The problem with creating monsters to harm others is that they inevitably come home to roost. All the countries that sponsored terrorism to further their geo-political or economic interests have finally found themselves hoist with their own petard. The US is battling Al Qaeda, which once proved to be a potent weapon against Russians in Afghanistan. And India has had to live in the shadow of LTTE terrorism which it created to tame Sri Lanka over three decades ago.

That the focus of the world Eelam movement would be shifted to India or some other country after the collapse of its project in Sri Lanka was a foregone conclusion. The LTTE has created conditions conducive to a revival of secessionist forces in Tamil Nadu by setting up cells and infiltrating the political establishment. Today, the LTTE is in a position to stage seditious protests even inside Indian courts and to manipulate the Centre through its allies.

Both Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunananidhi and his arch rival Jayalalitha Jayaram, who are usually at loggerheads on almost every issue, have endorsed Eelam. Their claim that they don’t approve of violence as the means is hogwash. In terrorism, the means and the end are the same and whoever subscribes to the end endorses the means in the process. Championing a separatist goal while denouncing the methods employed to achieve it is like promoting beef eating while condemning cattle slaughter! The separate state those two political leaders have in mind is not limited to two provinces of little Lanka. It is something of the Vijayanagar proportion encompassing part of India, too. So, the endorsement by the topmost Tamil Nadu political leaders of Eelam augurs ill for India already battling separatism on several fronts. Their stance could also be read as an affirmation of their commitment to a non violent secessionist movement in Tamil Nadu.

Close on the heels of an intelligence warning of a possible LTTE attempt to take ‘punitive’ action against India––which prompted Kerala to beef up airport security––the central intelligence agencies have alerted India to a possible LTTE-Maoist tie up to disrupt the upcoming elections. A Times of India report we reproduced yesterday quoted a police officer as having said that though the LTTE was ‘in a shambles it would not leave any stone unturned to settle scores with India’.

A nexus between the LTTE and Maoists in India has existed for a long time with the former providing the latter with arms and training. Terrorist groups network faster than democratic institutions! Links between the Assamese terrorists (ULFA) and the LTTE have also been established. In December 2006, Director General of Police, Tripura Ghansyam Murari Srivastava confirmed that the two groups had close relations. He said there was strong evidence that three LTTE cadres had stayed in the ULFP’s Lakhipathar camp for more than a month. Srivastava also revealed that the LTTE’s assistance had been sought by the ULFA for maritime contacts, because the latter owned a few trawlers operating from Chittagong.

The LTTE may not have sought to disrupt Indian elections in the past but it has certainly made interventions to turn their outcome in its favour. It has been sponsoring election campaigns and manipulating elected representatives, especially those of the lunatic fringe, all these years in South India. In 1991, it physically removed Rajiv Gandhi from Indian politics as Prabhakaran considered him an obstacle to his Eelam project. So, it is likely that the LTTE will try to make another intervention this time around and what its modus operandi would be remains to be seen.

It is extremely difficult to read Prabhakaran’s elusive mind. Made of the same stuff as a suicide bomber, Prabhakaran, when he realises it’s curtains, may resort to anything to take revenge before taking his life.

It is not only India that has to look out. Even after the LTTE is decapitated here, its overseas network will function under a different leadership and continue its narcotics trade and gun running. The first casualty of Prabhakaran’s humiliating defeat will be the LTTE fund raising arm as people will no longer have to contribute money out of fear. That will make the stump of the LTTE more dependent on illegal operations to keep itself afloat.

In Dec. 2006, it may be recalled, an LTTE activist together with three others was nabbed by the US Coast Guard in the act of smuggling three tons of cocaine in a semi-submersible. In 2005, the US federal agents detected a tunnel across the US-Canadian border operated by a man with LTTE links for drug smuggling.

All the countries were lucky that the Sri Lanka army marched on the LTTE bastions in the Vanni and captured a factory where submersibles were being manufactured presumably with foreign assistance. Moreover, although the Sri Lanka Navy has destroyed almost all the LTTE arms smuggling vessels, its mother ship is still at large on the high seas. It is described as a floating arms warehouse. This vessel may serve as an arms distribution centre for other terrorist outfits as well, unless traced and destroyed. This is a task that Sri Lanka cannot accomplish by itself.

One must not make the mistaking of thinking the benefits of defeating the LTTE will accrue only to Sri Lanka. The real beneficiary of Sri Lanka’s model war will be the civilised world afflicted by the scourge of terrorism.

Sadly, the developed world which claims to lead a global anti-terror drive refuses to back Sri Lanka’s war on terror. Some nations have made a mockery of their crusade against terrorism by turning their national legislatures into whorehouses, where lawmakers have placed themselves at the LTTE’s service. Someday they, too, will have to pay the same price as India for cohabiting with terrorists.

- The Island Editorial, 01st April 2009