The late and unlamented Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi would have been extremely proud of the 60 shattered corpses and 70 maimed and bleeding bodies of men, women and children in the bus wreckage on a road near Thalgaswewa in northeastern Sri Lanka yesterday. This sort of unspeakable barbarity has caused even those who oppose the presence of occupation forces in Iraq to recoil in revulsion. The effect on the people of Sri Lanka, including the majority of Tamils, can be no less profound.
This was nihilistic savagery at its worst. The bus laden with villagers struck two mines. The attack has all the trademarks of the Tamil Tigers, who continue to flout the Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in a clear effort to plunge the island back into civil war.
A Tamil Tiger spokesman quickly denied responsibility. This might have been an attempt to suggest government forces perpetrated this crime themselves. It could equally have been prompted by the realization, in some quarters of the Tiger leadership at least, that this depraved mass murder would undermine the position of the Tiger’s political representatives. The truth is that either reason is threadbare. The Tamil Tigers have brought about a situation where the cease-fire now hangs by a thread and many even believe it to have already snapped. It is their refusal to enter into serious negotiations about autonomy within Sri Lanka, their prevarication and petty protests over the location of talks, even of talks about talks, that has ratcheted up the tension. And it is their murderous attacks, on government forces, leading Sinhalese politicians as well as defenseless civilians that have undermined the peace process.
Worse, as other Tamils have become restless at the sight of the longed-for peace slipping away, the Tigers have been ruthless in suppressing protests within their own community. There was a time when Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels drew widespread sympathy from their Indian cousins across the Gulf of Manaar in the state of Tamil Nadu. No longer. Instead, there is now widespread disgust at the gangsterism that has come to dominate the Tamil Tiger leadership. As has happened time and again with terrorist organizations from the IRA in Northern Ireland to the Farc guerrillas in Colombia, terrorism becomes a profitable way of life in itself, in which a relatively small dominant leadership enjoy all the trappings of absolute power while they send out misguided dupes to die for a cause in which they themselves no longer really believe. These thugs and criminals know they would be unlikely to prosper if peace returned, so it is absolutely in their interests to sustain the terror as long as they can.
Somehow moderate Tamils need to take back the ownership of their own destiny. In a regimented community where children are encouraged to inform on their own parents, this will be no easy matter. But at least it is now clear to the world that despite the serious mistakes of past Sri Lankan governments, the real villain of the piece is the cynical Tamil Tiger leadership.
