The suicide option...

I thought this article was really well written, even if it only elaborates what's known to each and every person who knows anything about the terrorism issue in Sri Lanka.

I found this article in the Independentsl website which usually re-publishes others' articles and regularly fails to give credit where it is due. Therefore I am unable to source this accurately without being fair by the correct publisher and the author. Nevertheless it is well articulated and the true author deserves due recognition.

LTTE has only suicide to offer to Tamil people


Indi's Column

There’s video of the bra bomber on the net. You can see her sit down at a desk, in orange sari, thin and seemingly attractive. A man points at her chest, something odd. Her chest explodes, sending her torso flying and the man reeling into a pool of blood. It’s pretty sad, meaningless, and, well, just sad. At this point – after 25 years of armed failure – you have to realize that the suicidal path has failed. When the latest suicide bomber could be the child of the first - when it has become generational - suicide bombing ceases to be a tactic. It is now a way of life. Suicide bombing used to be a means. Now it’s just an end. The Tamil nation under Prabhakaran is just committing suicide.

Terrorism has failed. It simply doesn’t terrorize like it used to. People hear about the No Limit bombing – at one of the more crowded intersections in Colombo – and many just worry about the traffic home. Within minutes there are jokes around the water cooler because, as sad as it is, this is not that unusual. We all know someone who missed the Nugegoda bomb by minutes. But then they kept driving. And we all keep going. It’s just another day in a war that has lasted a lifetime.

There is nothing the LTTE can do to us that they haven’t already done. Attack the armed forces, done. Hit the Central Bank, done. Religious sites - bombed and machine gunned. Airport - struck, shut down, etc. Civilian massacres - but of course. Dead Presidents, Prime Ministers, Indian Prime Ministers, leaders and civilians? In the dozens. Bus bombs, trishaw bombs, assassinations, etc, ad nauseum, yadda yadda. Been there, done that. LTTE terrorism doesn’t shock anymore, and terrorism without shock value is just amateurish war.

In another video youth mill about in fatigues, carry guns, smiling and unsmiling. It’s the Anuradhapura attack where 20+ suicide cadres died while destroying millions worth of military hardware. Out of a budget of billions. The LTTE trained for months and lost all that human capital. For what? Really, just to make a statement. Just to show that they could. But all those young lives are irretrievably lost.

After 25 plus years, the suicide cult is stripped of all pretense. The LTTE is not a suicide cult that will lead to Tamil Eelam. It is just a suicide cult. Its cadres aren’t committing suicide towards an end anymore, they’re just committing suicide. Prabhakaran has said that if he betrays the dream of a separate Eelam, to kill Prabhakaran. And if the Tamils give up the dream of Eelam? If they decide they’d like to live in Wellawatte or travel and trade among the whole island? Then kill all the Tamils. That is what Prabhakaran is doing. His terrorism has failed. It does not work anymore. All he has to offer the Tamil people now is suicide. "