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| Sri Lanka: Now, to win peace |
| Friday June 19, 2009 , New Delhi |
| Exactly a month ago, on 19th May, the world watched and heard in disbelief, the death of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the supremo of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE, unarguably the world's most dreaded, most potent and most innovative terror group. As visuals of Prabhakaran's body were flashed around the globe, most people initially refused to believe the news. After all, Prabhakaran had seemed invincible for over a quarter century, his Tamil Tigers virtually occupying one-third of Sri Lanka. They had taken on and beaten back the Indian and the Sri Lankan armies in the past and many thought Eeelam War IV, as the latest conflict had come to be known, would also result in a stalemate. But there it was. Prabhakaran was indeed dead. Shot in the head, dressed in military fatigues he so dearly loved, his eyes bulging -- was he surprised? Shocked when the end came? Prabhakaran's body was identified by his one-time comrade in arms, Vigyanmoorti Muralitharan better known as 'Col' Karuna in the LTTE. Muralitharan, now a minister, was especially flown in into the battle zone to confirm Prabhakaran's death. Looking back, our team--Dhanpal, who handled the camera and me, were lucky to be reporting one of the biggest news events of the decade. But as I have discovered time and again in all these 26 years of journalism, luck is another name one gives to impeccable sources and friends in the field. In a virtual repeat of what had happened with me during the Kargil conflict, exactly a decade ago, I was lucky to be tipped off in time by sources I had managed to cultivate and befriend over the years in Sri Lanka. Like in Kargil, two different sources came to my aid. They called independently, one on the night of 15th May and the other on the morning of 16th May to say, "It (the war) is over bar the shouting. Be here asap." So, thanks to those tip offs, on the 16th, the day whole of India was glued to television sets to hear the Lok Sabha election results, I was flying due south via Bangalore to land in Colombo by late afternoon. In retrospect, it was a timely move to be in the Sri Lankan capital because from that Saturday evening onwards, events unfolded with lightening speed and one could keep pace with the demands from the office only because in Dhanpal I had an experienced and unflappable colleague. As Eelam War IV neared its climax, there was virtually not a minute's respite since one was reporting both for the English as well as the Hindi channels. May 19, 2009 will therefore forever remain etched in my memory. It was an historic news event but also a sad one. Prabhakaran was dead and the LTTE, finished. Through the day, we managed to remain on top of the news but as night fell and prime time bulletins were over, the reality hit us both. All said and done, Prabhakaran was an extraordinary personality. The outfit that he created and led had no parallel in the history of terrorism. As we sat sipping our chilled beers, Dhanpal recalled, how, as a college student in Chennai in the late 1970s, he was part of a group that had mobilized support for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka and how Prabhakaran was even then a celebrity in the Tamil brotherhood. Unlike Dhanpal, I had no such personal memory but as a student of insurgencies and conflicts, I only had grudging admiration for Prabhakaran's military genius and innovative mind. After all, he invented the suicide bomber; he perfected the cyanide capsule culture and applied innovative and daring tactics to combat large professional armies. But in the end, not knowing when to quit and compromise cost Prabhakaran his life. So, in different ways both of us, felt sad at the turn of events. Over the next three days, we managed to get exclusive, one on one interviews with Sri Lanka's Defence secretary and Army chief, among others. These interactions helped me confirm some of the conclusions that I reached about why Eelam War IV was different than earlier military campaigns in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's Army chief Gen. Sarath Foneska explained it in one simple sentence: "This time, we were playing for a win, not for a draw," We were chatting in Gen Fonseka's office even as Dhanpal, was setting up the lights and camera for Fonseka's first television interview just a couple of days after the Sri Lankan army troops had killed Vellupillai Prabhakaran. All my irritation over both me and Dhanpal being subjected to a two-stage, thorough security checks that lasted for an hour -- take off your belt, remove the shoes, click the camera, switch off the mobiles, kind of checks -- vanished the moment we are ushered into his large office. Looking pleased as a punch, Fonseka apologised for keeping us waiting. "Your army chief was on the line, congratulating us for our military success," he told me. That's the opening I needed to break the ice. "Well, I know that General Deepak Kapoor has been taking a keen interest in your operations," I told the General. "You know him?" he asked. Before I could answer, Brig. Udaya Nanayyakara, the Sri Lankan Army spokesman, who has accompanied us to the interview, tells his chief: "Nitin has been reporting on Indian armed forces very closely for a long time Sir." He shoots a query at me. "So how do you rate our operations?" "No one can dispute the military victory," I responded and asked Gen. Fonseka the ONE question that had been at the back of my mind ever since I landed in Colombo for the fifth time in six months since January: What made the difference this time? He gives me one of the pithiest comments I have ever heard: "This time, we were playing for a win, not for a draw." I say to myself: this guy is a TV interviewer's dream. What a byte! And sure enough, throughout the half hour, on camera Q & A, Gen. Fonseka is candid, blunt, aggressive and pleased with himself and his troops, giving me quotable quotes or bytes as we call them in broadcast journalism. Each of the answer is a potential headline. And sure enough, we carry many of his replies as stand alone stories over the next few days. But coming back to Sri Lanka a month after the military victory, the government there has a massive task on hand. Winning peace and more importantly, the trust of the minority Tamils will be harder than winning the war. Post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation and then finding a political solution to the long-standing Tamil grievances -- which made Prabhakaran and others take up arms in the first place -- should be the only priority of the Rajapakse government. The President and his close advisers will also have to avoid Sinhala triumphalism to come in the way of doing justice to the Tamils. The war may have ended, but the Sri Lanka story is not over yet. As a reporter, I hope to continue taking the same interest in Sri Lanka as before. |
A student of conflicts, insurgencies and wars, Nitin Gokhale has spent 26 years reporting on military and militants from various hostile fields like India's north-east, Kashmir valley, the Kargil war, China and Sri Lanka, among others. He's currently NDTV's Defence and Strategic Affairs Editor.
