Sri Lanka: the global context and ideology of a triumphant regime

24 January 2011. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from two articles, "Global Politics and the Sri Lankan Trajectory" and "A Contribution to the Debate between Rajpal Abeynayake and Malinda Senevirathne on the Role of the Moral Police," submitted by Surendra Rupasinghe, Secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist). These selections focus on the interrelationship on the one hand between the political and economic situation in Sri Lank and international developments, and on the other the relationship between all this and a campaign being waged in the ideological sphere by the regime of President and Commander-in Chief Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has acquired enormous political power in the wake of the defeat of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE).



Introduction



The imperatives and the options of the Sri Lankan regime have to be identified within the logic of motion of the global political-economic-strategic order.



The present regime is trying to optimise the range of its policy options within the context of dramatic changes in the global political-economic-strategic order. The undisputed hegemony exercised by the U.S. as the sole superpower has entered into a new spiral of crisis.



U.S. hegemony is being challenged by new and rising global alliances and floating coalitions, particularly the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which links Russia with China, along with a host of countries. Sri Lanka enjoys observer status within this global configuration. There is an emerging global polarization between a bloc of powers led by the U.S. countered by Russia, where China and India play a decisive role. These movements are in constant motion and change, and they have not coalesced into hardened rival blocs. There is both contention and collusion, both unity and struggle between all these powers in their effort to gain decisive strategic advantage over all others.



A strategic balancing act



The Sri Lankan regime is trying to optimize its strategic options by exploiting this rivalry and contention between the various emerging power centres and blocs. Even as it bends towards Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and Brazil, it conforms to the needs and dictates of the U.S., Japan and the West, and capitulates to the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank. Even as it leans heavily on China, it takes great care to placate India by offering it also a juicy slice of the strategic pie. It profiles a pro-Iranian stance, while having entered into a military agreement with the U.S. Even as it declares solidarity with Palestine, it relies on Israel and its Mossad for military and strategic assistance. The regime exploits these contradictions and contentions based on the growing strategic importance of the island with respect to accessing and controlling the vital sea lanes of the Indian Ocean.



Role of regional and international players



The growing linkages being built up with China will, no doubt, exert pressure in deciding the future trajectory for Sri Lanka. China has afforded a line of credit to the tune of $3.4 billion. This is financing critical mega-projects, including the Hambantota harbour and the coal power plant in Puttalam – both of which are under way. The Hambantota harbour will be of immense value to China commercially. But, more importantly, this project opens up a strategic gateway for China to gain access to the vital Indian Ocean sea-lanes which contain traffic of some 70,000 ships a year, and to further penetrate the economic, political and strategic lifelines of Sri Lanka and Asia. This project is a vital part of the Chinese projection of Asiatic and global power.



This is why both India, the U.S.-Western bloc and Japan, are all in jitters and are making their counter-moves. India too is reaping benefits, economically, politically and strategically. India has offered lines of credit to finance railway reconstruction in the North ($800 million), a 500 MG thermal power plant in Trincomalee ($200 million), immediate relief, resettlement and reconstruction in the North-East ($110 million), housing construction in the North, East and Central Provinces ($220 million) and reconstruction of the Palaly airport and the Kankasanthurai harbour. India is to open up Consulate General offices in Jaffna and Hambantota. There is agreement to link up electricity grids in the two countries and to resume ferry services from between Colombo and Tuticorin and between Talaimannar and Ramesweram, alongside a bi-lateral trade agreement that is being drafted.



The U.S. and the European Union, along with the UN in the forefront, are trying to cajole the Sri Lankan regime by raising the issue of human rights, including war crimes, as a way of exerting pressure on the regime to link up more solidly with their own structures of global strategic design and political economy. The issue of war crimes has been taken up not for the love of humanity, but to mainly seize a stranglehold on the regime, to placate the Tamil diaspora and appear as defenders of human rights. The whole issue will be elegantly dropped, once Mahinda Rajapakse falls in line. So will the "Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission" also promoted by the U.S.



Let us not forget that all these international and regional powers – the US, EU, Japan, Russia, China, India and Pakistan and others – assisted the regime to wage war against the LTTE and the Tamil national liberation movement it represented. They gave critical assistance and support – politically, economically, diplomatically and militarily – without which such a devastating and decisive military solution would not have been possible. They are all also responsible for whatever war crimes and other violations of human rights that occurred, and for the continuing humanitarian catastrophe, along with the consolidation of a Sinhala-Buddhist hegemonic state. The point is that all these powers identified a clear strategic interest in backing the regime, which the regime is trying to balance and exploit.



At the same time, despite the balancing act carried out by the regime, it is moving steadily into a strategic dilemma or quagmire. Whom to rely on? Which way to turn? The intensifying crisis of global capitalism, along with its consequent intensification of rivalry and contention among all the various imperialist and rising global powers, will eventually compel the regime to make its irrevocable choice as to whom to decisively capitulate.



