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THE government has made plans to celebrate the defeat of the LTTE and the liberation of Thoppigala by the Sri Lankan security forces on a grand scale later this week. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is to be presented with a scroll by the heads of the Sri Lankan military informing him of the great victory in keeping with ancient kingly tradition. Government media units, administrative units and even schools have been instructed accordingly. The Rajapaksa government seems to believe in the ancient wisdom that man does not live by bread alone and is feeding the economically deprived people of the country with a heady diet of military victories.
   On the other hand, receiving scrolls is no guarantee of enduring success or an end to the war as Sri Lanka’s more recent history would testify. In 1995, the man in charge of the Sri Lankan military forces, retired Colonel Anuruddha Ratwatte, who subsequently received a promotion to the rank of general, also arranged for a similar scroll receiving ceremony to announce the liberation of Jaffna from the LTTE. Undoubtedly bringing Jaffna under government control was a major military and political achievement, as Jaffna is the effective capital of Tamil civilisation in Sri Lanka. But the war against the LTTE has continued much beyond the term of General Ratwatte.
   Thoppigala, which unlike Jaffna is a rocky outcrop surrounded by jungle, was the last major military base of the LTTE in the east. LTTE cadres would still be present in the east to harass the government, and engage in acts of guerrilla violence. But the LTTE no longer controls territory in the east. With the fall of Thoppigala, the last remaining LTTE administrative centre has been dismantled. The media showed less savoury aspects of that administration, including small cage-like structures in which captives were kept. In addition, the home grown courts of law, the police and the civil administration system of which the LTTE was proud of, will no longer be there to give legitimacy to the LTTE’s claim of separate statehood.
   But there is a potential downside to this rooting out of LTTE structures. Whatever moderating influence that the political wing of the LTTE might have exerted on its military wing will be reduced with the elimination of the LTTE’s administrative and political structures. An ominous indication of this possibility has already come in the form of a warning by LTTE political wing leader SP Thamilselvan in response to the fall of Thoppigala. He announced to the international media that the LTTE would be targeting economic targets to cripple the strength of the government.
   The LTTE may seek to boost its morale by making threats of a deadly nature, and by referring to past recoveries on their part. But on this occasion their defeat in the east is unlikely to be easily reversible by them on the ground. On previous occasions, such as in 1992, when the government took back full control over the east, the LTTE was able to make a comeback by stealth in succeeding months. They did not need to launch major military operations against the government forces. Instead they waited until the government had to reduce its troop concentrations in the east for tasks elsewhere, to infiltrate back and gradually take control once again.
   On this occasion, however, the LTTE will face a major problem in infiltrating back to the east in any significant numbers. This is because they will have to face competition from their former comrades from the breakaway Karuna group who are now present in the east with the support of the government forces. Unlike in the past, the reduction in the government’s troop levels in the east will not automatically translate into a military vacuum that the LTTE can fill.
   The indications at the present time are that the government has shifted the theatre of military confrontation with the LTTE from the east to the north. On the face of it, the mismatch between the conventional strengths of the government and LTTE forces will mean that the government will have the capacity to overrun the LTTE defences in the north, as they did in the east. But the costs of such an exercise will be much higher, perhaps intolerably so, for two reasons. One, the Wanni is the stronghold of the LTTE, where government troops will face an undivided LTTE unlike in the east where the LTTE lost the support of the Karuna group. Second, the LTTE is likely to resort to increased terrorism in Colombo and outside of the north and east if its very existence as a politico-administrative entity in the Wanni is threatened.
   It is an accepted truism in Sri Lanka today that a political solution to the ethnic conflict is necessary for sustainable peace. President Rajapaksa is a foremost verbal proponent of this view in national and international forums. The end result of the government’s military assault on the LTTE-controlled Wanni might mean its recapture and the dismantling of all LTTE administrative structures in the north and east. However, the grievances of the Tamil people that gave birth to the LTTE would remain to destabilise the polity. The internationally powerful Tamil diaspora would remain a formidable foe for Sri Lanka without becoming its ally.
   However, the Rajapaksa government has shown itself to be much less sensitive to human and economic costs than its predecessor governments. So far the government has not been deterred by the array of charges levelled against it with regard to human rights violations, massive corruption and mis-governance. The question is how long the Sri Lankan electorate will be prepared to bear the heavy human, economic and moral costs of the war. While it is true that man does not live by bread alone, the government’s diet of military victories is unlikely to allay the hunger in the vast majority of Sri Lankan people for economic prosperity, non-violence in daily life and moral governance.
