooded manner. The government of Sri Lanka, although it did not condemn the killing, called for an explanation of his death. A number of government ministers have condemned the killing. Issuing a statement consisting of 21 words in one sentence, the government of Sri Lanka said: ” “The Government of Sri Lanka is of the opinion that the circumstances surrounding the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi require an explanation.”

This statement is commendable especially in the context when even a country like China, which has been a stronger supporter of Gaddafi and his government, issued a more muted statement. The statement by China’s foreign ministry said: ‘Gaddafi’s death marks the turning of a page in Libya’s history.’ China also called for a rapid launch of an inclusive political process to find unity in the country, and the launch of economic restructure, to make its people live peacefully and happily.

The statement of the GOSL is indirectly calling for an inquiry into the incidents which led to the death of Gaddafi. A proper explanation can only be possible after an impartial inquiry. Here we can see that the GoSL is of the same opinion as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Both organisations issued strong condemnations of the killing and called for a proper investigation and justice.

Both these organisations have called for such investigations regarding the alleged killings that had taken place in the last phase of the war with the LTTE in Sri Lanka. They have provided evidence of individuals killed while in detention. One such case is that of the Eastern province LTTE leader Colonel Ramesh. The video footage of Ramesh being questioned by Sri Lankan military personnel, and of his dead body, is available even on the internet. A number of wives of former LTTE leaders came before the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission of the government and said that their husbands surrendered themselves to the military; their whereabouts are unknown after that.  The Sinhala language newspaper Divaina reported that a number of LTTE leaders were in military custody and printed their names. (The newspaper later retracted the story.)

While the West and Sri Lanka fight on, India stands doing not much for a country that is practically in its backyard.  I think it is India's wishy-washy stance that emboldened the Sri Lankan government to commit atrocities against Tamilians. Well, it would be germane to ask "What should India have done?" My answer: "Something different from what it did." India cannot be blamed, but dil mangtha hain more from; if India could not have influenced Sri Lanka, little could other countries do. And if India had been little more active, the 'Evanjihadists' influence on the Tamil groups could have been controlled. Or probably not. We would never know.

Buddhism stands along Islam as another religion of peace. I am positive Buddha would be greatly troubled, and maybe we can lay all the fault at Asoka's feet for spreading Buddhism in 'Ceylon'.