Realities and trajectories of the regime



Not a healthy, nor viable, trajectory. For the sake of its survival, the regime must infuse a massive, accelerated flow of foreign investment in order to generate and sustain a given, viable and rapid rate of development, however lop-sided, distorted, vulnerable and dependent that development might be. Without the injection and infusion of such a logic and dynamic, the whole system, and the political economy it sustains, is bound to jump gear and head for a crash, along with the regime. This logic and flow is absolutely and urgently necessary to pay off staggering debts, oil the ideological and repressive apparatus of the State, rake in fat commissions and profits and amass new fortunes, keep the train of loyal lackeys, ministers, advisers, bureaucrats and contractors happy, and to keep the masses at bay by throwing some crumbs along the way. The regime must come up with lucrative mega-projects that will allow the multi-national predators to make a fulfilling kill, so as to enthral the masses with the illusion of soaring prosperity, even as they are ground to dust to pay the cost of the skyscrapers. So, mega-projects must lead development.



In the meantime, opposition and resistance will intensify and break through the barricades of repression, once the people begin to understand the source of their poverty, misery and degradation and begin to regain and organize the struggle for their freedom. In the face of this, the regime must exercise political-ideological hegemony over all of society in order to consolidate undisputed political authority, security and stability. It must impose and police its moral code, based on the new Dharma, as propounded by the new religious authorities of the state. Politically and strategically, to stem mass resistance and rebellion, the regime must continuously rely on mobilizing a solid, hard-core, chauvinist political-ideological base. For this purpose, it must continuously mobilize dominant nation chauvinism in the name of patriotism, identified as the "Defence of the Land, Race, Language and Religion", equated as the "Defence of the Motherland". It must advance the banner of the undisputed supremacy of the Sinhala-Buddhist nation, in order to persistently mobilize its political-ideological vanguard and harness the hearts and minds of the oppressed Sinhala masses.



For these reasons, the regime cannot afford to address the burning need for a democratic political solution to the Tamil nation, nor address the national-democratic rights of the Muslim and the Hill Country Malayaga Tamil nationalities, nor still protect the rights of the various ethnic-religious communities. It must suppress and control all thought, feeling and action of the masses, lest they see the light of day. It must strive to keep the masses in utter ignorance, divided and deluded. The regime must conjure dreams and fantasies of mega-cities carved from out of the sea, while it lets the hundreds of thousand dispossessed and deprived victims of war suffer in hell. It must exercise an iron dictatorship over society in order to insist and command that the people shall endure all suffering, all indignities, all atrocities, all evil violations for the sake of perpetuating the regime. The logic and trajectory of the regime, and of Sri Lanka, is towards consolidating a military-police state, ruled by a crony, comprador-capitalist, dynastic oligarchy, out to enhance and perpetuate its power and privilege at whatever cost.



The moral police



There is a moral police being unleashed to police intimate, personal relations and sexual practices in order to enforce a culture of conformity, through instilling fear and subordination. Beyond that, there is a trend towards enforcing a puritanical political culture over society, under the banner of "advancing the cause of the Sinhala-Buddhist nation".



The reality of a moral police is no bogey. The fact is that the role of a moral police is integrally linked with a broader agenda of corralling, controlling and suppressing any form of resistance to the status quo. It is an integral part of a political-ideological-military strategy to rope in the people to believe in, and abide by, a given doctrinal religion, with its own intrinsic truths, laws and principles, that shall override any earthly law or constitution. A new doctrinal religion, infused by an all-consuming patriotism that will serve to legitimize and justify any and all crimes against humanity and against the people, as part of the sacred project to "liberate the motherland" from terrorists and traitors.



As a necessary part of this program and strategy of suppression, this doctrinal religion will reinforce patriarchy and imbibe obedience and subservience to (male) authority. It will nurture faith in supernatural beings and promote superstition and ritual. It will nourish faith in a karmic destiny, where you shall be bound to repent and pay for your past accumulated sins. It will identify the destiny of the family, the village, the town, city and the country, the people and all civilized life with the liberating role of the Supreme Benevolent Patriarch. The role of the moral police is to extend and strengthen the grip of the state and the regime in creating and maintaining such a subordinate, servile and slavish population under its supreme political, ideological and moral command.



This political agenda cannot be carried out without a solid base deep within the core Sinhala-Buddhist constituency. Blind, reactive, instinctive patriotism is the key to controlling and mobilizing the oppressed, mainly rural Sinhala masses to endure and pay the cost of the Mahinda Chintanaya project, a political-ideological project implemented by the regime to not only control, but mobilize the masses into a culture of blind faith and chauvinist patriotism that will ensure instinctive subservience and loyalty to the Supreme Benevolent Patriarch/King. The Mahinda Chintanaya regime – its ruling politics and ideology – crystallizes a particular historical process. It is a crystallization and culmination of a particular historical trajectory that has ruled over us since the transfer of state power by the British colonial power to its class of local comprador lackeys in the name of independence. Mahinda Chintanaya crystallizes, concentrates and culminates the feudal-colonial/comprador-capitalist ideology and politics crowned by the mantle of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy. In honouring its historical mission, the Mahinda Chintanaya regime has reconstructed the political-ideological structures, institutions and edifices of centralized, autocratic, hegemonic dictatorship to a new level.