   Jehan Perera is media director of the National Peace Council in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He can be reached at: jehanpc@sltnet.lk

I WILL not refer to Bush’s health and education, but to that of his neighbours. It was not an improvised declaration. The AP agency tells us what his opening words were: ‘Tenemos corazones grandes en este país’ (We have big hearts in this country); he said this in Spanish in front of 250 representatives of private and religious groups, foundations and NGOs who had come to Washington with all expenses paid by his government. Of these, some 100 came from the United States.
   ‘The meeting, called the White House Conference on the Americas, is part of the ideas outlined by Bush as he began a tour of five Latin American countries at the beginning of March about what his government was hoping to do for the region in the short time still remaining of his term in office.’
   ‘Bush called the conference in order to discuss several subjects, especially education and health. ‘It’s … in the interests of the United States that our neighbourhood be healthy and educated’, he said in improvised declarations during a chat with six of the attendees, from Guatemala, the United States, Brazil, Haiti and Mexico, who sat at the table with him in a colloquium’, the press agency added.
   He said some incredible things, like ‘the hard work we’re doing in the neighbourhood’.
   Bush spoke, as did the secretary of the treasury, the under secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and the under secretary of state for public affairs. Together with them, several members of the cabinet chaired the working groups in which the meeting was arranged. They all talked until they were blue in the face.
   They mentioned that Bush had created a training centre in Panama that graduated more than 100 doctors from six Central American countries. They very emphatically referred to the Comfort, ‘one of the best medical ships in the world that had just called on port in Panama after visiting Guatemala’.
   ‘Bush dedicated 55 minutes of his time to this activity which took place in a hotel in the city of Arlington, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington DC.’
   Then, as bold as you like, Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, joined the voices to speak about Cuba.
   According to another news agency, when our council of state, complying with constitutional norms, had just called the elections, she declared that ‘the United States hopes that the Cubans themselves will decide their future’, and she added: ‘Washington will not tolerate the transition from one dictator to another’.
   In his opening speech, Bush addressed really unusual concepts for the head of a planetary global empire, very conscious of his power and of his personal role, reported in detail by the Spanish press agency EFE: ‘The president of the United States, George W Bush, today urged the governments of Latin America to be honest, transparent and open… The leader affirmed that societies which are open and transparent are those which will lead to hopeful tomorrows.’
   ‘We expect governments to be honest and transparent … We reject the notion that it’s okay for there to be corruption in government…’
   ‘It is also in our interest to help a neighbour in need. It renews our soul. It lifts our collective spirit. I believe to whom much is given, much is required. We’ve been given a lot as a nation, and therefore, I believe we’re required to help,’ he insisted.
   Bush knows that he is lying and that his tall tales are hard to swallow, but he doesn’t care. He is confident that if he repeats it a thousand times, many will finally believe him. Why so much trickery? What essentially torments him? When did all this rushing come up?
   Bush is discovering that the economic and political system of his empire cannot compete with Cuba in vital services, such as healthcare and education, although this country has been attacked and blockaded for almost 50 years. Everyone knows that the United States’ specialty concerning education is the brain drain. The International Labour Organisation has indicated that ‘47 per cent of people born abroad that complete their Doctorate in the United States stay in that country.’
   Yet another example of the plunder: ‘There are more Ethiopian physicians in Chicago than in all of Ethiopia.’
   In Cuba, where healthcare is not a commodity, we can do things that Bush cannot even dream of.
   Third World countries do not have the resources to set up scientific research centres, while Cuba has created these even if her own professionals have often been enticed and encouraged to defect.
   Our Yes I Can method of teaching people to read and write is today available to all Latin American countries, free of charge, and the countries that choose to use the programme receive support to adapt it to their own characteristics and to produce the printed materials and the corresponding videos.
   Countries such as Bolivia are implementing the programme in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. The numbers of those who have learned to read and write there in just one year exceed the number of those who have been taught to read and write by the empire in all of Latin America, if indeed there is anyone. And I am not speaking about other countries like Venezuela which has accomplished veritable heroic deeds in education in a very short time.
   Yes I Can is of benefit to other societies outside the Western Hemisphere. Suffice it to say that New Zealand is using the programme to eradicate illiteracy in their Maori population.
