Editorial

23rd September 2001
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Forked tongue

The United States has officially excluded the LTTE from the global war on terrorism, and this is no joke. Mr. Stephen Holgate, the US government's spokesman here says "we (in the US) are fighting terrorists who are not asking for anything.'' (See our page 1 main story).

It is not a homily delivered by a non-entity; but its rationale is very clear. The US has nothing to negotiate with Osama bin Laden as he hates America full-stop. But, with LTTE terrorists, it is a different cup of tea, because they are asking for something!

If Osama bin Laden demands 1/3rd of America and 2/3rds of its coast as a separate state tomorrow — does it mean that the US must not then wage war but negotiate with bin Laden? 

This is what US President George Bush said, addressing a joint session of Congress this week:

We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.

And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

So, while President Bush takes that unequivocal stand against "terrorism", his spokesman in Colombo sings a different tune. How come?

"Terrorism can be commendable and it can be reprehensible", said bin Laden in 1998 to a journalist which is quoted in the latest issue of the US magazine Time.

The problem is that bin Laden then went on to say "the terrorism we practise is of the commendable kind."

Once you begin to recognise the distinction between commendable terrorism and reprehensible terrorism; about negotiable terrorism and non negotiable terrorism then that is where the humbug about fighting global terrorism also begins.

On the other hand, the Sri Lanka government and her people are hoping that the US war on terrorism will extend to the LTTE. But, then our President told last week's Ashraff commemoration meeting that "it will not be sufficient to seek perpetrators of terrorism and merely deal with them. It is equally important to understand the deep rooted causes that lead to terrorism, and to resolve them as the only effective means of eliminating terrorism.''

There seems to be no sense of the double-speak that is going-on the issue of terrorism, since the US was attacked.

What's seen is that governments may be banding on the one hand to combat global terrorism, even as the terrorists have their own agenda of networking with each other. Purveyors of terror and their organizations have mutual contact, and they virtually run parallel governments.

One needs to look at random recent developments to see what global terrorism means today. Some members of the Irish Republican Army were nabbed in Columbia recently, and they were linked to the drug cartels in this country. There have been intelligence reports here that the LTTE has been shopping for Stinger missiles in the Afghan arms market, which have been thriving after the abortive Soviet invasion.

Their international networking success is such, that today, while government's conduct conferences in venues such as Geneva, these terrorist organizations run their own stalls in different floors of the same conference venue in the guise of being Non-Governmental Organizations.

When leaders of powerful nations wax eloquent about terrorism, we Sri Lankans can only have a smirk on our faces, as we know about terrorism first hand, having borne the brunt of a more vicious and ferocious kind of terrorism than the US has just faced for so many years now. But then, we must negotiate because after all, there is something to negotiate — a separate state.

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