In this respect, Mahinda Rajapakse, himself, is the one true heir to the UNP-SLFP historical legacy, which sanctioned the birth of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy and divided the country, while mortgaging the land and the people and enslaving them. He is the true inheritor of the ruling class in terms of exercising a ruthless comprador dictatorship over the masses. But he has exceeded all in terms of applying the science and art of deceit and deception, cunning manipulation and unmitigated repression in perpetuating his power. The hard fact is that the "Sinhalayas" have rallied around Mahinda’s banner of war, conquest and supremacy as the path to their liberation.



Following the centuries of colonial domination and depredation, deep in the subterranean subconscious of the popular Sinhala mind there is a sense of long-lost victory and a spirit of regaining lost pride and independence. There is a shared need to be liberated from the shackles of imperialism and feudal oppression, to be free of the scourge of endless poverty, deprivation and degradation. These genuine national-democratic aspirations of the Sinhala nation has been perverted into a form of patriotism in the service of the comprador ruling class. This has led to a spirit of joyous celebration over the military liquidation of the LTTE. There is a popular triumphal spirit of Mahinda Rajapakse as the conqueror who has vanquished the alien imposter and liberated the land and the people from hell and damnation. That was how the war was crafted and pursued – as a patriotic war to save the "Sinhala-Buddhist Nation and its Motherland" from the clutches of "Tamil separatist terrorism".



Along with the military liquidation of the LTTE, the destruction and eradication of the whole generative structure of the ideology and politics of separatism was to be the aim of the war. Ultimately, the war was aimed at eradicating the Tamil national liberation movement, root and branch, so there will not be a Tamil National Question to resolve. The "Sinhalayas" – rich and poor, en masse – supported this war led by Mahinda Rajapakse and are still supporting its ideology and politics with conviction.



The oppressed Sinhala masses, betrayed by the "Left" movement, without revolutionary leadership and organization, have fallen prey to this State ideology of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy. Mahinda Rajapakse's consummate political achievement lies in having exploited all the frustration, deprivation, alienation, degradation, exploitation and oppression generated by the system, ever endured by the Sinhala masses, into a torrential wave of support for a military victory over the LTTE and the "alien" Dravidayas! The progressive, anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle of the people of Lanka has been perverted into that grotesque form of the oppressed killing each other to protect the oppressor state and system.



Mahinda – that is the combined energy and experience of the Indian RAW, the American CIA, the Israeli Mossad, the Pakistani ISI and the Sri Lankan Strategic Command – exploited also the fatal bourgeois-nationalist political and ideological limitations of the LTTE. Particularly, its reliance on the system of world imperialism to deliver liberation, and the negation of the role of the exploited and oppressed masses in waging revolutionary struggle and revolutionary warfare to rid the world of all forms domination, exploitation, oppression, violence and war.



Mahinda Rajapakse has introduced a new era. There is to be no more discussion of a Tamil National Question, or of any national question. There is declared to be only "One Country: One Nation". Enter Jaffna, and you will see! There is to be no protest or opposition to this agenda, lest one is to be classified as an agent of "separatist terrorism", as a traitor to the Motherland, to be branded and hounded as an enemy of the State. No one before him has had the courage to assert absolute-"monarchic", autocratic- hegemonic, comprador-Capitalist rule over the whole of society as Mahinda Rajapakse. No one before him has transformed the state into a modernized, politicized, militarized apparatus for the perpetuation of dynastic-oligarchic rule. No one had achieved such broad popular consensus over waging and winning the "war on terror". No one has emerged as the one, true undisputed guardian and saviour of the Sinhalayas. This is his historic achievement as the crystallization and concentration of the ideology and politics of Sinhala supremacy, which has formed the foundational structure of the modern feudal-colonial, comprador-capitalist state.

Sri Lanka: Lessons of the defeat the Tamil Tigers

The following article, originally entitled "The Liquidation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE): Lessons Paid In Blood", was written by Comrade Surendra of the Ceylon Communist Party – Maoist. It was slightly edited for this publication.



The killing of the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Pirapaharan, has brought an end to a stage in the development of the Tamil national liberation struggle. There are many crucial lessons to be learned from this experience, lessons paid in blood. It is imperative that we learn from them with a deep scientific perspective, if we are to charter the path of liberation for the people of Lanka.



Origins of the demand for a separate Tamil state



The demand for a separate state of Tamil Eelam arose in response to the Soulbury Constitution drafted by the British as a basis to transfer state power to its local lackey comprador capitalist ruling class before independence in 1948. This constitution was established upon the foundations of the Westminster system of parliamentary government, tried and tested in Britain for centuries as the most effective form of deceiving, dividing and ruling over the workers and oppressed masses and nationalities, while entrenching the state power of the capitalist ruling class. Parliamentary democracy functions as a way of deceiving the people to believe that they are sovereign in deciding their true political representatives, and thereby their life and future.



