Lalin’s Column: Fantasizing Indian Intervention

The SL Rumour Mill Consolidation, the common candidate of the LTTE, is close to packing up as its allies are no longer amongst the living. It didn’t prevent it from making its last burst, stinking or not, smelly enough to repulsive.

Rumour mills last production

It tried on successive Sundays to panic the citizens with craftily presented scenarios of an Indian intervention. It wasn’t many moons ago that India was its bete noire when the LTTE were gasping and India was only expressing great concern without taking up its IC sponsored invitation to intervene.

Apparently according to these cadres, India will now also have to face the IC about war crimes committed in SL!

Veiled warning

On 18 October there was a veiled warning of India’s concern about what turned about to be bogus internal challenge to SL’s security. On 25 October it did a smart about turn. It said there was apparently no truth in the panic button scenario painted the previous week.

However just in case people began to breathe easy, they were told that Indian paratroopers had been put on ‘stand by’ somewhere in ‘mother’ India. On 25 October an additional bogey of a resurrection of the LTTE with the Maoists in South India was also trawled hoping the people’s morale would wobble. Indian intervention in the Maldives in 1989 was also given prominence to add spice to the smelly witches brew.

Parachute Operations strictly confined to politicians

On 01st November 09 the Indian paras had apparently closed in to an undisclosed South Indian base as if the natives here did not know the reference was Tirunevali where they twiddled their thumbs in 1983.

Effective intervention by paratroopers even in war is a remote possibility today due to the fire power available to the defence, unless enormous casualties if not the extermination of the paratroops is acceptable and a madman commands them. Intervening in another country in peace time will be far worse. For those skilled in attempting to sow unrest and panic for political and financial mileage, this scare story could be as futile and agonizing, especially for gasbag politicians.

Good neighbours have their own problems

SL has good if not excellent relations with India. This timed media operation on Sundays to create despondency failed. India helped SL from the 1990s in many ways to defeat the LTTE. Pakistan and China did so from the start while USA and EU did so latterly although as western nations the latter could not resist striking evangelical high notes, much of it discordant, developed to meet the mounting challenge of al Quida terrorism. India with or without its paratroops and its growing military cooperation with the USA and Afghanistan has its hands full too as the fundamental Deobandists who inspire the Taliban originated there.

A closer Indian Deoband partnership with the terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir is the nightmare they fear, not Maoists and the ghosts of the LTTE as this cadre explained. Thankfully for South Asian peace, China is looking down the Aksai Chin Mountains with little malice. The one time Sunday warriors should look for better places to drop their political paratroopers whether they are based in Agra or playing hide and seek on Sundays in Colombo.

Lessons of 1987

India ‘intervened’ in SL in 1987. It is highly unlikely India would forget that nightmare. They came they said on the invitation of President JRJ, apparently to ensure the Tamils were not ‘victimized’. They ended up by going to war with the LTTE. During the ‘war’ the host country’s President and 3 supine Generals conspired treacherously to gift weapons and ammo to the LTTE, to fight its ally the IPKF. It questioned SL’s morality, reliability and credibility as an ally and cost the IPKF 1300 lives.

Maldivian Interlude

In 1988 when the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India was in strength in SL, it picked up news of an impending plot by 80 SL Tamil mercenaries, supposedly from PLOTE, to intervene in the Maldives to overthrow President Gayoom who sent out requests to USA, UK and India for help. Indian paras landed in the Maldives within 12 hours and restored the situation, backed by Indian frigates which captured the fleeing mercenaries. The stunningly quick response made headlines. It escaped many that RAW for long had been stirring things up in SL. Surely if not involved themselves from the beginning, RAW must have had more than an inkling of the attempted coup. What is it up to now that its creation the LTTE has been wiped out?

Cheap thrills - marketing panic

This murky Maldivian episode if not the ‘ invasion’ by the IPKF is the lesson that conniving collaborators who pray in vain like late Velupillai P for foreign intervention to restore their personal fortunes, may have forgotten. The last time it happened (1988/90) it caused 60,000 deaths in south SL. The majority of people, far from panicking will not, deservedly, forgive them if foreign intervention from any quarter, however fanciful and cheaply thrilling, is marketed again. No paras or any mix of forces, Indian or Western will relish mixing it up with our battle hardened, ready, well equipped and superbly led 200,000 army supported by an equally proficient navy and air force today or on any Sunday.

- Asian Tribune -