   Instead of having one training centre for medical professionals in Central America, which has trained about 100 – and we’re glad for this – our country today has tens of thousands of students from Latin America and the Caribbean on full scholarships who spend six years training as doctors in Cuba, free of charge. Of course, we do not exclude any American youth who take their education very seriously.
   We cooperate with Venezuela in the education of more than 20,000 youths, who study medicine and train in clinics in the poor neighbourhoods, tutored by Cuban specialists, so that they can get acquainted with their future and difficult job.
   The Comfort, with over 800 people on board, that is, medical staff and crew, will not be able to look after great numbers of people. It is impossible to carry out medical programmes episodically. Physical therapy, for example, in many cases requires months of work. Cuba provides permanent services to people in polyclinics and well-equipped hospitals, and the patients can be cared for any time of day or night. We have also trained the necessary physical therapy specialists.
   The eye surgery also requires special skills. In our country ophthalmologic centres perform more than 50,000 eye surgeries on Cubans each year and look after 27 kinds of diseases. There are no waiting lists for cornea transplants which need special arrangements. Let an active investigation be done in the United States and you will see how many people really need to be operated on there; since they have never been examined by an ophthalmologist they will attribute their eye problems to other causes and run the risk of becoming blind or of having their vision seriously impaired. You would find out that there are millions.
   In the above-mentioned figure I did not include the hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans and Caribbean people some of whom are operated on in Cuba, but most in their respective countries, by Cuban ophthalmologists. In Bolivia alone, they are more than 100,000 each year. In this instance, Bolivian doctors educated in the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) take part in the surgeries alongside our Cuban specialists.
   Let’s just see how the Comfort will make out in Haiti, providing health services for a week. There, in 123 of the country’s 134 communes there are Cuban doctors working alongside ELAM graduates, or Haitian students in the last year of medical school, fighting AIDS and various tropical diseases.
   The problem is that the United States cannot do what Cuba is doing. On the contrary, it brutally pressures the manufacturing companies of the excellent medical equipment that is supplied to our country to prevent them from replacing certain computer programmes or some spare parts that are under United States patents. I could cite concrete cases and the names of the companies. It is disgusting, even though we have solutions that make us more invulnerable in this field.
   Less than six months ago Bush had not yet invented the idea of making fuel production universal, from foodstuff, inside and outside the United States. Those of us who are aware of the value of fats and protein foods for human nutrition know what the consequences are for pregnant women, children, teenagers, adults and the elderly if they lack these. The brunt of the scarcity will fall on the shoulders of the least developed countries, in other words, on the largest part of humanity. It will surprise no one that this will be accompanied by increased prices for basic foodstuffs and social instability. Yesterday, Friday 13, the price of oil was 79.18 US dollars a barrel; another consequence of the money rush and the war in Iraq.
   Barely 48 hours ago, the United States secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, said that ‘he had the gut feeling that a terrorist attack could happen in the country during the summer’. The secretary of state, and subsequently the president of the united states himself, said something similar. But while they were giving information about a potential risk, they were also taking great pains to calm public opinion.
   The government of the United States sees and hears all, with or without legal authority. Furthermore, it possesses numerous intelligence and counterintelligence services that are provided with copious economic resources for espionage. It can obtain all the security information it needs without kidnapping, torturing or murdering persons in secret prisons. Everybody knows the real economic purposes pursued through world violence and force. They can prevent any attack on their people, unless there is some imperial need to deliver a bang so that they can carry on with and justify the brutal war which has been declared against the culture, religion, economy and independence of other peoples.
   I must conclude.
   Tomorrow, Sunday [July 15], is Children’s Day. I think of them as I write this reflection. I dedicate it to them.
   ZNet, July 17, 2007

Hasina’s arrest

The present government came to power to organise an election but from the very beginning they took a confrontational attitude towards the politicians. The advisers have no roots in the society and it is clear that they are dependent on some other force for taking punitive measures against others. Some of us are thinking that the government is taking actions against corruption. But what they are doing is obstructing the natural flow of democratic politics. They have not taken any action against any other people who are not politicians.
   Waheed Nabi
   England
   * * *
   For quite sometime it has been clear that the secular forces would be the actual target. No regime likes the liberals.
   M Emad
   Oxford, UK
   

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