The truth is that this system deprives them of the political power to rule over their life and future. In effect, throughout the world, this system of government is designed to hide the dictatorship of the capitalist ruling classes. Under this system, the exploited and oppressed masses are compelled to choose between capitalist parties, who take turns in wielding state power in order to perpetuate the capitalist system and the exploitation and oppression upon which it is based.



With this intention, the British introduced the system of parliamentary representation based on universal adult franchise, on the principle of "one man-one vote". This principle ensured that the majority population composed of Sinhalese (74 percent) and the Sinhala-Buddhist nation (64 percent) would exercise majoritarian hegemony over all other nations, nationalities and ethnic-religious communities, while entrenching the dictatorship of its lackey Sinhala-dominant comprador capitalist ruling class. Article 29 was included in the constitution to guarantee the rights of Tamil and other "minorities". However, this article had no juridical power. The jurisdiction of this article was denied by the very same Privy Council of the British colonial power when it was called upon to adjudicate on the Indian and Pakistani Citizenship Act which had been adopted by a two-thirds Sinhala majority in the bourgeois parliament, in 1948. This act abolished the voting rights of the Hill Country Tamil nationality – descendants of plantation workers who had been conscripted by the British Raj in India and brought to Ceylon to serve as indentured labourers on the tea plantations – and denied them citizenship and declared them "stateless".



Tamils had made very significant contributions to the independence struggle. The Jaffna (Tamil) Youth Congress led by eminent people such as Handy Perimpanayagam was the first to issue the call for national unity based on the slogan of SWARAJ – that is, the complete independence of Ceylon from the British. The Congress led the first boycott of the general elections called under the new Constitution. This was when D.S. Senanayake and his fellow comprador travellers were cringing for limited autonomy under continued British colonial control. However, the comprador ruling class managed to marginalize this genuine anti-imperialist struggle. It should be recalled that Arunachalam Ponnambalam, founding President of the Ceylon National Congress, campaigned for the rights of the Hill Country Malayaga Tamil nationality. It is patently clear that this generation of Tamil leadership was at the forefront of seeking to build a democratic nation-state.



It was in response to national betrayal and discrimination amounting to subjugation that the Federal Party advanced the demand for a separate state of Tamil Eelam, within a federal form of government, under the leadership of S.J.V. Chelvanayagam. This demand was raised on behalf of the "Ceylon Tamils" cohabiting in the North-East. This demand was effectively sabotaged from within by the Tamil comprador bourgeoisie led by the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress, who preferred to share state power with the dominant Sinhala comprador ruling class.



Politics of the Sinhala compradors



The Sinhala comprador ruling class, which came to be represented as the United National Party (UNP) and the Mahajana Eksath Peramune, later transformed into the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), took turns in earnestly undertaking the task of erecting a Sinhala-Buddhist, hegemonic comprador-bureaucrat capitalist state. This ruling class introduced an openly Sinhala chauvinist policy of discriminating and subjugating all other nationalities and communities. A "Sinhala Only" policy was introduced to entrench the Sinhala language as the sole official language in 1956. Tens of thousand of Tamil people lost their jobs in the state sector due to this language policy.



Finally, in 1972, under a coalition government with the Trotskyite Lanka Sama-Samaja Party (LSSP) and the revisionist Communist Party of Sri Lanka, the SLFP introduced the "Republican Constitution" which entrenched Buddhism as the foremost religion and further entrenched Sinhala as the sole official language. Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka as part of this "Sinhalization".



This government also introduced a "standardization" policy, which effectively limited Tamils from having access to higher education. The Tamil bourgeois leadership that had entered into electoral alliances with either the UNP or the SLFP based on pledges given to address Tamil grievances was betrayed by every successive government. The International Tamil Literary Congress was attacked, killing twelve participants. These cumulative developments gave rise to Tamil youth militancy. The late leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Pirapaharan, mounted the stage of history by assassinating the Mayor of Jaffna for attempting to cover up for this crime. The year 1976 was a turning point. All Tamil political parties and militant organizations adopted the Vaddukodai resolution, which declared a common struggle to achieve a separate state of Tamil Eelam. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was formed to carry out this mandate constitutionally.



All efforts by the governments in power to even cosmetically address Tamil grievances were repeatedly sabotaged by the bourgeois parliamentary opposition by unleashing Sinhala chauvinism, resulting in the most barbaric forms of state-sponsored anti-Tamil communal violence throughout the country. In the 1997 general elections, the Tamil United Liberation Front was returned as the main opposition party, with a mandate to struggle constitutionally for a separate state. The bourgeois TULF had agreed to meagre reforms in the form of the District Development Councils, as a substitute for a separate state. The DDC elections held in 1981 were openly rigged and Jaffna, the capital of the North, was set ablaze by Sinhala goons and armed forces mobilized by the state. The Jaffna library was set ablaze destroying some 95,000 books and documents of irreplaceable value, being the repository of the Tamil intellectual and cultural heritage. This was a form of cultural genocide committed against the Tamil nation.



The 6th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted by a 5/6th majority in parliament. This amendment simply outlawed the demand for a separate state, with possible punishment of up to 20 years imprisonment and seizure of all movable property for any activities connected with this demand. The TULF lost its position as the leading parliamentary opposition. All constitutional means of advancing the struggle for national self-determination were blocked. In the face of these concerted attacks on Tamil nationhood, the armed struggle for national self-determination was launched by several militant groups. The armed forces were given six months by the state to wipe out this problem, and they went on a rampage against Tamil youth.



Black July 1983 witnessed a most horrendous form of state-sponsored terrorism against the Tamil people. In retaliation for the killing of 13 soldiers by the LTTE, 53 Tamil political prisoners who were detained under maximum security were brutally massacred by Sinhala prisoners fuelled by liquor and armed with knives and swords provided by ministers of the state. This was accompanied by a bestial communal rampage where Tamils were raped, torched, slashed and looted openly, as the state security forces stood guard. The Executive President of the Republic declared that this was justified revenge on the part of the Sinhalese.



A new Tamil generation emerges



This form of national subjugation and state repression resulted in the birth of a new generation of Tamil militants, bearing various political visions and ideologies, agendas – and buyers and backers. The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of Indian intelligence had penetrated some of the dominant petit-bourgeois Tamil militant forces, including the LTTE. From Indira Gandhi, the then-President of India, down to the political rulers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, drug peddlers and arms dealers, all vied for influence with the dominant militant groups. Indian ruling factions gave refuge, military training and funded each of their favourites. These groups, in turn, vied for influence with all kinds of agents of world imperialism and Indian hegemonism.



From the very beginning, the emergent new Tamil national movement was dominated by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois class forces. Contention and rivalry for dominance was promoted by the various powers and agents vying for influence over the Tamil national movement and over the politics of the country.



In this deadly contention, the LTTE emerged as the most ruthless force, eliminating and subjugating all other organizations. Most of the other Tamil militant organizations turned into paramilitary agents and accomplices of the state, in the war to liquidate the LTTE. The LTTE remained the only force that decided to carry out the mandate of the Tamil nation to achieve the right of national self-determination, in the form of a separate state, through an armed struggle against the state.



During the 25 years of armed struggle, the LTTE achieved some spectacular military victories and gained ground politically. In guerrilla warfare, positional warfare and conventional warfare, the LTTE stood up to the combined might of both the Indian army and the Sri Lankan armed forces, when India deployed its army to help resolve the issue. The so-called Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) became the Indian People Killing Force. The LTTE won the respect of the world by its daring political will, and unrelenting military capacity to take on the Indian state and the fourth-largest army in the world.



It established a de facto state in the North-East, operating their own ministries, banks, police, courts, tax collection, etc. The LTTE even commanded its own shipping fleet. Although banned in key countries such as the USA, UK, France, Canada, Australia, India and Sri Lanka as a "ruthless terrorist organization", when it came to negotiations the world powers and the Sri Lankan state were forced to give the LTTE de facto recognition as the leading force representing the Tamil cause. It was supported by literally millions of Tamils living abroad – both Sri Lankans, many of whom had to flee, seeking refuge in other countries and who had suffered irreparable loss of their loved ones and their property, and also supported by Tamils and others from other countries. It even built up its own rudimentary air force, with which it challenged the skies and dealt some deadly blows to the state.



The liquidation of the LTTE



Now the LTTE has been militarily liquidated and its leadership decimated by the state. Efforts at reviving the organization from different diaspora centres do not seem to have any critical, scientific depth in their analysis of the reasons for this decisive military defeat. Even more seriously, they appear to appeal to the very same international community of imperialist-reactionary powers to hear their cry of genocide and to persuade this community to change their double-edged, fatally treacherous policy towards their struggle for a separate state. In other words, those who wish to revive the LTTE are still trapped in the very same bourgeois nationalist ideology and politics which led to this liquidation in the first place!



In a most serious sense, the LTTE did not have a chance. The new regime led by President Mahinda Rajapakse overhauled the whole political approach to the national question. It simply and categorically denied the Tamil national question by rejecting any claims to Tamil nationhood and statehood, and unequivocally asserted Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy as the ruling principle. The war against the LTTE was declared to be a patriotic war of national liberation. This reinvigorated and unequivocal official chauvinism injected life and soul to the predominantly Sinhala armed forces of the state, who believed that they were fighting and dying to save their motherland – equated as the exclusive home of the Sinhala-Buddhist nation – from the mortal threat of "separatist terrorism". Based on this slogan, the broad majority of the Sinhala people and others were mobilized for the war effort. The majority swing was towards putting a final end to the ideology and politics of "separatist terrorism".



The new regime could sell this war agenda because it was in alliance with the most rabid chauvinist political parties – the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) made up of Buddhist priests, and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramune (JVP), who claimed to be the "one and only, grade 01, purest of all Socialist parties" – and with the Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the revisionist Communist Party of Sri Lanka. The pseudo-red banner was conjoined with fascism. So the regime was blessed and the war sanctioned by both sides – extreme Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists and downright class collaborationist "Left" traitors.



The highest religious authorities of the Buddhist priesthood (Maha Sangha) invoked blessings on the armed forces of the state and sanctioned the new regime with a "messianic" legitimacy. The war against the LTTE was dressed up as a continuation of the "historic" wars of national liberation fought against the Dravidian invaders. Mahinda Rajapakse was dressed up as descending from the line of the heroic king Duttagamani, who had slain the Tamil "usurper" Elara in direct combat and unified the land and the "race" under the banner of Sinhala Buddhism! The entire ideological apparatus of the state, including the media, schools, temples, and the state administrative machinery, was unleashed with concerted fervour to whip up the war hysteria.



The naked terrorist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie



This new military doctrine was to be under-girded by a new and higher level of exercising the naked terrorist comprador/capitalist dictatorship of the ruling regime – and of the state. This policy was carried out with the doctrine of complicity. It allowed the armed forces and other paramilitary agents to act freely, knowing that they would not be held accountable by the state, the people, or by any of the two-faced international human rights institutions, commissions or councils. This was a policy of freeing up the reactionary repressive power of the state to wage an all-out, no-holds-barred war against the declared "enemies of the state" as traitors to the motherland. In essence, this was a policy of consolidating the parasitic, blood-soaked, Sinhala hegemonic, comprador capitalist dictatorship.



Tamil members of parliament were assassinated in broad daylight, some in high security zones of the state. Tamil humanitarian workers were assassinated. Tamil students were hunted and slain. Lawyers who appeared for "terrorists" were listed on the Web site of the Defence Ministry as traitors. Media institutions that did not toe the line were attacked by government ministers in broad daylight. Media personnel who differed, or refused to comply, were beaten up or killed. Those who stood for a democratic political solution to the national question were all lumped together as traitors.



The new military doctrine was formulated in terms of "no concern for collateral damage," whether it be the death and suppression of innocent civilians, the degradation of the people, the militarization of the social order, the death of human and democratic rights, the humanitarian catastrophe, or any other such "human" concern.



The international community of imperialist/neo-colonial, reactionary powers and their various international human rights agencies, commissions and councils all complied with this policy, with the adequate doses of concern for human rights and humanitarian law just to save their skin and legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Neither the degenerate politicians of Tamil Nadu, nor the billions of dollars of sympathy and support of the international Tamil diaspora, nor the sophisticated international logistical network, nor even the national-democratic aspirations of the oppressed Tamil nation which had been temporarily concentrated in the LTTE, could withstand the new military doctrine, line and strategy of imperialism as realized through the Sri Lankan State. The regime knew they had finally decisively cornered the LTTE politically, and was out to settle scores, once and for all, militarily.



Summing up experience



The new regime summed up some two decades of military experience with the LTTE and adopted a new military doctrine, line and strategy. This new synthesis was not produced by some "genius" in command of some local planning/strategizing laboratory. It was a product of a collective effort between masters of mass death and destruction: the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, India's RAW and the Sri Lankan military. These forces got together to absorb some new valuable experience in decimating "terrorism" through a genocidal war of attrition and annihilation.



This cooperation resulted in modernizing the intelligence and espionage apparatus, along with a qualitative upgrading of hi-tech weapons of mass death and destruction, combined with precision targeting, including laser-targeted bombing, along with the use of incessant aerial bombardment as a form of terrorizing populations. The new doctrine combined elements of guerrilla warfare and positional warfare, tactics of deep penetration and surgical strikes at key military targets. The enemy was to be attacked and destroyed by a three-pronged policy of encirclement and destruction, piece by piece, by land, sea and air, until it literally bled to death. Lessons had been learnt. This was to be a war of attrition and annihilation, as opposed to a war for territory. This represented a major paradigmatic shift. It involved a policy of terrorizing the masses into mute submission, silencing the media through terror, murder and intimidation, monopolizing access to information, forbidding any alternative or oppositional politics at the cost of being eliminated, through exercising the naked terrorist dictatorship of the comprador state – and the regime – without let-up or limitation.



The question is this: Why then did such a force that stood intransigently for the peoples' mandate for national liberation suffer such a pitiless, brutal military liquidation by the state? There is a supposed truism that says that any force that stands for justice and fights for the liberation of oppressed people will have history on its side. Well, it seems that history has played a dirty, and pitilessly cruel game on the Tamil national liberation struggle.



The truth is that subjective will is no substitute for science. All the heroism and martyrdom, all the sacrifice of the people, all the power of technology, will never deliver genuine liberation. Anyone who shares a dream of liberation and freedom will anguish over this question and exert the conscious effort to learn from these lessons, paid in the blood of the toiling, suffering people, so that the errors and shortcomings never have to be repeated. For this, we shall have to engage in a critical surgical dissection of the ideological, political, strategic and military line and practice of the LTTE. This is a complex task, and this article is not the definitive summation. It is meant to encourage critical, scientific thinking on the path of emancipation of humankind from the horrors and crimes of imperialism.



The line and practice of the LTTE



This article has so far discussed how the new regime took command, and that the LTTE had no chance against this combined international imperialist counter-insurgency strategy. However, the liquidation of the LTTE has to be principally analysed in terms of its internal class basis, and the ideological, political, strategic and military line it applied. External forces and conditions can only act upon an internal basis.



The fact is that the ideological, political and strategic-military line of the LTTE had a fatal vulnerability. You cannot fight and defeat a more powerful enemy on his own terms. The fact is that the state pitted all its physical-technological destructive force against the LTTE. It was far superior in manpower (some 200,000 armed forces as against at most 20,000); it acquired hi-tech weaponry and commanded superiority on land, sea and air. It had the backing of world imperialism and regional powers such as China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand. Even though the LTTE displayed military superiority for a long time by applying principles of guerrilla warfare, which it combined with positional and even conventional warfare in a really creative way, ideologically and politically it was fighting on the terrain of the enemy. Ideologically and politically the LTTE remained trapped within the system, and paid the ultimate price. You have to wield philosophical, ideological and political superiority over the enemy, if you wish to maintain long-term strategic superiority, sustain military gains and advance towards victory. The success of a revolutionary struggle for liberation depends on its philosophical-ideological-theoretical basis.



The philosophical-ideological basis of the LTTE was an eclectic combination of a feudal-bourgeois construct. The LTTE drew its vision and inspiration from historical legends and myths glorifying the Dravida-Damila civilization and tradition of heroic warfare and martyrdom. This is one of the reasons that the national liberation struggle led by the LTTE had, and has, such a powerful resonance among Tamils the world over. The LTTE believed in a cult of the super-hero, glorified the tribal-feudal mythology of invincibility, believed in suicide killings as a form of martyrdom and spiritual liberation. Alas, this ideology had no place for the masses in waging revolutionary struggle to liberate themselves.



The ideology and politics of the LTTE had developed from a petit-bourgeois romantic perspective in its early formation in the period from 1976-1980, and transformed quickly into a bourgeois nationalist class perspective. At this stage, it combined both national bourgeois and comprador aspects. It did have some important anti-feudal, anti-caste orientation, but not about overthrowing or overhauling the prevailing feudal-colonial social order. Women were accorded respect and played a key role in the armed struggle, but this did not mean that women were liberated from the shackles of feudal oppression and patriarchy. It wanted to develop a rational, self-reliant national economy. However, in its principal aspect which defined its class essence, the LTTE transformed into a comprador bourgeois class that relied on imperialism and regional reactionary states to wage its struggle for national liberation, as opposed to mobilizing the masses to win genuine independence and democratic freedom.



The LTTE never had an anti-imperialist internationalist perspective, one which would situate its struggle in the context of the struggle of the people of the world for liberation. But, we cannot blame the LTTE alone for its bourgeois nationalist ideology. The class collaborationist betrayal by the so-called "left" movement in the South is also a major factor that led to the LTTE adopting this ideology. In a fatal sense, what originated as a demand for national self-determination of the Tamil-speaking people, to include both the oppressed Tamil nation in the North-East, and the Moslem and Hill Country Tamil nationality, was transformed exclusively into a struggle for national liberation of the oppressed Tamil nation.



While the question of the Hill Country Tamil people was dropped, the Muslim nationality came to be targeted as enemies. Some 40,000 Muslim families – around 100,000 oppressed Moslem people – were forcibly evicted from the North on command by the LTTE. No doubt, external conditions played a role in this transformation. The state was trying to manipulate Muslim elements against the LTTE. The state promoted various armed groups to split and attack the LTTE from within. The Moslem homeguards were to be in the frontline of this strategy. The correct way to deal with this policy is to win over the broad oppressed Moslem masses into a common front of struggle, in order to expose and isolate the state. The transformation into an exclusively and extremely narrow Tamil nationalist comprador-capitalist liberation movement is principally due to the evolution of the internal class character of the LTTE.



Whom to rely on?



No doubt the state is the generative factor in the politics of terror, and had unleashed barbaric terror against the masses on a far more systematic and systemic level than the LTTE. In retaliation, the LTTE also practised an extreme form of terrorism against the civilian population. This line alienated them from the broad Sinhala and Moslem masses, and sections of the Tamil masses as well. It is true that the state had succeeded in mobilizing broad Sinhala masses against the Tamil National Movement and against the LTTE, and that the so-called "Left" had betrayed the Tamil national struggle and had become agents and enforcers of the state. Yet it was not the case that the Sinhala oppressed people could not be influenced to sympathise and even support the Tamil national liberation struggle, if it also stood for the liberation of the oppressed Sinhala people. Whatever the case, a liberation force should never degenerate to the level of its enemy. It cannot apply terror against the masses as a policy. The enemy cannot ever be the reason for your own degeneration.



The political line of the LTTE relied on the heroism of the dedicated elite vanguard, along with the destructive power of technology, rather than on unleashing the creative revolutionary energy of the masses. In fact, the need and capacity of the oppressed masses to overthrow their oppressors and their conditions of oppression and achieve genuine liberation were never mobilized. The historical initiative of the exploited and oppressed masses was effectively suppressed.



Instead of mobilizing the masses, the LTTE relied on regional and imperialist powers to deliver liberation. They went into all kinds of deals with Tamil Nadu politicians and with the Norwegian negotiations "facilitators" who were acting on behalf of the U.S. They also entered into deals with the Sri Lankan ruling class, even to the extent of being bribed into making sure that the opposition candidate would be defeated in the presidential elections and thus paving the way for the victory of the current president – who later went all out to decimate them.



The LTTE believed that at the crucial moment, India would intervene to suspend the war and force the Sri Lankan government to negotiate. They believed that the Tamil Nadu politicians would be able to pressurize New Delhi to intervene on their behalf. Yet, the Tamil Nadu politicians were only seeking to exploit the image of the LTTE to collect some votes, and New Delhi continued to provide diplomatic and military support to the Sri Lankan state to wage war. Pakistan and China joined in with generous support militarily, in a bid to off-set the growing strategic influence of the U.S. and India in the Asian region. Some Western imperialist powers and Japan tried to influence the Sri Lankan state to end the genocidal war, since it was causing embarrassment to them. The U.S., European Union, Norway and Japan were the self-appointed co-sponsors of the so-called "peace process". But these efforts were cast aside by the regime as they went ahead to decimate the LTTE, at a colossal cost in death, destruction and displacement of the civilian population.



At the same time, the U.S. made sure that they had a key hold on the Sri Lankan war effort to gain strategic control over the island. In the course of the war, the U.S. (and Israel) continued to supply advanced weaponry and equipment, combat training to the armed forces, advanced intelligence skills and equipment, and diplomatic-political support for this "war on terror". During the course of the war, the U.S. exploited the opportunity to enter into an "Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement" with the Sri Lankan state, whereby the U.S. gained free access to all of the island's military facilities. This is how the super-patriotic regime waged war against the LTTE to defend the motherland.



The organizational line of the LTTE flowed from its bourgeois-nationalist ideological and political line. The LTTE was organized as a highly hierarchical military command centre. This was a case of extreme bureaucratic centralism, where no internal – nor external – dissent was tolerated. The LTTE did not develop a political party where there could be internal discussion and debate in forging a correct ideological and political line. The political front was to be a mere machine to serve the army and the military objectives.



In the end, in utter desperation, when they were being encircled and suppressed through unceasing waves of assault on land, sea and air, the LTTE was reduced to forcing the civilian population of the Vanni (a region in northern Sri Lanka that was the cradle of the LTTE) to remain caught in the crossfire to provide them with a humanitarian shield. It is reported that they shot and killed those who tried to escape to save their lives. The armed forces of the state, of course, could not be bothered with civilian casualties and went ahead and deliberately bombarded this no-fire zone. The civilians literally were held hostage by both sides, and thousands were killed in the process, including elderly, women and children.



The state could get away with this type of genocidal warfare because it claimed that the LTTE was preventing the civilian population from seeking safety by crossing over. It provided cream and credence to the claim that the state was forced to resort to extreme measures to "liberate the Tamil people from the fascist clutches of the LTTE"! The bitter lesson is that in the end, for all the daring of the elite vanguard, for all the spectacular military victories scored, for all the immense sacrifices made, for all the creative imagination in waging war against a vastly superior force, the ideological political military line of the LTTE proved fatally inadequate.



Conclusion



If we do not view and analyse the world scientifically, then we cannot achieve success in transforming it. If we do not place the liberation of any particular country or nation in the context of the historical mission of emancipating humankind from the shackles of ignorance and slavery bound up with class society, then our lenses will be flawed, and history will teach us a bitter and cruel lesson. The essential lesson to be learnt from the blood that has been spilt is that only the path of proletarian revolution illuminated by the science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, led by a vanguard Communist Party, in command of a people's liberation army and leading a united front of all anti-feudal/anti-imperialist forces aimed at smashing the state power – the dictatorship of the comprador-bureaucrat capitalist ruling class – in the context of advancing the world revolution, marching towards the dawn of a communist world with the goal of emancipating humankind from the bondage of class society, can unleash the infinite initiative, creativity and daring of the masses in waging revolutionary struggle – including revolutionary class warfare – to finally defeat and bury the system of imperialism and achieve liberation.